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Goran Bregovic Wedding & Funeral Band

From Bulgaria, Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Rep. of), Serbia

Roots in the Balkans where he stems from, head in the 21st Century which he fully inhabits, Goran Bregovic's music marries sounds of a gypsy brass band with traditional Bulgarian polyphonies, those of an electric guitar and traditional percussion with a curious rock accent…. all against a background of a bedevilled string orchestra and deep sonorities of a male choir, creating music that our soul recognises instinctively and the body greets with an irresistible urge to dance.

Born in Sarajevo of a Serbian mother and a Croatian father. After a few years of (very unenthusiastic) music studies at the conservatory (violin), Goran forms his first group "The White Button" at the age of sixteen. Composer and guitar player ("I chose the guitar because guitar players always have most success with girls"), he admits his immoderate love for rock n'roll. "In those times, Rock had a capital role in our lives. It was the only way we could make our voice heard, and publicly express our discontent without risking jail (or just about)..."

Studies of philosophy and sociology would most certainly have landed him teacher of Marxist thought, had the gigantic success of his first record not decided otherwise. Follow fifteen years with his group "The White Button", marked by marathon-tours and endless sessions of autographing in which Goran plays youth idol in Eastern countries until he's sick and tired of it.

At the end of the eighties BREGOVIC takes time away from this permanent hustle-bustle to compose music for Kusturica's "Times of the Gypsies", and to make his childhood dream come true: to live in a small house on the Adriatic coast. The War in Yugoslavia shatters this, and many other dreams, and Goran has to abandon everything to find exile in Paris…

For over ten years, since he abandoned pure rock in 1985, the music of BREGOVIC had never been performed live. This all changes in 1995 when, with a band of ten traditional musicians, a choir of fifty singers and a symphony orchestra, he undertakes a series of mega-concerts in Greece and Sweden followed by the concert given October 26th at the Forest National of Brussels for an audience of 7500. Very few concert performances in 1996 as the idea of a hundred and twenty performers on stage scared even the most enthusiastic promoters.

In June 1997, the group is reduced to fifty musicians for a two hour concert with the music he composed for films. And it's one success after another. Bregovic undertakes a triumphal tour throughout Europe with his Wedding and Funeral Band presenting live his most beautiful pieces from the famous " Ederlezi" (Time of the Gypsies) to the " In the Death Car" (Arizona Dream) and the energetic "Kalasnikov" (Underground) taking off as delirious audience echoes the with the powerful "Juris" (Charge ! !). The number of entries - between 3,500 and 10,000 per concert - and the concert given May 1st at the Piazza St. Giovanni in Rome in front of 500.000 people confirm beyond any doubt that his music now has a real impact on an international level.

Goran BREGOVIC continues his career, and the young local rock mega-star of the 70s and the 80s asserts his authority as a mature, successful, international composer.

Like a happy grown up child, Goran is honoured by collaborations with tallented performers from diverse cultures - people he would have asked for an autograph not so long ago : Iggy Pop, whom he totally reinvents (Arizona Dream 1993), Ofra Haza (La Reine Margot,1994), Cesaria Evora (Underground 1995), Scot WALKER in UK, Setzen Aksu in Turkey, George Dalaras in Greece, Kayah in Poland.

(Biography supled by artist management 2011)

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