Arsen Dedić

Arsenije "Arsen" Dedić (pronounced [ǎrsɛːnijɛ ǎrsen děːditɕ]; 28 July 1938 – 17 August 2015) was a Croatian singer-songwriter. He wrote and performed chansons, as well as film music. He was also an award-winning poet, and was one of the best-selling poets of former Yugoslavia and Croatia. Dedić was born in Šibenik, in the Littoral Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, today Šibenik-Knin County, in the region of Dalmatia, within the Republic of Croatia, as the second child of Veronika "Jelka" (née Mišković) and Jovan Dedić. His father was an Orthodox Christian ethnic Serb, while his mother was a Croat who converted from Catholicism to Serb Orthodoxy after marrying Jovan. His father was a bricklayer, volunteer firefighter and musician, while his mother was an illiterate housewife, whom Dedić later taught to write and read.

Dedić was baptized in the Serbian Orthodox Church under the name Arsenije, after the Serbian Archbishop Arsenije III Čarnojević. He finished music school. He and his older brother Milutin left Šibenik for Zagreb and Belgrade, respectively, in 1957. He studied law at the University of Zagreb but dropped out in 1959, enrolling in the Music Academy of Zagreb and receiving a diploma in 1964.

Dedić became a household name in the 1960s, thanks to pop music festivals and his brand of music, which was at first influenced by Dalmatian folklore, but is mostly comparable to the French chanson genre. Throughout the decades Dedić became one of the most respected musicians in former Yugoslavia and maintained that reputation all the way to his death.