The greater part of her life she lived in Beograd (Serbia and Montenegro) and on concerts around the world. Her career of folk singer began after the contest on Macedonian national radio when she was twelve. Topmost Macedonian musician Stevo Teodosievski, later her caretaker, master and husband, discovered her and transformed her vocal talent in Balkan and later world known voice. In India in 1976 Esma was acclaimed the Queen of Romani Songs.

Her 46 years long singer career is a never-ending unusual narrative of life among the maximum of 400 concerts a year, countless humanitarian concerts and actions. But above all she and her late husband adopted forty-seven boys and educated them in music and cultural traditions before they were eighteen. All members of the Teodosievski family have become
professional musicians, composers, arrangers, and leaders of their own bands.

With her voice and music of Ensemble Teodosievski Esma was and still is a creatress of a huge wealth shared among adopted children, Institution for persons with special needs Demir Kapija, Roma people in Macedonia, endless number of institutions and individuals. With no difficulty she admits to be a money factory. Her life philosophy is based on words like: Take from people; give to people. And she is a living proof of realisation of such a philosophy. All her life she is sharing and giving all her earnings to improve human life. She experienced richness and the surviving on the verge selling her gold to get trough the period of Stevos' sickness and Balkan conflicts.

With the downfall of Yugoslavia she returned to Skopje (Macedonia). With her husband they begun a project Home of humanity and Museum of music and tradition Esma Redzepova and Stevo Teodosievski on a historical site in the centre of Macedonian capital. The project is half finished but she doesn't care. She is concentrated on her career and humanitarian actions in her homeland passing trough hard economic crises and solving a problem of Roma refugees from Kosovo. At the end of summer after her 60th birthday she enjoyed the marriage of last of her adopted children.

About Esma:
Known to her audiences simply as Esma, she was born in Skopje in 1943 to a Rom- Jewish family. She was the first Balkan performer to make Romani music popular with non-Rom in the early 1960's.

Esma earned the title Queen of Romani Songs at the First World Festival of Romani Music in India in 1976. At the Festival of Roma Experiences in Moscow in year 2000 Esma was proclaimed Laureate and Roma Singer of the Century. Esma and Ensemble Teodosievski have performed for many heads of state, including Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Overall, Esma has toured more than four decades with Ansambl Teodosievski, performing in excess of 8,000 concerts, among which 2,000 humanitarian, in over 30 countries.

In the past thirty years she and her late husband Stevo Teodosievski have fostered forty-seven children and educated them in music and cultural traditions before he died in 1997.

Esma's humanitarian activities continue today through the Home of Humanity and Museum of Music Esma and Stevo Teodosievski institution which she founded and later donated to the city of Skopje and the Republic of Macedonia as an institute of cultural heritage. She has also been a major contributor to countless advocacy and assistance programs for Macedonia's underprivileged Roma and recent refugees from Kosovo. She is honorary president of the Macedonian Red Cross, and has been a Red Cross activist since early childhood. In the year 2000, the American Biographical Institute awarded Esma the Medal of Honor, and the Sorority of Roma Women proclaimed Esma Woman of the Millennium. In 2002 Esma received the Mother Teresa Award and was nominated as United Nations Ambassador for Refugees in Macedonia. Last year for the 45th anniversary of her career she was above all financing surgeries for individuals in need. Donating for health and education are her priorities.