Sevdah

[Senad]

“In my opinion, sevdah is an aura surrounding you, it is of invisible and non-material form, but every individual who defines aesthetics as part of his/her life, may feel sevdah in its slightest form and in the smallest space. It is a gift of God for those lucky ones who view and live life optimistically, and find elements of beauty and pleasure in such view. And once your soul is filled with the beauty of sevdah, you feel sevdalinka is refreshing and gladdening your heart:
“Play and sing to gladden my heart”.
Sevdah is not just a word – it is rather an imaginative ambience of beauty, in whose immense expanse, souls feel, find grains of joy, thus forming a mosaic and making their lives beautiful.
Unfortunately, life is not just love, and sevdalinka as a peak expression of sevdah is not just a love song. Sevdah is a style, a Bosnian lifestyle, and sevdalinka is a historical note-keeper of the lives of Bosnians.” (Omer Pobrić, Musician)

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“Svake večeri sjetim se mog španskog prijatelja Luisa Kasade iz madridskog ‘Anteniuma’. Jedne večeri prije dvije godine pozvao me u svoj dom na tartilju i pailju i španski konjak. Posle večere rekao mi je da je za mene spremio prijatno iznenađenje. Odveo me je u drugu odaju da slušamo ploče. Prva ploča koju mi je pustio ovaj prosvijećeni Španac bila je neka davna oda Saraj Bosni koju je pjevao Himzo Polovina. Nisam mogao verovati svojim prevelikim ušima da ovdje u srcu Iberije u Avendi Hoze Antonija, usred Madrida slušam glas Himze Polovne koji opjeva ljepote sarajevske mjesečine...” Zuko Džumhur, “Pisma iz Azije”

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…Zašto nikome nismo kazali da smo iz grada u kojem je hotel Europa, lijep stari hotel, tristo metara od kafane Kolobara, u kojoj svaku večer sviraju i pjevaju Behka i Ljuca, pjevači nečega što bi se moglo nazvati bosanski fado, pa ako kad dođete u taj grad, recite taksistu da vas vozi u hotel Europu, a onda navečer idite do Kolobare, sjednite nekamo u kut i slušajte te pjesme – zašto tako nismo rekli i zašto smo tako malo držali do posljednjih, umirućih oblika vlastite finoće, po kojima smo – razlikujući se – mogli biti slični cijelom svijetu?” Miljenko Jergović, Historijska čitanka 2, V.B.Z., 2008., str. 78

[Senad]

Muhsin Rizvić about Sevdalinka

“… Sevdalinka is not just a love song; it is a song about sevdah. That is where its essence lies. It is the song of the Slavic and Oriental emotional fructification and a combination of the following: the Oriental – according to the intensity of its passion, the power and potential of its sensuality; the Slavic – according to the dreamy, inconsolable, painful sensitivity, and the width of its spirituality. The poetic nature of sevdalinka incorporates some of the essential core of ballads, its obscure tragedy of a painful feeling as a consequence of an occasion or event. The difference is that sevdalinka does not have any kind of plot in its development and dynamics; it rather has a concise and at the same time vast, subconscious anecdote as a motive or summary where the crucial uncoils from – a love sigh as the fateful lyrical and erotic outcome. Or maybe sevdalinka shows the mere experience of the outcome of an event, the crucial fragment of an event, the one that carries the full emotional and lyrical potential and results in a cry, a yearning moan and the pain of love. That is why sevdalinka is actually a woman’s lyrical monologue, who, from her emotional and subjective standpoint, follows the sub textual happening in its abstract course and afterwards, the monologue of her own feelings as an echo and comment of love and life.”
(Muhsin Rizvić, Literary Historian)

[Senad]

Munib Maglajlić about Sevdah

“It was possible for sevdalinka, one of the most representative genres of our verbal literature and our folk art in general, to be born in times when the Eastern lifestyle was more comprehensively recognized in the part of the population of Bosnia that accepted Islam, when specific urban environments were formed with all necessary institutions, when the urban quarter – mahala – was fully developed with special spaces, depending on the economic power of the head of the household: court-yards with kapidžik with a fence around it, gardens with čardak , ašyk-pendžer … It was at the times when life was lived in an ambience that was characterized by well-known events described by sevdalinka. This may have taken place some fifty years after Bosnia came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, that is, at the beginning of the XVI century. Since the lifestyle did not change from that time until the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, this period is believed to be the golden age of the thriving of sevdalinka. Sevdalinka still did not fade at that time, but the entirety of the circumstances which sevdalinka had been born from were interrupted; the breakthrough of the Western lifestyle saw these circumstances disappear, resulting in a loss of the conditions necessary for its continued and uninterrupted development.

