The royal voice in the wilderness of the Croatian musical scene
To survive on the domestic musical scene by doing your own thing or at least in your own way is not accomplished by many. To survive doing it, while being a woman, is indeed a very rare occurrence. If a common denomination can be found in the last phase of Josipa Lisac's work during the 90-is, then it is certainly the fact that she stubbornly continued to do her own thing on the most enviable level, provoking at the same time the audiences' expectations. Throughout her career Josipa Lisac did not only overcome the basic tasks laid upon the stage artists, but also she managed to set them ambitiously high in the shabby surroundings of the domestic musical scene, despite all the risks and circumstances in which she acted. And while in the past, during the collaboration with her life and work companion Karlo Metikos, we would talk about a tandem, today the situation is considerably different.

Whether Josipa Lisac is the goddess or the queen of the domestic stage wilderness, her caprices and her stage incarnations represent a completed appearance, matchless for the competition, who still sees spangles and dancing in the manner "two steps leftwards and one backwards" as the basic tools on the stage forever petrified in the festivals of the 70-is. If we add to her brave visual innovations her singing identity, we reach an interesting update: if Josipa Lisac saw her stage geometry as an aesthetic category, her material from the 90-is showed the similar aesthetic in terms of music. 

This double concert album entitled "Live" is the continuation of that very strategy: this is a luxury compilation from a singer who sailed through a 30-year long career and precisely in the 90-is found her new voice. It is no coincidence that "Live" is released after her latest studio album "Zivot" (Life), the most complete musical project Josipa Lisac made after her classical album "Dnevnik jedne ljubavi" (The diary of one love). The stage principles of the past were changed by sailing into the wider sizes of the genre, established on the popular music of the 90-is, together with the superior backing of the accompanying band that equally includes both electronic and acid-jazz ornaments. The more demanding orchestrations served as the new basis for the familiar voice and at the same time they led Josipa Lisac into the clubs thusly presenting her in a whole new way to the younger audiences, who are not unfamiliar with the stylish divergences of this sort, but rather, they are looking for them. Of course, collaborators like the keyboard player and the producer Gojko Tomljanovic have indisputable merits for this turning point in which Josipa proved to be like a fish in the water. Knowing her capabilities, the choice of the collaborators and the repertoire has always been the most important decision, so this occasion saw the total avoidance of some of the earlier illogical slip-ups of her studio albums. 

It is an old truth that we are talking about a singer who could even sing the lines of the phone book and make it sound suggestive.  But contrary to her earlier concert albums, like the excellent 'Live in Lap' from 1992, "Live" is the product of the different orientation and the different time. Despite the fact their titles are well known, the 17 songs on two CDs with their musical intensity and collaboration with the accompanying musicians are often completely changing some of the existing stereotypes and are showing the different face of Josipa Lisac, the old passion which underwent a new musical face-lifting.

We can therefore look at "Live" as a worthy concert account of her career, but also, as a contra-nostalgic work with which Josipa Lisac demonstrates she belongs to the present. Some of the old characteristics are still noticeable; primarily her emotional vocal performance on the verge of camp self-importance, but Josipa Lisac is above all a colourful figure inborn with the surplus of the stage adrenalin. It is probably very hard for her to avoid it even when she is singing under the shower. It is a well known fact that Josipa Lisac's vocal equipment is a category in its own right and also the main driving force of the whole story: the future positive mark solely depends on the quality of her musical material and in this case that quality is an undeniable fact.

Hrvoje Horvat

Josipa Lisac: Live
Everything begins and ends with the voice. All the debates about the image, eccentricity and extravagance are futile: if Josipa Lisac did not make good music, did not have good lyrics and a good voice, no one would listen to it. But Josipa Lisac has much more than a good singing voice. Her voice is her trademark, her identification and her unmatched value. Like someone said about Bryan Ferry 20 years ago: he could sing a phone book and make it sound good. Josipa Lisac sometimes even sang the average songs and average lyrics, but that was very difficult to notice due to the way she interpreted them. She turned bronze into gold.

