Esma Redzepova
‘Queen of the Gypsies’ who sang for Macedonia at Eurovision
ESMA REDZEPOVA, who has died aged 73, was a Macedonian folk singer known as the “Queen of the Gypsies” who, for more than 50 years, helped to promote the music and culture of the Roma people around the world.
Known for her extravagantly colourful, billowing dresses, heavy jewellery and turbans, and her powerful and emotional delivery, she performed for many years with her husband Stevo Teodosievski’s Romani and Macedonian folk music ensemble. She toured the world from the 1960s, giving more than 9,000 concerts in more than 30 countries, released more than 100 singles and 20 albums and appeared in six films,
including When the Road Bends… Tales of a Gypsy Caravan (2006), which was recently listed by The Daily Telegraph as one of the greatest music documentaries of all time.
“I sing about suffering and joy, about the two extremes – there is nothing between them,” she explained to an interviewer. “When I sing, I live what I am singing. I can communicate with my mimics and my gestures. Music knows no language barriers. My voice was once voted the second best in the world, after Ella Fitzgerald … Pavarotti only came seventh.”
In 2013, at the age of 70, she represented Macedonia at the Eurovision Song Contest, performing a duet with Vlatko Lozanoski with the song Pred da se razdeni (“Before the Sunrise”). They came 16th. She also sang the song that plays over the opening credits of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “mockumentary” Borat, though she claimed it had been used without her permission, and was unhappy with the film’s portrayal of Kazakhstan as a backward culture. In 2010 she was listed among the “50 great voices in the world” by the US media organisation NPR.
Esma Redzepova used her fame to campaign for Roma and women’s rights and was mother to 47 former street children whom she adopted, many of whom attended the music school she founded with her husband in the late 1960s.
Esma Redzepova was born on August 8 1943 in Skopje, then under occupation by the Kingdom of Bulgaria (later part of Yugoslavia and, from 1991, the Republic of Macedonia). Her paternal grandfather was a Catholic Roma and her grandmother an Iraqi Jew, while her mother was a Muslim Roma. Her father worked variously as a porter, circus strongman and shoeshiner, and also played the drums, sometimes performing at weddings.
At school she was the only Roma: “Nobody wanted to sit next to me. So I sat down next to a boy. It was a scandal, because boys and girls usually sat separated from one another! After that I was the star of the school.”
She began her professional career at the age of 13 in 1956, singing on the radio, and came to the attention of the producer and composer Stevo Teodosievski, whom she would later marry. She released her first record in 1958 and, at Teodosievski’s urging, attended the Belgrade Music Academy.
Esma Redzepova and Teodosievski changed perceptions of Roma music, which had once been banned from Yugoslav radio, and in 1976 Esma Redzepova was “crowned” Queen of Romani Songs at the World Festival of Romani Music in India.
Towards the end of the last century her musical career was beginning to slow down but, after Teodosievski’s death in 1997, Esma Redzepova began collaborating with younger musicians, combining traditional Romani ballads with pop elements.
As well as giving many concerts for charity, she was honorary president of the Macedonian Red Cross and a councillor in Skopje.
In 2010, she was awarded the Macedonian Order of Merit, and she was appointed National Artist of the Republic of Macedonia in 2013 by the Macedonian president, Gjorge Ivanov.