When earlier this year, on St.Valentine's day my all-time favourite Croatian artist Josipa Lisac celebrated 67th birthday, I mused here how unusual it is for a pop singer to have such impressively long career - particularly here on these territories where music veterans are practically endangered species and the business itself usually ruthlessly sidelines older faces in order to explore something constantly new. By definition, pop musicians come and go, with generally one important highlight after which if they are lucky, they might experience latter-day revival where new audiences discover them. Since we basically have no precedents in such cases and no rules about how exactly the pop singer is supposed to age gracefully trough the years, the times and trends, it would be perfectly logical to assume the person will probably at some person cease to be relevant. Perhaps it is so, in cases where somebody experiences really huge, meteoric rise and is over-exposed in media to the point of saturation or if their work gradually loses steam and inspiration. Some decide to play safe and eventually find themselves in artistic cul-de-sac where audiences simply don't find them interesting anymore. Others even give up after a while, unable to repeat previous success or unwilling to change with times - usually you hear them complaining about younger generations and how ignorant or disrespectful they are towards them, as that award from 1965. empowers them to a life of admiration.
Completely alone and remarkable amongst handful of our Croatian music icons, Lisac has carved her own way trough ups and downs of the business and looking objectively at her 50 years of career, one can recognise certain aspects that might have been instrumental in achieving her present status as still-standing warrior. For one thing, right from the start she showed clear disdain for following any commercial trends - if all the herd went to one direction, she went another way and bravely experimented with various music genres even if critics at the time didn't understand or support her projects. That she was blessed with unique voice is actually of less importance than it seems - many other artists had their own sounds but dared not to explore them or to evolve further. Being selective in choice of collaborators and material might be far more significant, as Lisac always had a good ear to spot gifted musicians and if the first half of her legend was cemented trough now classic collaboration with Karlo Metikoš, for the last twenty six years or so she continued holding on the the same high standards as before, picking the material with great care. Treating her songbook as a precious body of ever-evolving art and presenting it in different variations instead of repeating herself might be another factor - not content to became just another golden oldie, Lisac never allowed herself to became simply nostalgic singer from another era but pushed her material towards constantly experimental edges and in process intrigued younger musicians who seems to always recognise her adventurous spirit. What media always focuses on - her ever changing visual metamorphoses - is in fact far less important than the unexpected musical directions and choices she embraces. How effortlessly Lisac mastered the craft of always being interesting and even provocative, is clear when her colleagues try to follow the same example and fall flat on their faces, because her charisma allows playful reinventions where other artists just look silly or imitative.
Back in February I wondered how much further Lisac can go at this point, but I shouldn't have worried - not only that she still works as much as she wants (at the age when most of her contemporaries are long forgotten) but she got herself a huge hit collaborating with another new, cutting edge band "Chui" (in a song that is quite ambitious and almost symphonic) and presently I see her playing in Chicago, New York and Toronto. I have no doubt that audiences crowding these concerts are ex-patriots who expect nothing more than nostalgic trip but were probably startled with the way Lisac keeps her music fresh and completely different (personally even myself sometimes I can't recognise introductions to songs on her concerts, which is exactly just what she intended). It's very hard to write about her without using phrases like "unique" or "special" since journalists have wrestled with this from 1968 onwards but its a status she worked very hard to achieve and managed to stay relevant against all odds.
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