American singer Bilal makes his Zagreb debut at the Bugaloo club on December 15, as part of the first Zagreb Soul Fest. The concert starts at 9pm.

Bilal is one of the most important voices in contemporary neo-soul, R&B and jazz. His debut album "1st Born Second" came out in July 2001 and sits among the canonical records of the genre, with contributions from Mike City, Robert Glasper and a large part of the Soulquarians collective. The album broke into the top ten of the Billboard R&B albums chart and drew almost unanimously positive reviews.

The Soulquarians were a rotating collective taking in Common, J Dee - that is, J Dilla - Ahmir Thompson of The Roots, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Q-Tip and Raphael Saadiq. Bilal met them in New York and became part of that scene at the exact moment it was defining the next decade of black music. His song "Little One" earned a Grammy nomination in 2011, and he appeared on The Roots' Grammy-nominated album "undun" and on the award-winning "Black Radio" by the Robert Glasper Experiment.

That an artist of that standing is coming to a club with a few hundred places rather than a hall is more of an advantage than a drawback for material that lives off dynamics and improvisation. Tickets through entrio.hr go up to 27 euros, roughly 1,663 denars.