His Sarajevo and Dobrinja will remember him: Prominent artist Esad Arnautalić has passed away

Esad Arnautalić, a distinguished musician, composer and conductor, founder of the band Indexi, passed away in Sarajevo at the age of 78 after a long illness, writes the BH news agency Patria.

Arnautalić had been in poor health for a long time and lived in the Dobrinja settlement. In his honor, on September 17, the Municipality of Novi Grad unveiled a bench with his name in the center of Dobrinja, so that Eso could sit and rest when he left his apartment to go to the bank and the store. 

The pop and rock music era began with Esad Arnautalić. He founded the festivals „Vaš šlager sezone“, „Mali šlager“, „Prvi aplauz“, „Dječiji šlager“, and is the author of the European evergreen „Kud plovi ovaj brod“ which was sung at the Opatija Festival in 1970. Eso Arnautalić conducted at three Eurovision Song Contests. He gathered musicians that BiH will never gather again for one project called „Muzika raspoloženja“ (Music of Mood).

In 2007, he received the Davorin award for lifetime achievement. 

Glimpses from his biography

He was born on February 28, 1939, in Sarajevo. In the early 1960s, he began working at Radio Sarajevo as a music editor and producer, becoming one of the key music experts whose demands for local young authors to engage in authentic original creation, instead of the then-common copying and re-recording of world pop hits, opened the doors wide for the first generation of the future Sarajevo pop school, of which Indexi became the pioneers and founders.

Arnautalić is the author of significant musical works for theater, film, and television series, among which the most famous themes are for the feature films "Miris dunja" (Scent of Quince), "Ovo malo duše" (This Little Soul), "Azra", and "Savršeni krug" (Perfect Circle).