Idoli
Yugoslav musical group; new wave band from Belgrade
Idoli (Serbian Cyrillic: Идоли; trans. The Idols) were a Serbian new wave band from Belgrade. They are considered to be one of the most notable acts of the Yugoslav rock scene, and their 1982 album Odbrana i poslednji dani was on several occasions voted by the music critics as the greatest Yugoslav rock album.
History
Background: Merlin and Zvuk Ulice
The roots of Idoli are found in a Belgrade-based band called Merlin (not to be confused with the Sarajevo-based pop rock band of the same name that would appear later and achieve Yugoslavia-wide popularity) and then jazz and pop rock band Zvuk Ulice consisting of Vlada Divljan on guitar and vocals, bassist Zdenko Kolar, keyboard player Dragan Mitrić, drummer Kokan Popović, Bora Antić on saxophone and Dragana Milković on piano and vocals.
Besides performing covers of various 1960s Anglo-American hits, Zvuk Ulice also wrote their own songs. In 1978, they performed at the BOOM Festival in Novi Sad and Gitarijada festival in Zaječar. Despite completing several recording sessions in a Radio Belgrade studio, none of the recorded material was ever released. Mitrić moved on to Bulevar and Popović joined Slađana Milošević's backing band.
VIS Dečaci and formation of the band
The first ideas of forming Idoli came up in 1979 when a youth magazine published photos of a band called Dečaci which were actually photos of the first Idoli lineup. The photos featured witty remarks like, for example on March 8, 1979, a photo signed "Dečaci emancipuju žene" ("The Boys emancipate women").
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q432679. VIAF identifies the subject as 305642847. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1978 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Idoli” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.