for the 60th anniversary of the artist's work
The legendary Dubrovnik doyen of chanson Ibrica Jusić,
who left an indelible mark on the Dubrovnik Summer Festival with his
midnight serenades and guitar recitals, will perform a programme
entitled From Shakespeare to Sevdah and in the
festival's anniversary edition celebrate his own great anniversaries -
the 60th year of his artistic activity and over 50 years at the
Festival. Jusić was born in Dubrovnik, where he began his fruitful
career in 1965 singing on the steps of the Dominican Monastery, the
venue which turned out to be crucial for his vocation. On the invitation
of the composer Pero Gotovac, he moved to Zagreb and then to Paris,
where he appeared at the most prestigious cabarets. Nevertheless, every
summer, he kept on returning to his native City and his steps, where he
performed his traditional midnight concerts for the faithful citizens.
During his summer visits, he began his collaboration with the Dubrovnik
Summer Festival (1971), and took part with his songs in the Festival's
cult plays Edward II, Columbus and Aretaeus (directed by Georgij Paro). He composed music and performed in the play Miho Pracat Biography
in 1977. That same year he gave a recital at the Rector's Palace, the
venue reserved for the most prestigious musicians, which was a kind of
official recognition of his artistic value.
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Ibrica Jusić was born in Dubrovnik on December 14, 1944. This year he will celebrate his 80th birthday. Five years ago, he was awarded the Croatian recording industry’s Porin Prize for Lifetime Achievement. His story and his song are still going on, in all their vitality and strength. This is a fine age to have reached, but still more imposing and impressive is the number of years of his artistic work and his presence in the music and life of whole generations of audiences. About 60 years ago, Ibrica Jusić first sat down with his guitar and sang on the Stairs of his native Dubrovnik, and has still not come down from them. From this first pebble thrown into the sea, his life and career have been circles that have widened and widened. From a pair of lovers who were the first to stand still spellbound by his voice, his audience has grown without a break. This was the beginning in which he won over the world by being a persistent presence, with tireless self-improvement that is still going on and, above all, his uncompromising truth to his own self. The accordion of his father Arif and the voice of mother Emina sowed the seed of talent that unstoppably grew and flourished with marvellous fruits, grafted on to the hardy stem of a never-subdued defiant youthful rebelliousness, the essential ingredients of temperament and passion of the thoroughbred chansonnier Ibrica Jusić, romantic enthusiast, eternal wanderer and bohemian in equal measures of Dubrovnik, Zagreb and Paris.
His songs have been the set-texts for the sentimental education of whole generations. Not sentimental alone. Eternally strong and topical for every new generation is the Brechtian cry “Don’t let them fool you” from the vocal cords of Ibrica Jusić, which do not snap, and are to this day steeled with incessant appearances. It would be easier to list the cities and towns of Croatia and the whole of one-time Yugoslavia in which he has not appeared in public, should there be any, than those in which the audiences are still greeting him with gratitude and delight.
Ibrice Jusić takes on board and makes his own the verses and music of other poets and composers, just as he did with the Cat of Zvonimir Golob and Pero Gotovac, turning it into his own blood and voice and his own jewel of a chanson. This is a masterpiece of a chanson in fact, with which right at the beginning Ibrica Jusić winged his way at once to the very top of the Croatian chanson, at the end of the 1960s winning the top prize three years in a row at the Zagreb Festival; it has an emblematic significance for the whole life’s work of Ibrica Jusić and so it is no accident that it is going to be the high point of this evening’s retrospective.
Every choice of songs, including tonight’s, in the case of Ibrica Jusić, means a kind of self-portrait,s snatches of an autobiography, as well as an anthology in which the writer and vocalist once again takas out his heart and offers it to us on the strings of his guitar and in his voice.
Having particular significance at the beginning of the concert tonight is the song Ponoć – Midnight, in which Ibrica Jusić, in this case singer-songwriter, identifies the places at which it all began, the celebrated ancient Dubrovnik Stairs that have been his home from which he departs for his guest appearances, including that of tonight, in the just one hundred metres distant Rector’s Palace. The Stairs are his most important stage, and have always been his favourite, the point of origin to which he always returns. Don’t be surprised if you see and hear him there tonight already, and by all means look for him tomorrow, around midnight, in front of the Dominican Monastery, where this evening’s celebration will continue.
Like many other of the loves of which he sings, this love for the City of Dubrovnik is not always requited. But it is from this kind of love that troubadour hearts like Ibrica’s are composed and nourished, love in which they grow, singing eternally, in spite of all, In any case I love you. And this song is a wonderful tribute to a different and other genius of the city and the clime, Ibrica’s brother Đeli Jusić. This evening too there will be a particularly emotional farewell to the great Dubrovnik gentleman and poet Luko Paljetak who has recently taken his leave of us. This is a tender love, unconditional and timeless. An evening like this is the more important and finer when the love is returned, when after a long time the space of the atrium of the Rector’s Palace consecrated by the music of the greats is opened to Ibrica Jusić. And it is a good occasion to recall Jusić’s collaboration with the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, which began more than half a century ago.
Two more songs from this evening’s concert should be highlighted, in line with the title of From Shakespeare to Sevdah. The sevdalinka – Bosnian love song – To you, mother, my thoughts do fly is an ode to an important component of his complex cultural and spiritual identity, a richness witnessed and immortalised on his albums Amanet and Amanet 2. Anyone who is not capable of embracing and loving this part of the heritage, Jusić’s and Dubrovnik’s, is deprived and spiritually crippled. Finally, in a year in which there is no Hamlet on Lovrijenac, Hamlet is going to bewail through Jusić’s throat his bitter fate this evening in the Rector’s Palace. The song Tired with all these is actually Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66, so close and similar to the famous monologue of the tragic prince of Denmark as if excerpted from it. The point is that love is the reason for existing and not backing down, in spite of the slings and arrows of fate and of the world.
Branimir Pofuk
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Photo (c) archive of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival
