Todor "Toše" Proeski was born in Prilep on 25 January 1981 into an Aromanian (Vlach) family and grew up in Kruševo, the mountain town above the Pelagonia plain that he would always call home. Music ran in the family's stories: his grandfather had acted with the Kruševo theatre. Toše went to primary school in Kruševo and then to the secondary music school in Bitola, where his teachers moved him from the clarinet department to solo singing — partly because his parents could not afford a clarinet. He later studied at the Faculty of Musical Arts in Skopje and kept taking classical lessons even when his pop career was at its busiest.
The festival years
A family friend, the musician Hristo Hristovski–Mularot, suggested he sing at the children's festival Zlatno Slavejče in Skopje, where at the age of twelve he performed a song in Aromanian. At fifteen he won the 1996 Melfest festival in Prilep with a cover of The Beatles' "Yesterday". MakFest 1997 brought "Pušti me", and 1998 was a breakthrough year: a second jury prize at Ohrid Troubadours for "Usni na usni" and the Grand Prix at Eurofest in Skopje. Our festival timeline goes through each stage.
Albums and the wider Balkans
His debut album Nekade vo noḱta appeared in 1999 on Avalon Production, followed by Sinot Božji in 2000, which reached the top of the Macedonian charts. From 2002, recording in Serbian as well as Macedonian, he became a star across the former Yugoslavia; the Athens-made album Ako me pogledneš vo oči (2002) produced a string of number ones. In 2003 he won Beovizija in Belgrade with "Čija si", and in 2004 he represented Macedonia at the Eurovision Song Contest in Istanbul. The discography page lists every studio album.
Humanitarian work
Toše became a UNICEF regional goodwill ambassador in 2003 and a national ambassador in September 2004, held charity concerts across the country, and helped equip the haematology department of the Children's Hospital in Skopje. See UNICEF ambassador for details.
The final years
The albums Po tebe (2005), Božilak (2006) and Igra bez granica (2007) kept him at the top across the region. On 5 October 2007 he gave a charity concert for school reconstruction at the city stadium in Skopje in front of more than 25,000 people. Eleven days later, early on 16 October 2007, he died as a passenger in a car crash on the Zagreb–Lipovac highway near Nova Gradiška in Croatia. He was 26. A state funeral was held in Kruševo on 17 October, which was declared a national day of mourning.
His grave in Kruševo and the Memorial House that opened in 2011 are visited by people from across the Balkans and the diaspora. The legacy page collects the honours that followed.