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Dobrin Vekilov – Doni on his successful musical projects

Photo: BGNES
Dobrin Vekilov – Doni is one of the most attractive Bulgarian pop musicians. He is always looking for something new, something challenging and hence the success of his projects. The new Iskash Li /Do You Want/ single, performed in a duet with Neti – a singer, actress and Doni’s wife, only confirms that. What is the secret of his successful career?

“Above all I try to provoke myself. If an artist tries to provoke the others, it is likely for him or her to go this way – to try always to satisfy the needs of others, thus making compromisesр," Doni explains. "I have been trying to provoke myself for years, to be a more interesting and better musician. When a person has the curiosity about himself, it reflects the others too. The beautiful tunes in our new duet song belong to violin player Stanislav Panayotov. The music of Iskash Li appeared relatively fast, but I had waited for the text for three months."

Doni became famous with the Atlas and Medicus bands and his duet with Momchil in the beginning of the 90s was a phenomenon. Those were the years when all radios neglected Bulgarian performers and their music, but not the pieces of the two musicians. Their albums topped the rankings and thousands gathered at their concerts.
The duet now belongs to history, but its songs still have their fans. What is the secret of their success? Is it a miracle or just some good management?

“Doubtlessly the management was a good one, but it could hardly sell a bad product. So, I guess it was some sort of a combination of both. If I could define some secret, perhaps I would have written a book so far, making a lot of money. The truth is that miracles happen and one of those happened to me. Together with Doni we worked for 7 years. We released 5 albums and a series of singles, we sold a lot of those, no definite numbers are available. Our album Oblache Le Bialo /White Cloud/ intrigued the Bulgarians, living abroad. However, people change and so did we. Besides that, we were influenced from the outside. Thus we split.”

We will remind you now another successful project of Doni. The Estrada album with covers was an unusual one and the fans liked it. It consists of covers from the past, of 20th century’s love songs.

“The idea came by chance. I was on a holiday and I was listening to a radio station, playing songs from that period. It occurred to me that some of those could be sung in a new manner, thus impressing young people in 2002. There is a 1958 song in the album – Zamalchi, Zamalchi /Be Quiet, Be Quiet/, in the rendition of Mimi Nikolova. It was part of Liubimets 13 movie’s soundtrack and the music was written by Petar Stupel. There was another song of legendary pop and jazz performer Lea Ivanova. The new version of Spri Do Men /Stand By Me/ was created in a digital duet. I had to receive the approval of some of the authors and performers. The Shturtsite rock band invited me to take part in their jubilee concert with a performance of their Vesselina. The whole album is an interesting musical experiment, some sort of a musical archaeology.” 

English version: Zhivko Stanchev
По публикацията работи: Maya Raikova


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