A Serbian guitar virtuoso at Villanos del Jazz: courage, freedom, and the power of the electric guitar!!!
Madrid, a city whose nights are animated by music, conversation, and the restless energy of its streets, provides an inspiring setting for the arrival of Ana Popović, one of the most distinctive figures in contemporary blues-rock.
Performing as part of the prestigious Villanos del Jazz concert series, the Serbian-born guitarist brings to the Spanish capital a musical identity forged through determination, extraordinary instrumental skill, and an unwavering commitment to the expressive power of the blues.
Popović’s story is particularly significant because it challenges some of the historical assumptions surrounding electric blues guitar. For generations, the genre’s most influential instrumental voices have overwhelmingly been men. Names such as Albert King, Albert Collins, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and George Benson have shaped the vocabulary of blues and blues-rock, establishing a demanding tradition of expressive phrasing, rhythmic authority, technical command, and personal musical identity.
Ana Popović entered this tradition without attempting to diminish its history or imitate it mechanically. Instead, she absorbed its lessons and developed a voice of her own. Her playing combines the muscular energy of electric blues with the sophistication of jazz, the immediacy of rock, and a modern sense of arrangement. Her guitar can speak with a fierce, cutting intensity, but it can also become fluid and lyrical, moving through phrases that suggest a singer’s breath or the emotional arc of a story.
The result is a style that feels both deeply rooted and unmistakably contemporary.
Her appearance in Madrid is therefore more than another stop on an international concert itinerary. It represents the continuing journey of an artist who has crossed geographical, cultural, and professional boundaries to establish herself among the internationally recognized performers of her generation.
Within the broader European autumn–winter jazz and blues season, Popović’s presence offers a particularly powerful reminder that blues is not a closed historical tradition. It is a living language, continually renewed by musicians who bring their own experiences, influences, and ambitions to the stage.
A journey from Belgrade to the international blues stage
Her achievement has never depended on simply reproducing the vocabulary of American blues guitar. It has depended on learning that vocabulary deeply enough to speak through it with her own accent, temperament, and musical imagination.
The electric guitar is an unusually revealing instrument. Its sound can be shaped by the smallest changes in touch, the pressure of a finger, the angle of a pick, or the way a note is allowed to sustain before disappearing into silence. A technically accomplished guitarist may play a fast succession of notes, but a truly expressive musician understands that a single note, placed at precisely the right moment, can communicate more than an entire flurry of virtuosity.
Popović’s playing draws on this expressive tradition. Her influences include the powerful phrasing of Albert King, the fiery attack associated with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the adventurous electric language of Jimi Hendrix. Yet her work also reflects an understanding of modern blues-rock as a broad field, one that can accommodate jazz harmony, soul, funk, and contemporary production.
That combination has helped her develop a sound capable of addressing different audiences. Blues purists can recognize the traditional roots; rock listeners can respond to the intensity and volume; jazz enthusiasts can appreciate the phrasing and harmonic flexibility; and newcomers can be drawn in by the immediacy of her performances.
Her career demonstrates that the blues is not defined by the country in which a musician was born. It is defined by the depth of musical understanding, the authenticity of the performance, and the ability to transform inherited forms into something personal.
The Experience Hendrix Tour — Standing among the masters
One of the defining milestones in Popović’s international career was her participation in the official Experience Hendrix Tour, where she became the first woman to take part in the prestigious touring tribute.
The significance of this achievement extends beyond the symbolic importance of being a woman on the bill. Jimi Hendrix remains one of the most influential electric guitarists in modern music history. His revolutionary use of distortion, feedback, dynamics, and improvisation transformed the possibilities of the instrument, making the guitar a vehicle for sonic exploration as well as melody and rhythm.
A tribute to Hendrix is therefore a demanding musical undertaking. It requires more than reproducing recognizable riffs. The performer must understand the adventurous spirit behind the music: its freedom, its rhythmic elasticity, its willingness to challenge convention, and its capacity to move between delicacy and explosive force.
Sharing the stage in this context with musicians such as Buddy Guy, Zakk Wylde, and Jonny Lang placed Popović within a distinguished company of artists shaped by the blues-rock tradition. The experience affirmed her standing as a guitarist whose skills and artistic conviction could hold their own in an arena historically dominated by men.
