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Sanja Ilić & Balkanika

Sanja Ilić & Balkanika will represent Serbia in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest with the song 'Nova Deca'.

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For years, the band Sanja Ilić & Balkanika have been growing in popularity in both the Balkan region and the world. 

Aleksandar Sanja Ilić is an author and composer as well as the band leader. Ilić ensures that the group assembles musicians who play old instruments from the Balkans and he’s trying to blend them into a modern pop-rock sound. 

The musical style of Balkanika is an original sound combined with elements of world music based on the powerful native rhythm of the Balkans mixed with modern approaches and sensibilities. Over the past few years, the band have organised successful concerts around the world including Russia, the United States and even as far as South Korea. 

Originally the band consisted of nine musicians (6 instrumentalists, one male, and two female vocals). They were later joined by two trumpeters and one female vocalist. Female ethnic vocals and powerful male rock vocals, combined with electronic sound and ethnic Balkanic instruments, give a modern sound that can be heard for the first time on the band’s recordings. 

Sanja Ilić & Balkanika's music can be described as both global and Balkan. At the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest they will perform the song Nova Deca which translates as New Children.

About the song writers and composers

Aleksandar Sanja Ilić was born in Belgrade. He has been in the music world since he was a child and he made his first professional steps at the age of 12 when he composed Uniforms. The song was performed on TV by actor and singer Dragan Laković who gave Aleksandar a chocolate box and to this day he considers it his first prize. His first successes as a composer and instrumentalist came when Sanja’s songs were performed by famous Yugoslavian singers during festivals and on records. In 1982. he won the Yugoslavian national selection for Eurovision Song Contest and went to Harrogate, in the UK, with the band Aska.  

Tatjana Karajanov Ilić was born in 1974 in Leverkusen, Germany. She has been living in Serbia for most of her life and worked in Belgrade for the last three years. Music is a part of her therapeutic work. She studies sound and frequencies, exploring the effect of music on the human condition. Since 2010, she has created therapeutic music and released two albums: Music Of The Spheres and Wisdom Of The Forest, which belong to the World Music genre. Tatjana is currently studying psychology at Singidunum University, in the Faculty of Media and Communications. In addition to her homeopathic practice and her psychology studies, she is actively engaged in music and has so far held numerous concerts. Tatjana is co-author of the song Nova Deca, which she wrote with her husband Aleksandar Sanja Ilić.

Music video

Live performance

Lyrics of Nova Deca

НОВА ДЕЦА
Свет је наш и време престаје да жури кад... си са мном ти.
Свет је наш и с осмехом се будим зато што... постојиш ти.
Све је јасније, сунце сија другачије.
Свет је наш и нова деца с нама стварају бољи свет.
New Children
The world is ours, you just keep on dreaming.
Look at the Sun,
Happiness is achievable, grab it.
It starts today, for us.