Ditka
Ditka, a singer-songwriter, guitarist and composer, was born into a musical family in Slovenia, a small country in Central Europe. Her father Gorazd, a music professor, composer, pianist and singer, was the first one who introduced her to quality music. When she was 7 years old, she started to play the guitar in music school. At only 9 years of age she wrote her very first song and presented it at the Children Music Festival called “Kristalček.”
When she was little, she was mostly listening to English speaking artists, such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Norah Jones and others. That is probably why she became very keen on this language and at her age of 16 she started to write her original songs in English.
She didn’t plan to be a professional musician, but she was certain that in her free time she would play around with her original music for fun and to fill her soul.
When Ditka was in high school, her professor of literature once suggested her to compose some music for poetry by the famous Slovenian poet Tone Pavček. Back then she didn’t have much of experience in composition, so she asked her father to do it. The song “Školjka” was very well accepted among the audience and this gave her an idea to put some more poetry into music. Later on, Ditka and her father composed music for a lot of poetry that was mostly written by the famous Slovenian author Feri Lainšček. The song “Ne bodi kot drugi” has become one of the biggest hits of all time in Slovenia and since now it has over 5 milion views on YouTube (Slovenia has 2 milion people). This song really opened the door for Ditka to burst onto the Slovenian music scene. Since 2013 she has released 5 albums with Slovenian poetry set to music, played numerous concerts and many kind of shows on a high cultural and state level all around her home country, her songs have reached high places on different music charts, and her last tour “Ne bodi, kar nisi” was listed as “Top 3 Tours in Slovenia in 2019.” In collaboration with Feri Lainšček, she has created a very special kind of performance that intertwines a concert with poetry reading by the author himself. Most of such musical-literary events were sold out in the past. Ditka’s career in Slovenia is successful and it’s growing organically, however, her music targets listeners who prefer a more sophisticated style of music which is based on lyrics and storytelling.
Although her career took a different path that she had expected, and she was mostly occupied with composing music for the Slovenian poetry, she never lost her passion for writing her own songs in English. That was always her favourite hobby. Whenever she had time or just needed to put her feelings out, she wrote a song.
She didn’t release many of them in Slovenia, but she occasionally entered some Singer-Songwriter competitions abroad where she got very good results. Her song “Dreamer” was the finalist of the UK Songwriting Contest, “Silence” was a semi-finalist of the »Unsigned Only« Competition in USA. With her song »I like it« she was the winner of the competition »30 Years For You« of the radio Slovenia International. In 2021, two of her songs, “Cold Heart- acoustic version” and “Believe”, got the highest score in the UK Songwriting Contest. In 2019, she won at the biggest International Singer Songwriter Festival in Sofia in Bulgaria.
All those achievements, and especially her inner feeling that those songs should reach more people, affected her decision to start building her international career starting in 2021 with her #liveacousticseries2021. Each month since June to December she was presenting one of her original songs on her YouTube channel.
Inspired by world-famous musicians like Norah Jones, Mumford and Sons and Eva Cassidy she continues to write her own music. She believes in simple but meaningful lyrics and in the kind of music that caresses your soul. She always writes from her heart, putting out her personal experience or stories inspired by real life, books, or even movies. Acoustic, country, folk and pop are the styles most often recognized in her songs.
* To add int. (international) in her name is just symbolic way to separate her music career in Slovenia from her international career.