Shaqir Hoti passed away!

Today, Kosovar culture lost one of its cultural, heritage gems.

Kosovo lost one of the wisest and most beloved personality, who with his professional, intellectual and human capacity cultivated a very important part of our spiritual heritage being a force for the unification of all other cultural fields - especially our musical culture.

The music community of Kosovo distinguishes thousands of contributors, but only a few with the figure of professional and human caliber like the late Shaqir Hoti.

Shaqir Hoti was one of the forerunners of the whole cycle of development of wind instruments in Kosovo, with the epithet - the first flutist of Kosovo, as a regular solo performer in the most important folk ensembles but also in other classical and contemporary formations.

He was a performer who not only cultivated the performance with all the spiritual folk instruments of Kosovo but made the Albanian folklore an artistic value which will be used in all other modern musical genres by accompanying our folklore and modern repertoire with his wind instruments for a whole constellation with many different generations of Kosovar performers and composers.

Shaqir Hoti was one of the biggest cultivators of the traditional/folklore repertoire with over 180 compositions - songs and dance including various collaborations in projects for soundtracks.

He was the initiator of the craft for the creation of musical instruments and with his own hands created over 1000 of them. He is best known for cultivating ocarina - the first he created in 2010 was made of soil, to later continue with many other different shapes and sizes.

He was the inventor and innovator of many new types of wind instruments based on the existing folk instruments of Kosovo.

Uncle Shaqë was a man with a unique sense and ability to match in a fluent and very accessible way with our folklore, our instruments in all modern musical aspects that contemporary musical culture has.

Shaqir Hoti saw our musical culture as an integral part of being and living in Kosovo and the world. Every aspect of his performing, creative and musical craft activity reflected his ability to create narratives and parallels of our folk traditions with liveliness and a high sense of humanity.

Kosovo and all its cultural spheres will miss the personality, wisdom, professionalism, innovation, creativity and special expressive culture of uncle Shaqë.

The Ministry of Culture and the entire music community of Kosovo share the pain with the family of Mr. Hoti in these difficult times.