Get Out: Serbian guitar sensation brings expansive blues-rock to town

Serbian singer-guitarist Ana Popovic is already a star in Europe. Now, with a recent W.C. Handy nomination for "Best New Artist Debut," she's poised to create a stir here in the U.S. as well.
Born in the city of Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia, Popovic makes music informed by the repression and fear that ravaged her homeland when she was growing up there in the 1980s and '90s. Perhaps seeking a cultural alternative, she became enamored of American roots music, as her U.S. debut, Still Making History, abundantly attests.

Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan are among Popovic's touchstones as a guitarist, but traces of jazz and even reggae are evident as well. The overall impression that her album leaves, though, is that, like the self-possessed girl in Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child," Popovic has got her own.

She plays Bourbon St. Blues & Boogie Bar (220 Printers Alley) tonight and tomorrow. The ticket price for her 8 p.m. show was unavailable at press time. For more information,call 242-5837.