During its life throughout centuries, sevdalinka was created in different social classes of the urban population, and it was composed and sung at girls’ and young men’s meetings, wheel dances, at come-togethers, weddings and other family gatherings, in court-yards, gardens, in towers, at belvederes, house rooms, at fairs, during travels, akshamluk , in hans, while walking through mahala, while riding a horse, in the open, at hunting, at city fortresses, in prisons, military marches, under the stars during nights spent in foreign countries…

… The strict separation of women, imposed by Islam ethics, reflected in the Muslim urban environment, and the culture of living that was partially transferred to the entire urban population: wealthy households had separated female and male rooms or even constructed separate buildings, selamluk and haremluk as well as female and male court-yards, with high walls or a wooden fence around it, in order to protect female faces from the glimpses from outside, but also to hide the maidens from their own cousins, grown men. A more moderate separation of girls that was practiced among the majority of the urban population, led to a special form of love encounters, ašikovanje , a gradual love acquainting with precisely established rules of love declaration, according to which, place, time and circumstances of the lovers’ meetings were rather precisely determined: it took place mostly on Friday afternoons, but also on other days and in different times of the day, at the gate or ašik pendžer , mušepci … On days determined for flirting, boys used to walk in the streets in groups, and girls used to stand in ašik pendžer or to peer out through a half-open courtyard door. One of the typical ways of understanding each other in this love dialogue was sevdalinka, which represented a unique form of communication between the female voice singing behind mušebak, the court-yard wall, and the male voice singing on the other side of it.

…Metrically, sevdalinka displays a great diversity and it appears in six metric varieties, which have been transferred into our age: the thirteen-syllable verse– “Uzeh đugum i maštrafu, pođoh na vodu”, the eleven-syllable verse – “Ja kakva je Đulbegova kaduna”, the symmetric lyrical decasyllable – “Djevojka viče s visoka brda”, and the rare asymmetric octosyllabic verse – “Ja svu noć ležah, ne zaspah”, while the symmetric octosyllabic verse “Put putuje Latif-aga” and asymmetric “epic” decasyllable – “Pošetala Hana Pehlivana” are the most frequent verses in our folk songs and sevdalinka.”
(Munib Maglajlić, Literary Historian)

[Senad]

Damir Imamović Trio

There's probably no better way to hear sevdah for the first time than to stumble on a live performance outside a bar in a narrow alleyway of Sarajevo's Old Town. This is the Damir Imamović Trio celebrating the release of their second CD, Abrašević Live.

Damir Imamović didn't set out to play sevdah. But he got interested in the music while doing research for a book about his grandfather. Zaim Imamović was a famous sevdah singer in the decades after World War Two.

[Senad]

Zavolio sam sevdalinku ...
"…Jednog aprilskog jutra, zapravo zore, 1946. godine probudio me neki nepoznati ritmicki zvuk i pjesma. Bilo je to cudno pjevanje DUBOKO LJUDSKO, NEKAKO DREVNO I ISKONSKO, A BLISKO I DRAGO u isto vrijeme. Pogledao sam kroz prozor i ugledao nekoliko seoskih kola: i na njima svatovi, u bijelim i sarenim zivopisnim nosnjama. Neki brkajlija sa crvenim omotacem oko glave lupao je sa puno smisla za ritam u tupan od govedje koze, a pjesma se orila, budeci gradjane iz njihovog posljednjeg jutarnjeg sna:
Sta u dvoru zubor stoji, sta ono vele?
Hej, ono majka sina zeni, pa se vesele!
Svak se tome radovase, majka najvise…

Taj mali, ali vrlo impresivan dogadjaj vratio me u carstvo djetinjstva, u svijet njegovih carolija, u dane kad se sve gleda rasirenim ocima. Prisjetio sam se mnogih pjesama koje su pjevale moja majka, sestra, strina, moje komsinice: Duda, Dzevahira, Bosiljka… Znao sam da su to pjesme primitivnog izraza, ali istinite i jos zive, nenatrunjene jednom kvazicivilizacijom, interesantne i lijepe. …

ZAVOLIO SAM SEVDALINKU.
Ona mi je vratila ljubav prema vrijednostima, koje sam nepromisljeno, ali i opravdano bio zagubio. Lirska narodna pjesma je jos interesantnija. Njen glas nam dolazi iz dubine prastarog, drevnog i neshvatljivog. I bas zahvaljujuci toj pjesmi mozemo da osjetimo duh i dah drevnosti, mozemo da predocimo sebi odnose iz patrijahalne sredine kao i nacin zivota i misljenja kakav je bio davno i jucer. Danas je ta pjesma, manje-vise, sa sebe zbacila svoje utilitaristicke primjese i BLISTA CISTA KAO BISER koji smo izvadili iz skoljke sa dna tajanstvenog mora. Njen izraz je precizan, koncizan, blizak. On i danas moze da bude uzoran. On je u stanju da poluci takve ekspresije da poetske igre modernih pisaca, nasih savremenika, mogu da nam izgledaju manje uspjele, isforsirane, nevjeste, ako ih uporedimo s nekim nasim pjesmama, zagonetkama i poslovicama."

Mehmedalija-Mak Dizdar

[Senad]

Kad proljece ozeleni (4) - Emina Zecaj

[Senad]

Sevdalinka: sta je to i kako je nastala?

[Senad]

Sevdalinka: sta je to i kako je nastala?