Mitar Subotić

Mitar Subotić "Suba" (Serbian Cyrillic: Митар Суботић Суба; 23 June 1961 – 2 November 1999), also known as Rex Ilusivii (Latin for The King of Illusions), was a Serbian-born musician and composer who was set to become one of Brazil's most prominent producers when he died in November 1999.

Subotić obtained a university degree in his hometown from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, before continuing electronic music studies in Belgrade. He was a pioneer of electronic music in former Yugoslavia, since he mixed and produced a number of celebrated albums of Yugoslav new wave acts such as Ekatarina Velika, Haustor, Marina Perazić in the course of the 1980s. In 1986, his fusion of electronic music and Yugoslav folk lullabies, In The Mooncage was awarded the International Fund for Promotion of Culture from UNESCO, which included a three-month scholarship to research Afro-Brazilian rhythms in Brazil. Falling in love with the country and its music, he emigrated to São Paulo in the 1990s, where his fruitful production began and ended. During that time he participated in Milan Mladenović's last project Angel's Breath, and recorded his famous album São Paulo Confessions.

On 2 November 1999 he was working on the post-production of the album of his new-found diva, Bebel Gilberto, when his studio caught fire. Following Subotić's death in a studio fire, international media outlets heavily popularized a narrative claiming he initially escaped the burning building but died after running back inside to salvage the unreleased master tapes of singer Bebel Gilberto's upcoming album, Tanto Tempo. However, this account has been disputed by Subotić's estate, close friends, and collaborators. According to records from his record label, Crammed Discs, the master tapes for Gilberto's album had already been finalized and safely delivered prior to the tragedy, meaning no such files were left in the studio to rescue. Furthermore, the biographical documentary Gringo Paulista, produced in cooperation with the official Mitar Subotić Suba Foundation, established through chronological eyewitness testimonies that Subotić never successfully made an initial exit from the apartment, instead tragically succumbing directly to smoke inhalation inside the studio. According to public events around the film and director's testimonies, Gilberto herself has expressed distress over the persistence of the "heroic rescue" myth, noting that the narrative unfairly shifted a heavy burden of survival guilt onto her for a fabricated event.

Suba died just a few days after the release of his album São Paulo Confessions, and shortly before the completion of Bebel Gilberto's acclaimed Tanto Tempo, the biggest selling Brazilian album outside Brazil.

Biography

Early years (1961–1982)

Mitar Subotić "Suba" was born on 23 June 1961 in Novi Sad, where he attended the music elementary school, playing accordion and achieving notable success with his accordion school orchestra in Yugoslavia and abroad. He started his career as a rock musician as a keyboard player in the short lived bands 96% and XX vek (20th Century), the latter disbanding in 1982, after which he turned to his own solo career. He studied composition and orchestration at the University of Novi Sad music academy, during which he had shown an interest for electronic music. This was the reason why he attended the electronic music course organized at the University of Belgrade by Paul Pignon, a British saxophone player temporarily living in Belgrade. At the time, strongly influenced by the French ambient music composer Erik Satie and British keyboard player and producer Brian Eno, he started recording ambiental music compositions, experimenting with different sounds, including telephone sounds, birds chirping and Amazonian indigenous music.

Career in Yugoslavia (1983–1989)

Subotić released his first recordings in an original way: the tracks that were signed under the pseudonym Rex Ilusivii were delivered personally by him to the Radio Novi Sad reception desk addressed to Dragan Gojković "Goja", the host of the Yu pop scena (Yu Pop Scene) and Novi Vidici (New Horizons) cult radio shows, which subsequently broadcast the recordings without knowing the author's true identity. After a year of sending new compositions to Gojković every week, Subotić decided to reveal his identity, after which came a live presentation of his work with performances in Novi Sad, Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Sarajevo and Subotica. In 1983, with the Novi Sad conceptual artist Lina Bus, Subotić performed in Paris and Venice, and with the comic book artist Zoran Janjetov and multimedia artist Kosta Bunuševac, he organized the first Yugoslav rock performance at the sold-out Belgrade SKC. At the time, Janjetov was one of his key collaborators, as he recommended him to use the pseudonym Rex Ilusivii after a comic-book character, gave him certain ideas and named several compositions.