Thirty years of successful work of Zoran Predin

First line story

Today, this Slovenian composer is a member of several music groups and promoter of different sorts of music. In cooperation with Gypsy Swing Band, this year he published the album Pod srećnom zvezdom (Under a shining star), which has already gained attention of the listeners. Also, two books have recently been published about the life and work of this eminent musician, which was practicly how the celebration of his thirty years long work began


By DANICA ŠUBERNIK
from Maribor, SLOVENIA


Zoran Predin, Slovenian composer and ex frontmen of the group Gladni Franc (Lačni Franz), today is a member of several music groups and promoter of different sorts of music. In cooperation with Gypsy Swing Band, this year he published the album Pod srećnom zvezdom (Under a shining star), which has already gained attention of the listeners. It contains ten songs which represent a mixture of good lyrics and rhytmic and live music that invites you to move and dance. In his own opinion, this is the winning combination that will find it's way to it's audience. Also, two books have recently been published about the life and work of this eminent musician, which was practicly how the celebration of his thirty years long work began.

"The first book, Poljubac koji crta usne (A kiss that draws the lips)- is an anthology of my lyrics collected for the first time in a single book. The second one - Priče iz prve ruke (First line stories) by Tadej Golob, is a sort of biography where he tried to go through those thirty years, arranging it by most relevant topics for me", says Zoran Predin for the WAVE magazine.

The initiator of the biography was Tadej Golob, who thought that the life of Predin is interesting enough to make a book out of it. The book, which already has the attention of every admirerer of this exquisite musician, developed from a series of interviews.

"High level of my vanity didn't let me try writing it on my own. Golob didn't know me before we started working and has met me eventually through my stories. This way, every reader can step into the writer's shoes and through reading, get to know me step by step. I have to say that the idea worked, because the book is very much read. It has a large number of exclusive things. For example, Oto Rimele has, for the first time, highlighted the reason for abandoning the Lačni Franz group, etc.", explains Predin for the WAVE magazine and admits that he revealed only a third part of the story to Tadej Golob. The second third is somewhere, waiting for the right moment, and the third isn't for publishing and if it ever gets out to the light of the day, it will be after his death and, as he says, that will be the one he will lie in the most.

The anthology of these songs was made by collecting lyrics the other way round, starting today and going thirty years back. As a songwriter, Predin has put his songs on paper for the first time and presented it to his audience that way:

"It is interesting how these lyrics, previously being slaves of rhytm, melody, arrangements, now live a new, literary way of life. Reading them like poems, they gain a new melody, new tint and content." Ninety nine percent of these songs were written between seven and nine o'clock in the morning. As Predin claims, the ones he wrote during the night or in the afternoon were not so good: "I can say that morning motivates me, because then the world is in a state where I can easily desribe in my songs."

According to him, these two books are extremelly interesting to everyone who wants to understand their own life and compare their knowledge with other people's knowledge. By the way, he remembers the ex-YU scene with melancholy:

"That scene was the third world scene, while it existed. I think it does not anymore. There are only a few artists who are the best. Although, maybe some bands I don't know about are also present. This turbo scene destroyed the R'n'R scene more or less. I hope that turbo-folk will become fat very fast and then die."

At the moment, he is performing throughout the foreign Yugoslavian theritorry. Every year, he has at least three or four special appearences in Serbia, and he already has plan to hold a concert on the 7th of March next year, in SKC, Belgrade. This is only the beginning of celebrating thirty years' anniversary since the moment Zoran Predin started to do the job that enabled him to feel like a man born under a shining star. On his website www.predin.com you can find details about activities planned for next year.


(Published: 10.12.2008.)