Hendrix’s influence is particularly relevant to the way Popović approaches the electric guitar. His legacy reminds musicians that technical control is only the beginning. The instrument becomes truly expressive when its sound reflects an individual imagination—when phrasing, tone, rhythm, and silence combine to create a personality that cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s.
Popović’s presence on the tour also carries a wider message for aspiring musicians, especially women who may not see themselves represented in the traditional canon of blues guitar. Excellence can open doors, but visibility matters too. When an accomplished artist occupies a stage from which women have historically been absent, she changes the possibilities that younger musicians can imagine for themselves.
Her achievement does not erase the inequalities of the genre, nor does it require her to become a spokesperson rather than an artist. Its importance lies in demonstrating, through performance, that the guitar belongs to anyone with the dedication and imagination to master it.
Twelve albums, nearly three decades, and a constantly evolving sound
Her recordings reveal an artist unwilling to remain confined to a single definition of blues. The genre remains the foundation, but its possibilities expand through rock, funk, soul, and jazz-influenced arrangements. The guitar can be placed at the center of a forceful electric ensemble, or it can become part of a more intricate arrangement in which groove and harmony play equally important roles.
This versatility matters because contemporary blues-rock exists in a complicated musical environment. Artists must respect a rich historical tradition while finding ways to make it relevant to audiences accustomed to many different styles. Popović’s career suggests that the most productive response is not to abandon the blues, but to explore its expressive potential more fully.
A blues melody can sustain an entire song through the emotional shape of its phrases. A funk rhythm can give that melody a different physical character. Jazz harmony can introduce new colors, while rock instrumentation can increase the dramatic impact of a performance. When these elements are integrated with care, the result is not a collection of borrowed styles but a coherent artistic voice.
The twelve-album milestone described in the Madrid festival biography offers a useful measure of Popović’s productivity. More important, however, is the artistic continuity linking the recordings: an ongoing conversation between tradition and innovation.
Her international touring career has also given this music a life beyond the studio. Blues depends on performance. It gains meaning through the relationship between musicians and listeners, through the improvisations that emerge in the moment, and through the subtle variations that ensure no two concerts need feel exactly alike.
In Madrid, this accumulated experience provides the foundation for an encounter with an artist who understands the blues not as a fixed repertoire but as a continuing process of discovery.
Madrid and Sala Villanos — An intimate stage for a formidable sound
Madrid itself brings an additional dimension to the event. The Spanish capital has a vigorous live-music culture in which jazz, blues, flamenco, rock, and contemporary popular music continually intersect. The Villanos del Jazz program reflects that openness, bringing international artists into a setting designed to make diverse musical traditions accessible to a broad public.
A performance of this kind can also reveal the expressive range of the blues-rock guitar. The instrument may begin with a sharp, rhythmic motif, expand into a sustained melodic line, and then build toward a solo whose intensity comes as much from phrasing as from speed. The rhythm section supplies the foundation, but the music remains alive through the spontaneous exchanges that happen between musicians.
The result is not simply a display of virtuosity. It is a performance in which sound, movement, and emotion become inseparable.
A woman who changed the view from the stage
Ana Popović’s importance should not be reduced to the fact that she is a woman working in a male-dominated genre. Her artistic achievement stands on its own: her command of the guitar, her experience as a songwriter and vocalist, her ability to combine musical traditions, and her sustained international career.
Yet representation matters. The history of electric blues has been shaped by extraordinary musicians, but its most widely celebrated guitar heroes have often been men. Popović’s visibility challenges that narrow picture and makes the tradition more complete.
Her achievement is particularly valuable because she does not need to reject the musical masters who inspired her. Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Albert Collins, and George Benson remain essential points of reference. What matters is that Popović takes the lessons of their music and transforms them into a personal artistic language.
That is how musical traditions survive: not through imitation, but through renewal. Her story offers encouragement to young guitarists and singers who may be approaching blues from a different country, culture, or background. There is no single birthplace for musical authenticity, and no gender that owns the right to express the blues. There is only the work of listening, learning, practicing, composing, performing, and finding a voice that belongs to the artist alone.
By Lauren Wulff
