Steven Wagner - Stevan Vagner, Podrum COLLEGIUM MELODIUM, World music museum in Belgrade, present The LEGEND at begin, early seventies GORAN BEGOVIC and * BIJELO DUGME * (“White Button”) were a highly influential rock band from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in former Yugoslavia. Active between 1974 and 1989, they were considered the most popular band ever to exist in the former Yugoslavia. The founder of the band was Goran Bregović, who spent much of his childhood in a Musical School for violin players, from which he was expelled for “lack of talent”. Soon after his expulsion, his mother bought him a guitar, and thus, Bijelo Dugme was born. Goran Bregović often admitted that his main motivation for forming the band was because “women were more receptive to musicians”.
With charismatic vocalist Željko Bebek, the band soon reached stardom in the former Yugoslavia, as one newspaper put it, they sold more albums than there were record players in Yugoslavia.