51 f feeling that someone rips the soul out of the bosom”. S
Sevdah is a state of both the mind and the soul. “I would say that sevdah is the mood that music is able to put us in,” says Šesti´
c.
“It is similar, perhaps, to your Spanish flamenco, and the feel of ‘duende’, which the great Federico García Lorca described once: “All that has dark sound has ‘duende’ or ‘that mysterious power that everyone feels but no philosopher can explain’.”
Sevdah , or sevdalinkes, was at first a vocal form, linked say some, to the sound of the ezan – the Muslim call to prayer. Later came the saz, then with the 1878 annexation of Bosnia by the Aus- tro-Hungarian monarchy, other instruments were introduced: vio- lins, guitars, and, especially the accordeon. Some famous names were Zaim Imamovi´
c, Himzo Polovina, Safet Isovi´ c.
In the late 1980s sevdah was a dead or dying form, drowned out by the ubiquitous and tasteless turbo-folk – a pop/folk mélange that relied on processed disco beats, a melismatic ‘Oriental’ vocal style and token accordeon riffs.
Some say that the war – just as it gave rise to a revival of tradi- tional religious sentiment in Bosnia (Christian, as well as Muslim), also engendered a revival of sevdah music, mostly in the hands of diaspora Bosnians who returned to the music out of nostalgia for a doomed land.
c and others dispute this thesis, saying that diaspora Bosnians were mostly fans of turbo-folk and had little to do with tra- ditional sevdah songs.
But Šesti´ says Šesti´
“I mean, it’s not arrogance, but it was Mostar Sevdah Reunion,” c. “Because we were the first ones that broke that sound.
We were the first ones that made those old songs. Because some- how we became some sort of underground band in Bosnia because with the first album the music critics from Bosnia, they were almost writing, What the hell is this now? Because it was a big shock for them. It is sevdah, but it is so strange. The conservative musicians were like, yeah, they are disturbing the real sevdah. And at certain points they were calling Mostar Sevdah Reunion everywhere. And slowly the young people were really… because we were some kind of inspiration to them, and they started creating the bands.”
c’s protégés was the now internationally famous sevdah artist Amira Medunjanin, who approached him in 2002 while he was recording Ljiljana Buttler. She left Šesti´
One of Šesti´ c with some
recordings, which he describes as “a little bit new age”. He asked her if she could sing in front of him accompanied by the accordeonist of Mostar Sevdah Reunion, Mustafa Šanti. “Immedi- ately after twenty seconds we were like ‘where have you been till now?’” A year later Šesti´
c introduced Amira to the world in
Mostar Sevdah Reunion’s album, A Secret Gate and her album, Rosa, followed a year later in 2004. However in 2007 the two went their separate ways.
A potential. “Someone said, ‘Bosnia is Miss World with bad teeth’. That’s
about it. It’s a beautiful country with great potential in people. Despite everything.”
F t the moment Dragi Šesti´ c is just about the only artistic,
non-commercial music producer in ex-Yugoslavia today. In a region where everyone in the music business is shooting for a clean and commercial sound – the sound of turbo-folk – Šesti´
c is a unique quantity. And para-
doxically, the more the local music business aspires to slick commer- cialism, the less money there is in it for the artists. “Croatia is still OK – but like Bosnia and Serbia and Macedonia, the musicians and artists are not getting the money, getting paid from the airplays,” says Šesti´
c. “And also these artists, singers, musicians, they have to survive; they have to put the bread on the table, and they are not open to the idea: OK, I am going to do something more artistic. Or this or that – probably I am the only producer here doing it.”
It is difficult living in Mostar today. There haven’t been elections for eight years. The city is mired in corruption, and young people are leaving daily. And yet, Šesti´
c sees a city – and a country – rich in
evdah – which means ‘love’ in Turkish – is the spirit or soul of Ottoman-era lyrical love complaints, songs of unrequited love, which elicit an almost trance-like state, transporting one to feelings of melancholy – karasevdah (‘black sevdah’) – where as Šesti´
c puts it, you had “the
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