Bosnia's Balkan Blues receives UNESCO recognition

Enes Salaman, a folk musician from Bosnia and Herzegovina, performs Sevdalinka every Friday. This ancient love song, which originated in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was added to UNESCO's National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage this month.

Sevdalinka is an urban melancholic love song that dates back to the 16th Century. It's a mixture of South Slavic oral poetry and music from the Ottoman Empire.

Salman is among a handful of musicians who keep the old tradition alive.

Salman, who recently performed in a concert, said: "I've been singing and playing Sevdalinka ever since I was fourteen."

Sevdalinka is often performed acapella or with traditional instruments such as a lute. It has been passed down from generation to generation by performances at family events.

Sevdalinka has been reinterpreted by younger musicians in recent years to reach a global audience.

Damir Imamovic is one of them. His father and grandfather, both famous Sevdalinka poets, are also among the group. Imamovic was awarded the European Best Album by the world music magazines Songlines & Transglobal in 2020/2021.

Imamovic promoted Sevdalinka on a global scale through his SevdahLab initiative, which helped to garner support for its inclusion on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

He said: "I realized how little people know about the Sevdalinka music genre, and I wanted to tell the story behind it."

Zanin Berbic (28), an ethnomusicologist and saz player who is a specialist in Ottoman music, believes that Sevdalinka is a story about Bosnian history.

Berbic, a music conservator at the Bosnian Regional Museum in Sarajevo, said that he spends most of his days either singing or playing Sevdalinka or reading or discussing them.

Sevdalinka, my life.

(source: Reuters)