GORAN BREGOVIĆ

Biography

With his roots in the Balkans, where he hails from, and his mind in the 21st century, Goran Bregović's compositions blend the sounds of a Gypsy fanfare, traditional Bulgarian polyphonies, an electric guitar, and traditional percussion with rock accents... resulting in music that we instinctively seem to recognise and that our bodies can hardly resist.
Born in Sarajevo to a Serbian mother and Croatian father, Goran Bregović formed his first rock bands at the age of sixteen. "Rock played a fundamental role in our lives at the time. It was the only chance we had to express our discontent publicly without risking ending up in jail, or close to it."
To please his parents, Goran committed himself to studying philosophy and sociology, which might have led him to a career in teaching, had the enormous success of his first record not altered his plans. Fifteen years passed with his band White Button, during which thirteen albums sold 6 million copies. He went on endless tours, becoming the idol of Yugoslavian youth. By the late 1980s, Bregovic shed his exhausting role as a "star” and retreated to a small house on the Adriatic coast, fulfilling an old childhood dream. There he composed the music for Emir Kusturica's third film, The Time of the Gypsies.
However, soon riots broke out in Yugoslavia, and the two friends were forced to abandon everything and move to Paris. To his already mixed background, Goran added a Muslim wife, and these times were not favourable for such a cheerful and exciting mixture.

FILM MUSIC
Raised in the same environment, of the same generation, escaping the same dangers, Goran Bregović and Emir Kusturica formed a close partnership that words no longer needed to express their connection. After The Time of the Gypsies, Goran was given free rein to compose the soundtrack for Arizona Dream. The result reflects the film: lyrical, innovative, and especially moving. "One of the great qualities of Emir's films is that they show life as it really is, that is, full of holes, unexpected events, and hesitations. It is this imperfect side that I wanted to preserve. The songs sung by Iggy Pop are also poorly produced. There is just his voice and an orchestra of old gypsies blowing their pre-war trumpets and playing ox horns. It's all very simple."

MUSIC FOR THEATRE
Il Silenzio dei Balcani is an ambitious multimedia project realised in 1997 in Salonica with Slovenian theatre director Tomaz Pandur. It marked the start of a collaboration with the Teatro Stabile di Trieste, for which he composed the stage music for an unusual Hamlet. Goran Bregović develops a taste for writing for the theatre through this work.
He then collaborated with one of Italy's most interesting theatre directors, Marco Baliani.
For the Festival Novecento in Palermo, he composed the music for La Crociata dei Bambini (November 1999). 
Between January 2001 and January 2002, he collaborated on another major project with Slovenian director Tomaz Pandur, titled La Divina Commedia, which premiered in January 2001 at Hamburg's Thalia Theatre. In 2007, Bregović collaborated with the Serbian National Theatre on the music for a ballet based on Alexandre Dumas's novella La Regina Margot.

CONCERT MUSIC
For ten years, since his departure from rock, Bregović's music had not been performed live. The change came in the summer of 1995, when, with a band of ten traditional musicians, added to a fifty-piece choir and a symphony orchestra, he began a series of concerts in Greece and Sweden, culminating in the one on 26 October at the Forest National in Brussels in front of 7500 people. In June 1997, the line-up was reduced to fifty performers for a two-hour concert featuring his film scores.
It was a success: Goran embarked on triumphant tours across Europe with his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, presenting all his most celebrated songs, from the now famous Ederlezi (The Time of the Gypsies) to In the Death Car (Arizona Dream), via the energetic Kalashnikov (Underground), which was enthusiastically chorused by the audience with the cry Juris (Attack!!!). The increasing audience numbers per concert- from 3,500 to 10,000- the concert in Rome's Piazza S. Giovanni on 1 May in front of 500,000 people- confirm that his music has a genuine international influence, and that the young rock star of the 70s and 80s has established himself as a composer ready for global success.