Vlado Kreslin
Encyclopedia
Beltinci
Beltinci is a settlement and a municipality in the Prekmurje region of northeastern Slovenia. The municipality has 8,256 inhabitants...
, SR Slovenia, Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
is a Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
n folk rock
Folk rock
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
.
Kreslin was born in the village of Beltinci
Beltinci
Beltinci is a settlement and a municipality in the Prekmurje region of northeastern Slovenia. The municipality has 8,256 inhabitants...
in the Prekmurje
Prekmurje
Prekmurje is a geographically, linguistically, culturally and ethnically defined region settled by Slovenes and lying between the Mur River in Slovenia and the Rába Valley in the most western part of Hungary...
region of Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
, then part of Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. He began his musical career in his student years, first coming to acclaim as the lead singer with the rock group Martin Krpan
Martin Krpan
Martin Krpan is a fictional character created on the basis of the Inner Carniolan oral tradition by the 19th-century Slovene writer Fran Levstik in the short story Martin Krpan from Vrh...
. He later continued playing a mixture of Slovene folk and rock music with the Beltinška Banda, a folk group from his native village, whose other members were all over 70 years old, and the group Mali Bogovi. With him both groups often perform together, mixing several generations onstage together.
Today he is one of the best-known and highly esteemed Slovenian musicians and songwriters drawing on Slovene folk and ethnic heritage, occupying his own niche in the Slovenian music scene. He has been referred to as an ethno-revivalist for his modernization of Slovenian folk songs such as "All the Wreaths Have Wilted". Modern Slovenian rock bands such as Siddharta
Siddharta (band)
Siddharta is a five-piece Slovenian rock band founded in 1995. They are named after the popular novel by German writer Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.- History :...
have worked with him. He has also performed with REM, the Dubliners, Allan Taylor, Hans Theessink, Vlatko Stefanovski, and the Walkabouts.
His annual concerts at Cankar Hall
Cankar Hall
Cankar Hall is a cultural and congress center in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It stands on the central Republic Square , opposite the Parliament of Slovenia....
in Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
have become a traditional event in the city's yearly cultural calendar. He has performed worldwide, including Adelaide, Australia, Barcelona, Spain, and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and has opened for many other bands, such as R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...
, Rory Gallagher
Rory Gallagher
William Rory Gallagher, ; 2 March 1948 – 14 June 1995, was an Irish blues-rock multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, and raised in Cork, Gallagher recorded solo albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s, after forming the band Taste...
, and Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
.His genre is a type of blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
mixed with Slovene folk music. In addition to performing songs in Slovenian, Kreslin's repertoire also includes songs sung in English, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Italian, and Judaeo-Spanish
Judaeo-Spanish
Judaeo-Spanish , in Israel commonly referred to as Ladino, and known locally as Judezmo, Djudeo-Espanyol, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, Spaniolit and other names, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish...
, as well as folk songs sung in various dialects (from his native Prekmurje
Prekmurje
Prekmurje is a geographically, linguistically, culturally and ethnically defined region settled by Slovenes and lying between the Mur River in Slovenia and the Rába Valley in the most western part of Hungary...
, Međimurje, the Slovenian Littoral
Slovenian Littoral
The Slovenian Littoral is a historical region of Slovenia. Its name recalls the historical Habsburg crown land of the Austrian Littoral, of which the Slovenian Littoral was a part....
, Istria
Istria
Istria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...
, and elsewhere). With his friends the rock singers Peter Lovšin and Zoran Predin, he composed the anthem of the Slovenia national football team for the 2000 European Football Championship.
Many of his songs and poems have been the basis for books and films, most notably Namesto koga roža cveti, which inspired Feri Laišček's award winning book of the same name and was the basis for the movie Halgato. He has also been an actor in several movies, including Halgato and Slavic Angel, and the play Three Other Sisters in Milwaukee.
In 2009 he was invited by Yale University to be honored at a Master's Tea, and there he was awarded the honorary title of Quincey Porter Fellow. His poems have been published in Poetry in Translation and Confrontation, and in 2012 Guernica Press will publish his book of poems, Instead of Whom Does the Flower Bloom.
Discography
- Od višine se zvrti, Martin Krpan, 1986
- Bogovi in ovce, Martin Krpan, 1990
- Namesto koga roža cveti, 1991
- Spominčice, Vlado Kreslin in Beltinška banda, 1992
- Najlepša leta našega življenja, Vlado Kreslin in Beltinška banda, 1993
- Nekega jutra, ko se zdani, Vlado Kreslin in Mali bogovi, 1994
- Pikapolonica, Vlado Kreslin, Mali bogovi in Beltinška banda, 1996
- Muzika, 1998
- Ptič, 2000
- Kreslinčice, 2002 (double CD)
- Generacija, 2003
- Koncert, 2005 (live CD and DVD)
- Cesta, 2007
- Drevored, 2010