 And when the songs were excellent, the power and the influence of her interpretation did not cease: would som other artist sing Oluja (The storm) or Dok razmisljam o nama (While I'm thinking about us) in the same good, convincing or outstanding manner? The fact that Josipa's songs are almost never remade by another artist tells a lot about her voice and everlasting energy: Josipa's aura, hanging in the air with every song, is too powerful.

The theatricality of her performances and the eccentricity of her image have in all that only the secondary significance. A lot was and it still is written about the way she looks and about her clothing. But all that is only of the secondary significance and it diverts one's attention from her real singing and interpretational talents. The people go to her concerts perhaps to see her clothing or the make up. The people who listen to her music (and in the end, their kind forms the biggest group) and  did or will buy her concert album 'Josipa Lisac Live' do this because of her music and because of here unique interpretation, if only for her classic songs, from the old ones like "Dok razmisljam o nama" (While I'm thinking about us) and "O jednoj mladosti" (About one youth) to the later ones like "Kraljica divljine" (The Queen of the wilderness), "Hir, hir, hir" (Caprice, caprice, caprice), "Ja bolujem" (I am love-sick) and the inevitable "Magla" (The fog) or the newest songs, like "Traje noc" (The night goes on and on), "Avantura" (The adventure) and "Zivot je samo most" (The life is just a bridge).

Josipa Lisac has always been an audio-visual experience. But if you would like to find her in her very true essence, without any internal disturbances that would distract your reception of the music (and that still is what it is all about, is it not?), the best thing to do would be to close your eyes, put all the visual away, together with all the discussions and all the gossips about her and let yourself go to the sonic. It can be pop, it can be jazz, it can be her rendition of "Ave Maria", but the experience will always be, just like   Rudolf Otto defined it by the religious temptations, numinous: more than magnificent.    

Marko Milosavljevic, Ljubljana

Live
Anyone can be born with a certain talent, but to carry and develop it in the right way is a virtue of the few. Why is it then that for the past three decades Josipa Lisac is the top artist of the Croatian pop scene? Yes, here is that voice of hers, a powerful instrument of the high expressivity who is familiar with all the shortcuts to the hearts of the listeners. With a strong inbred weapon like that, career planning seems an extremely easy task. And this is precisely the spot where the crucial mistakes are made.

Josipa never acted upon the "take the money and run" principle, she never jumped out of every opened newspaper, and she never cared much for trends. Her signature almost always and without an exception guaranteed quality and if we had to wait 13 years from one studio album to another, she did it without being nervous and losing her credit with the audiences. When finally at the end of the year 2000 we got "Zivot" (Life) album, the new stage youth of the eternal Lisac/Metikos tandem could begin. Aware of the fact that good old songs require equally good new readings, Josipa and her excellent band (Gojko Tomljanovic, Josip Grah, Borna Sercar, Robert Vnuk, E-Base, Davor Ivelic) bravely put some of her tested favourite songs into the new musical context. "Hazarder" (The hazard-man) thusly became a small celebration of the rhythm, "Ja bolujem" (I am love-sick) has a strong oriental flavour, "Danas sam luda" (Today I'm crazy) turned into a vivid acid-jazz with small psychedelic bits and "Hir" (Caprice) is endowed with a powerful and rolling groove…

Contrary to the playful musical ranges, this album offers the moments of almost sacral peace. To be perfectly honest, when one uses for its base such recognised masterpieces like "Ave Maria", "O jednoj mladosti" (About one youth) or "Dok razmisljam o nama" (While I'm thinking about us), it is best not to exaggerate with the adornments: the immortal song and the unique voice of Josipa Lisac are quite enough. Luckily, "Live" offers much more than that. Just in case you are wondering why the first place on the singer's top has been occupied by the same person for such a long time...

Ante Perkovic