Winner of the Nišville Lifetime Achievement Award

04 May Winner of the Nišville Lifetime Achievement Award

Winner of the Nišville Lifetime Achievement Award

Recognition of a Pioneer of Jazz and World Music Fusion in Serbia Dragomir Milenković Joga

Dragomir Milenković, an independent artist, guitarist, composer, journalist, and one of the pioneers of jazz and world music fusion, has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Nišville Festival, which recognizes artists who have made a significant impact on the Serbian jazz scene. He will receive the award on the opening night of Nišville 2023, on Thursday, August 10th.

Dragomir Milenković was born in 1954 in the Dalmatian city of Trogir, Croatia. He lived in Prokuplje, and it was during his time in Niš that he gained broader recognition and drew attention to his work beyond the borders of Serbia.

In addition to his wide-ranging interests and experiences in music, over several decades he has devoted himself to jazz, working in the Berklee School of Music system from Boston, and then exploring the possibilities of applying world music in jazz art. In the early 1990s, he worked on the development of new Balkan music and Balkan jazz as a member of the bands Hazari (which he founded about thirty years ago in Niš, and whose first album was released by Nišville) and Misteria Karpatika, before continuing his cultural work on the theory and practice of jazz improvisation. He has presented his original compositions on 14 albums to date, performed at numerous festivals in Serbia and abroad, concerts, collaborated with the French Cultural Center, the Iranian Cultural Center, the Ministry of Culture of Serbia, Serbian cultural institutions, RTS, TV Al Jazeera, and the International Red Cross.

He is also involved in journalism. His music philosophical texts have been published in the Belgrade magazine “Pop kultura”, the magazine of the world music association of Serbia “Etnoumlje”, the magazine “Nur” of the Iranian Cultural Center in Belgrade, the Belgrade magazine “Svetlica”…

He has collaborated with many artists (in a wide range of styles), including Oliver Dragojević, Zdenka Kovačićek, Kornelije Bata Kovač, Maja Odžaklijevska, Beti Đorđević, Bebi Dol, Boba Stefanović, Ljubiša Stojanović Luis, Nada Pavlović, Sanja Ilić, harpsichordist Smiljka Isaković, Usnija Redžepova, Vaska Ilijeva, Duo Želčevski, and the bands Frenki, Misteria Karpatika, and EYOT.

He is a member of the Association of Composers of Serbia, the organization SOKOJ, and since 2005, a member of the Coordination Committee of Artists of the City of Belgrade.

Dragomir Milenković Joga will perform with a new lineup of the band Hazari at the opening of this year’s festival, where he has performed several times before, and he is particularly remembered for the Hazari concert when Kornelije Bata Kovač performed as a special guest with them at Nišville 2010.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DPpwWmTAQc Hazari and Kornelije Bata Kovač – Nišville 2010