Ana Popovic grew up in 1990s Belgrade as Yugoslavia fractured, yet she became the first European nominated for Best New Artist Debut at the W.C. Handy Blues Awards. Her entry point into American blues was her father Milton’s record collection, a sonic sanctuary in a turbulent time. By 15 she was playing guitar, by 1995 she had formed the band Hush, and by 1998 that band was playing over 100 shows a year across Serbia, Greece and Hungary and releasing a debut album with a full brass section.

This episode follows the counterintuitive decisions that shaped her career: walking away from Hush at its peak to study jazz guitar in the Netherlands, landing on the Jimi Hendrix tribute album Blue Haze alongside Taj Mahal and Buddy Miles, recording her solo debut in Memphis with producer Jim Gaines, and being invited on stage and on tour by Solomon Burke. We cover her move to Memphis in 2012, her nine-piece Mo’ Better Love band at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the ambitious 2016 Trilogy with guests including Joe Bonamassa and Bernard Purdie, working with Keb’ Mo’ in Nashville, and her decision to keep performing and recording through breast cancer treatment, culminating in the 2023 album Power.

• Why a Belgrade living room full of Delta blues and Chicago soul became the launching pad for a European blues star
• Leaving a successful band to become a jazz conservatory student in the Netherlands
• How the European festival circuit put her on a Hendrix tribute record and in front of Solomon Burke
• Memphis, a nine-piece band, a triple album and a rapper on a blues record
• Recording between cancer treatments and the album fittingly titled Power