Mara Djordjević

Early life (1916-1941)

Marija “Mara” Mišović was born in 1916 in Odobești, in the Moldavia region of Romania, where her father was working at the time. Both her father, Aleksandar, and her mother Rusa (née Džilević) were natives of Tetovo in Macedonia. Her father's family traces its roots on the other side of Mt Šara, from Djakovica in Metohija.

Her father died only six months after Mara was born and her mother staggered back to Tetovo with infant Mara and her brother Jovan. Thus Mara grew up in Tetovo where she studied in a local Artisans' School graduating for a craft of tailor. Afterwards she tried to enroll in the school for teachers in Skopje but was not admitted.

In 1934 Mara married Slobodan Djordjević who came to Tetovo from central Serbia to be a school teacher. They had two sons, Dragiša and Vojislav.

Career (1941-1971)

Mara came from a family that loved to sing. She grew up to stories about her father's masterful singing and came to love singing as well. Most of the songs she learned from an old Tetovo singer None Grnčar.

During the winter of 1940/41 preparations were made for the opening of Radio Skopje. Mara applied for a singer and was the only one admitted to the post. She sang on the opening night of the radio, January 27, 1941. Her first show immediately impressed all who listened to it and got excellent reviews in press.

However, in April 1941 Yugoslavia was attacked by Nazis and soon Tetovo was occupied by Bulgarians who started harsh reprisals to anything and anyone connected with Serbs and Serbia. As her husband and brother were mobilized at the start of the war and later on joined the communist resistance fighters, Mara Djordjević was left on her own. Mara and her two kids fled to her husband's family in the village of Jabučje near Lajkovac. Later on they moved to Niška Banja.

At the end of the war, in 1944, her husband got a post in Priština and Mara came as soon as possible to reunite with him. Slobodan worked as a PE teacher and Mara as a housewife but she joined a local cultural society "Radnički“ in which she sang as a soloist and in the quire. In Priština she learned many old Serb songs from Kosovo. When in 1946 Radio Priština started to function, Mara Djordjević became a solo singer there as well.

The big breakthrough in her career came in 1947 when "Radnički“ was on a tour in Croatia. She was noticed by the tour organizer who notified people from Radio Belgrade that he found a person that not only sings masterfully but also sings many songs from Kosovo that were not yet recorded. In the summer of the same year Mara Djordjević came to an audition in Belgrade and impressed the commission. A few weeks later she was singing on Radio Belgrade.

Until 1950 when her husband got a new appointment in Pančevo, a town close to Belgrade, Mara Djordjević sang both on Radio Priština as well as in Belgrade where she traveled to. That year she became a residual soloist of Radio Belgrade. There she sang mostly accompanied by the legendary Vlastimir Pavlović Carevac on violin and later on with the orchestra of Dušan Radetić.

Djordjević recorded her first record for Zagreb's Jugoton in 1952, soon followed by another one. Curiously Radio-Television Belgrade (RTB) published only two single records of hers. However, the radio archive has all of her recordings made between 1956 and 1969.

She retired in 1971 continuing to sing on informal occasions in Pančevo, often accompanied by her husband on guitar.

Songs

Mara Djordjević ranks as one of the best singers of traditional songs from this period. Even more importantly, she first sang on radio until then less known songs from Kosovo. She made famous such, nowadays popular and widely sang songs as Oj, golube, Srce mi boluje, Karanfil se na put sprema, Beli lice prizrenka devojka. These songs were very similar in style to the songs of Macedonia, often characterized by melancholy stated in (unusually) major key.

Her style of singing remained traditional. Even though she polished it a bit during her time in Radio Belgrade, it remained basically the same as at the beginning of her career when she was singing the way she learned it from other, non-professional singers. Her singing is characterized by a somewhat high-pitched but also warm soprano. She also retained all the olden-days decorations in songs.