CROATIAN MUSIC, Oliver Dragojević

Oliver Dragojević (7 December 1947 – 29 July 2018), the singer who had earned to be called “The Voice”, exactly like Frank Sinatra. Also known as “the Cosmic Dalmatian”, “the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost of Dalmatian song and the Southern comfort”, which he patented long ago with his emotional vocal rasp, Oliver most certainly was the best singer among the musicians and the best musician among the singers. A multi-instrumentalist and an excellent keyboardist, over the course of his long-standing career he made his way from rock to popular music and jazzy stylisations. He first gave his voice and soul to the numerous eternal melodies of the Split Festival written by Zdenko Runjić, while in the ‘90s he started a new lucrative era with song Cesarica, enriching his career through cooperation with a series of young composers. While he was the cult “Dalmatian singer” in the ‘70s and the ‘80s with the anthemic and anthological songs such as Galeb, Malinkolija, Oprosti mi pape, Skalinada, Karoca, Ništa nova, Stina and other, reaching far outside the regional borders, in the ‘90s and the new millennium he became the biggest and the shiniest star of (not only) Croatian scene. Moreover, he gave a unique emotional timbre to the great ballads typical of his opus in the 2000s, cooperating successfully with composers and musicians of other genres whom he saw as brothers in passion, inspiration and music preferences, just as he saw Ray Charles, Wonder or Cocciante. It yielded compositions presented in the most important global concert venues, which comprise the grand finale of the magnificent career of a singer (and a musician) who entrusted us with eternal melodies until “the end of time” through his unbearable lightness of talent and musicianship. As an epitaph and as a testament.