Arsen Dedić was born in Šibenik in 1938. He started studying law in Zagreb but dropped out in 1959 to go to the Music Academy, also in Zagreb, where he graduated in 1964. Dedić wrote poems and composed songs through most of his life and started his singer-songwriter career in the mid-1960s. He made his debut as a solo artist at the Zagreb festival of popular music in 1963. Prior to that he performed as a flute-player in pop and jazz bands, sang in several vocal groups such as Prima, Zagreb Vocal Quartet, Melos and led the instrumental Flute Quartet. Songs Moderato cantabile and House by the Sea from 1964 marked the beginning of his musical opus and traced the direction of his style as a songwriter.
He composed French-style chansons and became a local trademark of that musical genre, which merges his key artistic outlets – music and poetry. He earned an international reputation by the early eighties and collaborated with prominent poets-singers such as Sergio Endrigo, Gino Paoli and Bulat Okudžava. Along with more than forty albums, he left behind a number of recognizable melodies for the theatre, film and television and wrote scores for about 200 theatre plays. Dedić also wrote poetry and authored some 20 collections of poems.
