Tomaž Pengov

Tomaž Pengov was a Slovenian singer-songwriter, guitarist, lutist and poet, born on 29 September 1949 in Ljubljana. He studied comparative literature at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and later lived as a freelance artist. He sang, wrote his own songs and played the twelve-string acoustic guitar and the lute, with a finger-picking style of his own.

His first concerts, in 1968, were songs by Bob Dylan and Donovan, which he went on to translate into Slovene. His first known recording is his vocal on "Oda Ireni", recorded with Mladi levi. A concert in the Knights' Hall of Križanke on 21 March 1972 convinced his friends that he should make a record, and in 1973 he recorded Odpotovanja, partly in the toilet of his flat on Prešernova cesta and partly in the poorly equipped studio of Radio Študent. Released by ŠKUC, it was the first singer-songwriter album and the first independent album in Slovenia and the former Yugoslavia, and it is still regarded as an unsurpassed work of its kind. It holds "Cesta", "Danaja", "Sarkofagi", "Nerodna pesem", which radio would not play because of the word God, and "V nasmehu nekega dneva", which he played at almost every concert.

In the mid-1970s he founded the experimental group Salamander with the poet Milan Dekleva, with Bogdana Herman and Lado Jakša among its members. He set Ježek's "Črna pega čez oči" to music in 1978 and wrote "Tihe so njive" for the film Krč in 1979. Pripovedi, recorded over seven years at Studio Tivoli, followed in 1988, then Rimska cesta (1992) and Biti tu (1996). In 1994 he opened for Townes Van Zandt in Ljubljana.

He received the Ježek Award for his poetry in 1997, and the 1999 film Dih besede portrays him through his best songs. Koncert, recorded at Križanke, came out in 2006, and the audiobook Drevo in zvezda in 2011. Others have recorded his songs, among them Avtomobili ("Nerodna pesem") and Steve Wynn, who sang "Prišla je" in English as "She Came".

Tomaž Pengov died after a serious illness on 10 February 2014 at Golnik. On 24 April 2014 musicians including Vlado Kreslin, Bogdana Herman, Lado Jakša and Drago Mlinarec paid tribute to him at the Hommage Pengov concert at Kino Šiška.