Zoran Kalezić

Zoran Kalezić was a Montenegrin folk singer, born in Danilovgrad on 1 February 1950 to the journalist Dragiša Kalezić and his wife Mileva. He finished the administrative school in Danilovgrad and entered the music business in 1969, the year of his first album, Uspomene.

His first solo appearance was at the Beogradsko proleće festival, and prizes soon followed: first prize at the Crna Gora '71 pop festival with "Zbog đevojke Crnogorke", first prize at Akordi Kosova in 1973 with "Vratiću se, majko", a third audience prize at the Yugoslav festival in Paris in 1975 with "Dođi sine, pa se ženi", and the audience and jury awards at Ilidža with "Jednoj ženi koje više nema". He sang at MESAM in the 1980s and in 1996 ("Ti nikad nećeš znati"), and at Poselo 202 in 1990 with "Željo moja, moj otrove".

Over five decades he recorded some twenty albums, from Moj život je tužna priča (1970) and Vratiću se majko (1973) through Kako je lepo u mom kraju (1980), Dobro veče izgubljena nado (1982), Stan' mladosti, stani stani (1985) and Moj dobri anđele (1990) to Balkanska duša, Kotrlja se život (2002) and Album 2007. Many of them carried traditional Montenegrin songs and new songs written in their spirit, and he is credited with more than 15 million records sold. He also wrote songs for Ljubomir Đurović.

Zoran Kalezić was a prominent figure in the variety world: in 1993 he became president of the association of folk performers in Belgrade, and at the first Montefon awards in 2001 he received a special award for thirty years of artistic work. In 2016 he marked fifty years on stage with a concert at Belgrade's Sava Centar, and that September he held a concert at the Štark Arena in memory of his best man, Toma Zdravković, with guests including Novica Zdravković and Halid Bešlić.

He died on 4 January 2023, aged 72, and was buried two days later in his native Danilovgrad, as he had wished. At a commemoration in Podgorica, Danijel Alibabić said that he had carried the most beautiful melodies of Montenegro to audiences across the former Yugoslavia. He and his wife Irena had a son and a daughter.