IstaraCollab is an independent, non-commercial project focused on working with lyric-centered singer-songwriters across Central and Eastern Europe whose work is rooted in language, place, and lived experience, and who are interested in exploring meaningful connection with English-speaking audiences through collaborative, artist-centered English lyric adaptation.
My current focus is Croatia, Czechia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
My approach is grounded in attentive listening and cultural proximity, with an emphasis on nuance, restraint, and depth. I am drawn to voices that invite engagement rather than insist on it, and to songs where meaning unfolds through form, tone, and context. This work often involves engaging with songs as they move across languages and listening cultures.
This work does not begin from the assumption that artists should culturally neutralize themselves for English-speaking audiences. The aim is not to flatten culturally rooted music into generic international pop language, but to help carry artistic voice, symbolism, atmosphere, and emotional truth across languages while preserving the identity, tensions, and textures from which the songs emerged. English adaptation here is approached not as cultural replacement, but as a careful act of artistic and linguistic mediation.
My practice unfolds in two distinct but connected movements: intercultural English lyric adaptation and lyrical translation.
It begins with adaptation—where the song’s meaning, imagery, and voice are carefully re-formed into a natural, meaning-ready English lyric. This stage creates a space of encounter, allowing the song to be heard and felt by English-speaking listeners without dissolving the cultural ground, emotional logic, or symbolic atmosphere from which it emerged. The focus is not yet the melody, but the integrity of meaning—so the English lyric can emerge from the artist’s world rather than be shaped by musical constraint too early.
Lyrical translation follows as a final, aligning movement. Here, the English lyric is brought into the songwriter’s original melody—guided by its stresses, phrasing, and breath. Lyrical translation focuses on aligning the English lyric with the musical composition that carries it, working through melody, rhythm, stress, breath, and phrasing so the words live naturally in the voice. Words are placed where the music asks for them, with small adjustments that allow the lyric to remain faithful to its meaning while living fully within the musical line.
This collaboration is intended for artists with a developed artistic voice who are interested in exploring how their work might travel into English while remaining true to where it comes from. Because the process involves depth, reflection, and care, I collaborate with a small number of artists each year.