An Evening with Bajaga i Instruktori (2012)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Location: Hala Tivoli (small hall) / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: December 20, 2012
Attendance: 2,800
Ticket price: €22.00

To mark the release of the new album “Daljina, dim i prašina”, Bajaga and his loyal Inštruktorji set off on a mini tour of the former Yugoslavia. On Thursday that tour rolled into the small hall of Hala Tivoli.

Ljubljana, which Bajaga counts as one of his favorite stops, had already got a visit from him back in July. That time he played Orto bar (read the report HERE), and he devoted the whole show to songs from his latest album, which was just hitting the shelves at the time. Maybe that very move is why expectations for the Hala Tivoli show were so high. The crowd at Hala Tivoli was clearly hoping for more of the older hits.

Gušti and his backing band warmed up the crowd really well, though everyone had of course come to Tivoli mainly for the night’s headliner, Bajaga. Bajaga kicked off the show with the title track of the new album, “Daljina, dim i prašina”. A few older songs followed, including, surprisingly, “Red i mir”, which lives on his third studio album “Jahači magle”. Bajaga’s musical road is long and fruitful, so he’s got plenty of quality songs to draw on. That’s partly thanks to Inštruktorji, who have stood faithfully by his side all these years. The lineup of Inštruktorji has hardly changed, and since 1985 the core has still been the same: Bajaga, guitarist and singer Žika Milenković, and bassist Miroslav Cvetković. The comparison with Bruce Springsteen just suggests itself. What the E Street Band is to Springsteen, Inštruktorji are for sure to Bajaga.

Inštruktorji are superb musicians. Žika, of course, leads the way. With his humor, which at times is downright clownish, he treats himself to a bit of climbing on the stage scaffolding, and he’s also got a great knack for entertaining the crowd with all sorts of witty quips. This time he really made an effort and tried to talk to the audience in Slovenian, which deserves nothing but praise. Žika is truly a sort of resident entertainer, and he plays that role very well. Bajaga, meanwhile, is a bit quieter and more laid-back, and mostly keeps his communication with the crowd to his music.

Somewhere around the middle of the nearly three-hour show, a “special” guest appeared on stage. None other than Ljubljana’s own sheriff, Zoran Janković. A year ago he showed up at a Parni Valjak concert at Arena Stožice. Back then the brave sheriff got an ovation from a crowd that was largely the same as the one at Bajaga’s show, but on Thursday he was greeted with a barrage of whistles. So in just one year, the mood of the people has changed quite a bit.

But let’s leave politics alone. Unfortunately, Bajaga also wandered into a bit of a fog with his choice of the evening’s repertoire. The middle of the show had too many melancholic songs, and above all songs the wider audience didn’t know. The fact that the guys played almost the entire new album deserves some credit, but a few of the older songs could easily have been swapped for some better-known ones. The hit “Sa druge strane jastuka” was especially missed, which strikes me as, to put it mildly, an incomprehensible move! Žika, of course, got his moment again, singing “Ko me ter’o”, a song by his project Bebe. That was when Bajaga recharged his batteries backstage for the second part of the show, which was absolutely too melancholic and at times downright boring. Sadly, a look at the set list also reveals that “Dobro jutri džezeri” had been planned for the encore, a song I personally would have been very happy to hear. Bajaga simply decided otherwise and swapped it for “220”. Good on him. He probably realized near the end of the show that it would be good to give people at least a bit more energy and faster tempos in the encore. Quite a few people preferred to head to the bar for a beer during the second half of the show. Maybe it would have been better to play “220” earlier, so “Džezeri” wouldn’t have dropped off the set list either. I’ve noticed that putting together a set list hasn’t exactly been going well for acts from the former Yugoslavia lately. Parni Valjak have been playing similar shows recently too, but unlike Bajaga, they go to the opposite extreme. Sadly, they’re too populist. The evening’s selection of songs wasn’t populist enough, with too few well-known older songs that get the whole hall on its feet and into the air, the ones that create an energetic connection between stage and crowd. That’s when a concert is a bomb! There’s a very thin line between the two extremes. Only the greatest masters know how to put together the right set list. Sadly, Bajaga didn’t quite pull it off on Thursday. So if we were a bit disappointed with the song selection, we can at least praise the length of the show. A real dilemma, actually. Sometimes less can be more.

I definitely hope Bajaga drops by Ljubljana again in a year or two. I’d rather see him at Križanke than at Tivoli. With more carefully chosen songs, of course. Let Thursday’s concert be a lesson. Until next time…

Setlist

01.Daljina, dim i prašina
02.Red i mir
03.Godine prolaze
04.Još te volim
05.Ako treba da je kraj
06.Vjerujem-ne verujem
07.Gore-dole
08.Lepa Janja, ribareva kči
09.Suza
10.Iza nas…
11.Mala uska haljina
12.Ko me ter’o (Bebe cover, vocals: Žika Milenković)
13.Život je nekad siv, nekad žut
14.Vreme
15.Ovo je Balkan
16.Vesela pesma
17.Kap po kap
18.Bademi i so
19.Još jednom
20.Slovenačka reč
21.Ti se ljubiš (na tako dobar način)
22.Plavi safir
23.Dvadeseti vek