Tomislav Goluban

Tomislav Goluban is a Croatian blues musician, singer, composer and harmonica player, born on 16 December 1976 in Zabok. He blends blues and country with Croatian traditional music, many of his songs are in the Kajkavian dialect of Zagorje, and since 2022 he has also played in Zabranjeno pušenje.

He took up the harmonica in 1997, inspired by the old blues masters. In 2005 he came fourth at the World Harmonica Championship in Germany and became the Croatian endorser of the harmonica maker Hohner, and in 2009 he was the first Croatian at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. With his band Little Pigeon's Forhill Blues he recorded Pigeon's Flight (2005), Mr. B. (2007), Zagorje Blues (2009) and Med bregi (2012), the last with guests such as Tamara Obrovac and Zdenka Kovačiček.

His solo albums took him to America. 200$ SUN Memphis Album (2010) was recorded at the Sun studio in Memphis, and Chicago Rambler (2019) live in Chicago in two afternoons; it spent 12 weeks on the Roots Music Report's Top 50 Blues Albums and was number one in Chicago and Illinois. Memphis Light (2020) and Express Connection (2021) followed, the second counted by Blues Music Magazine among the ten best albums of the year. 20 Years on the Road (2022) brought in guest singers from the United States and Britain, and Nashville Road (2025), made in Nashville with Crooked Eye Tommy, topped the Roots Music Report's blues rock chart for four weeks.

At home he has won nine Porin awards, one of them for the children's album Tatine priče i pjesme (2021), and three Status awards of the Croatian Musicians' Union. His album Folkaj (2024) includes "Dobar dan" with Alen Vitasović and his version of Bijelo dugme's "Selma". He hosts blues programmes on Croatian Radio, started the Zagorje Blues Etno Festival in 2014, was the first president of the national blues society Hrvatske blues snage, and takes a programme about the harmonica and the roots of modern music to schools across Croatia.

Tomislav Goluban's playlist here is Naj 20 (2025), twenty of his songs in their Croatian versions, recorded at Sunday Studios in February 2022, among them "Ljepa roža", with words in Kajkavian by the actor Adam Končić, "Kaj god blues", "Zagorski cug" and "Flying Pigeon".