Dino Merlin

Did You Know?

• Dino worked two shifts a day at a metal factory to fund the recording of his first album after dropping out of university.
• He is the only artist ever to have filled Sarajevo's Koševo City Stadium on four separate occasions.

Early life

Edin Dervišhalidović came into the world on 12 September 1962 in Sarajevo’s Alifakovac neighbourhood, back when Bosnia was part of Yugoslavia. His dad Abid worked as a carpenter, having moved to Sarajevo as a teen, while his mum Fatima, a Muslim cleric, was a local. He has a younger sister named Amina. When Edin was seven, his parents split, and his mother raised him. He went to Moris Moco Salom primary school—now called Edhem Mulabdić—where he captained the soccer, basketball, and table tennis teams. The area around the school, including the Emperor’s Mosque, Tito’s konak, and Hotel Nacional, shaped his later work. He then attended Sarajevo Technical High School. Outside class, he played in a duo with childhood friend and keyboardist Mensur Lutvica, and together they later founded the band Merlin.

Music career

Although Dervišhalidović's mother was against the idea of her son being a musician, she helped him buy his first guitar when he was 12 years old. He penned his first song at 14 years old. Dervišhalidović was mostly self-taught, although he did take a few lessons from an older neighbour named Mirsad. Mirsad's younger brother, Mensur Lutvica, played the keyboard and attended the same school as Dervišhalidović.

They soon became friends and eventually became the founding members of the later band 'Merlin'. Lutvica began accompanying Dervišhalidović while performing on the streets of Sarajevo. Dervišhalidović was heavily influenced by the Yugoslavian musicians Bijelo Dugme, Zdravko Čolić, Kemal Monteno, and Toma Zdravković, among others. He entered several music competitions covering their songs.

He later became close friends with Goran Bregović, the founder and primary songwriter of Bijelo Dugme. After enrolling in university, Dervišhalidović formed a band with Lutvica on keyboard, Amir "Tula" Bjelanović on guitar, Džafer Saračević on drums, and Enver Milišić on bass guitar. Each of the five put a paper with their idea for a band name in a hat; the name "Merlin" was pulled and chosen as the name of the band. After completing his first semester at university, Dervišhalidović dropped out to pursue a music career.

However, he did not have enough money to rent a recording studio. During this time, he married his girlfriend Amela and worked two shifts a day at a metal factory in the suburbs of Sarajevo for a few years. It was during this time that he started writing most of the songs which would later appear on his first album. In 1984, Dervišhalidović rented a local studio in Sarajevo owned by producer Brano Likić.

Dervišhalidović wrote all the recorded songs and paid the recording fees from his funds. He was rejected by every major record label in Sarajevo. At the same time, Dervišhalidović's private funds were only enough for 6 songs. During the recording session for the final song, a local A&R agent named Muradif Brkić entered the studio where Dervišhalidović and Likić were mixing a song.

After listening to the track, "Kokuzna Vremena", a couple of times, Brkić offered Dervišhalidović a contract with his record label Sarajevo Disk and agreed to finance the remainder of the song recordings. Merlin eventually released their first album in 1985 titled Kokuzna vremena. With the band, Dervišhalidović has recorded 5 studio albums: Kokuzna vremena in 1985, Teško meni sa tobom in 1986, Merlin in 1987, Nešto lijepo treba da se desi in 1989, and Peta strana svijeta in 1990.

Dervišhalidović began his solo career under the name Dino Merlin in 1991 and has since recorded seven studio albums: Moja bogda sna in 1993, Fotografija in 1995, Sredinom in 2000, Burek in 2004, Ispočetka in 2008, Hotel Nacional in 2014, and Mi in 2025. During the Bosnian War, several members of Merlin were killed, including their long-time manager Kemal Bisić, with whom Dino was close. Not long after the band dissolved, Dino was invited by the Bosnian state government to write the country's first-ever national anthem, "Jedna si jedina".

The song acted as the state's national anthem until the late 1990s. In 1993, he wrote the song "Sva bol svijeta" ("All the grief in the world") for and eventually participated in Bosnia's first Eurovision Song Contest in Millstreet in 1993. The song is about the hardships Bosnians endured during the war and calls for peace. He again participated in the Eurovision Song Contests in Jerusalem in 1999 (singing "Putnici" with Béatrice Poulot, a French singer) and in 2011 with "Love in Rewind".

Dervišhalidović has also taken part in other big European festivals, such as the Copenhagen festival in 1996 and the Turkovision Song Contest in 1997. In 2000, Dino released his most successful album to date - Sredinom ("Through the Middle"). The album was a top-selling album in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was sold in all of the former Yugoslav republics. The album became a classic and was the highest-selling album in the region in 30 years.

Some estimates put the album sales at about 2,000,000. The subsequent tour promoting Sredinom included over 200 concerts with a performance at the Koševo City Stadium in Sarajevo in front of an audience of about 80,000. This was the largest crowd ever to assemble in the national stadium in Bosnia's history. Dervišhalidović subsequently performed three more times at this stadium and is the only artist ever to have filled this venue on four occasions.

After a six-year hiatus, Dino returned to the stage with his eleventh album Hotel Nacional. It was released in June 2014 and was featured in the top 10 on the Billboard World Albums list upon release due to unprecedented online sales in the region. This is the only album from Slavic-speaking Europe ever to chart on Billboard. The album featured Yoad Nevo, Richard Niles, Hüsnü Şenlendirici, and others. 900,000 people attended The Hotel National World Tour across 4 continents.

It is the largest tour ever to have been produced by an artist from Southeast Europe. Dino released his song "Mi" in October 2020, followed by "Dođi" at the start of 2021, and two more songs ("Mir svim dobrim ljudima" and "Jedan dan, jedna noć") in May.

Philanthropy

Dino is an active donor to scholarships for underprivileged children in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is a long-time member of the Hastor Foundation, the biggest organization devoted to distributing scholarships to students in the country. He sponsors over a dozen students each year and has been a member of this program since 2008. Dino worked for five years pro bono as the honorary and de facto president of the assembly of AMUS, the main association of music artists of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was one of the founding members of the organization in 2013. In early 2018, he resigned from his position due to the lack of time to do the work. Dino has played numerous charity concerts. During the 2014 Southeast Europe floods, his team was heavily involved in distributing water, food, blankets, and other provisions to affected areas.