Highlights
- Vasil Garvanliev is North Macedonia's entry to Eurovision 2020 after last year making his first appearance on the Eurovision stage as one of Tamara Todevska's backings
- He has been singing since he was seven. He was a child pop star in his country and appeared on many TV shows
- His family moved to the US in 1997 to escape war but they were deported and Vasil had a ten-year ban from entering America
The 35-year-old Macedonian singer says he found his truth because he “wasn’t afraid to look into his secret”.
Born and raised in Strumica in North Macedonia, he was already very famous as a child pop-singer at the age of 12, holding concerts all around the country. A year later, he was “no one and nothing” having to start from scratch as an immigrant in the US.
“It was very difficult, as it would be for any 12-year-old boy, but my situation was a bit different as I was very famous at home, while no one knew me in the US, he told SBS Macedonian. “I entered puberty and the hardest grade – year 7.”
When his parents decided to move to Chicago in 1997 because of war in Kosovo, he was told they were doing this so he could advance in his career. But his excitement didn’t last long as he was sent off to a normal school, with advice from his mother to “join the choir so you can live your music every day”.
Vasil Garvanliev during Eurovision 2019. Source: Supplied
“I had long hair at the time,” he recalls. “It was my trademark actually, but I had no idea that detail would take me down the bullying road at the school in Chicago.”
He spoke no English the first year. In fact, he didn’t speak at all, because the kids in the school were laughing at him and calling him names that he couldn’t even understand. He says music was his “soul’s salvation”, so he decided to join the school choir.
Since he didn’t speak English, he took a video tape of one of his performances in Macedonia, and handed it to the choir teacher with the words “See this”. Later on, the music teacher became his English teacher as well, spending a few hours every day teaching him the language.
Vasil Garvanliev Source: Credit: Martin Trajanovski
Vasil says he never considered opera as he was a pop singer. But the music teacher saw this new potential of his and soon he was the leading voice of the choir, which led him to perform in the White House in front of the president George H.W. Bush, and stand beside Celine Dion, Enrique Iglesias, Nick Cave, Julie Andrews.
It was all going well, until his parents received a letter, announcing the decision of deportation.
He stood in front of the school and announced that he and his family would be deported. A few months after, Vasil and his family left and received a 10-year ban from entering the US. Vasil, in the process, once again lost his friends and his choir family. He also lost a scholarship to study at the New York Manhattan School of music when he was denied permission to re-enter the US.
Back in Macedonia, he decides to appear as a guest at a TV show. It was during one of his TV appearances that Boris Trajanov, a world renowned Macedonian opera singer, noticed his singing and offered to cover all the expenses for Vasil to take classes in Milano with maestro Pier Miranda Ferraro.
Source: Supplied
“A new chance… a new home… a new lesson… this is what I got,” he says.
But just when he thought life got back on track – his father died at the age of 45.
“Everything in my life comes with a price. But I keep on fighting.”
That same year, 2004, he got two offers of full scholarships – from the Queensland Conservatory in Brisbane and Toronto Royal Conservatory. Being emotionally attached to his choir family in Chicago, Toronto was the obvious choice.
After finishing his studies, he spent two years in Chicago as his entry ban had expired and in 2017 went for another year of studying in London. It was that time there that moved him away from classical singing a bit. With voice starting to mutate from baritone to tenor, he couldn’t continue the studies. He had to take expensive private classes to regain his baritone voice again.
“For the first time in my life, I was allowed to work in a field other than the one I was studying for. So I was doing everything I could to pay for my expensive private lessons - receptionist at a hairdressing saloon, car washing etc,” he recalls.
It was in that silent times in life that he got his inspiration to come back to his roots and do Etno pop music.
Source: By Bojan Stoilkovski
“Spring your wings and win them over,” he says, and it’s how “Gerdan” (Necklace) song was born, followed by “Patuvam” (Travelling) and “Mojata ulica” (My street).
“I’ve spent years of studying and singing opera, but my heart always wanted to go back to that small boy and sing a pop song again. 2019 Eurovision was the highlight of that goal. But it got even better when in January 2020, I was selected to represent my home country.”
He says it’s an opportunity that he had been waiting for his whole life.
“It is very easy to give in to the darkness around us. I've always focused on the light in me and share of it as much as I can. I’m forever grateful for everything in my life, it made me who I am: a survivor, a soldier, resilient and ready to help through my truth, story and voice,” says Vasil.
While the Eurovision 2020 in Rotterdam has been cancelled due to COVID-19, a week-long festival of Eurovision from 10-17 May is underway. It will culminate in a brand new alternative Eurovision 2020 with SBS’s Eurovision 2020: Big Night In! and Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light from The Netherlands.
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