Volume 34
Spring-Summer
2008 |
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If you happen upon a Bosnian community
event, you’re likely to notice the aroma of
grilling lamb or spiced sausage and hear the
quavering voice of an impassioned singer
accompanied by a small combo—typically a
musician playing an Middle Eastern–sounding
melody on an elaborate Korg synthesizer
and a drummer tapping on a drum kit. There
will probably be a line or circle of dancers—
mostly women—with hands linked,
backs straight, and shoulders erect while their
feet perform intricate steps in unison.
Mirza Tihic performs on the saz at Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, New York. Photo: Faye McMahon
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The Bosnians as a culture group are relative
newcomers to New York. They were driven
from their homes in southeastern Europe in
the brutal war that followed the breakup of
Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Many of the Bosnian
refugees found a new home in the United
States. Some Bosnian refugee communities
are located in large metropolitan areas like
Saint Louis or Chicago, but even more have
settled in smaller cities like Boise, Idaho;
Des Moines and Waterloo, Iowa; Salt Lake
City; and in New York, Utica, Syracuse, and Rochester.
Few Americans knew much about Bosnian
culture and history—in fact, many had never
even heard of the country—until the war
there propelled it into the international news
headlines from 1992 to 1995. The country’s
correct full name is Bosnia-Herzegovina,
since its present borders encompass the territory
of those two historical lands. There is no
official internal boundary separating Bosnia
from Herzegovina. For convenience, I’ll use
“Bosnia” to refer to the entire county—no
offense intended to Herzegovina, the smaller
part with the longer name. Nearly everyone in Bosnia speaks a variant of a South Slavic language
that may be called Bosnian, Croatian,
or Serbian, depending upon the community.
In Yugoslavia, the language was usually called
Serbo-Croatian, and that designation is still
often used in the United States.
Bosnia is a multicultural country: Bosnian
Muslims, Serbians, Croatians, Sephardic Jews,
and Romany are the main ethnicities. As in
much of former Yugoslavia, religion and
nationality in Bosnia are intermingled. The
largest religious/national group is Bosnian
Muslims, most of whom follow a very liberal
version of Sunni Islam. The next largest population
group in Bosnia is Eastern Orthodox
Serbians, followed by Roman Catholic Croatians.
Among Bosnian Muslims, the Islamic
prohibition on drinking alcohol is not widely
observed. The majority of Muslim women
wear Western clothes and do not cover their heads. Atheism was encouraged during the half century of socialist Yugoslavia, so many
Bosnian Muslims are actually atheists. There are also atheist Serbians, Croatians, and Jews.
Much of the culture—those grilled meats, the circle dances, the singing style—is shared
among all Bosnians, although there are details of the folk traditions and distinctive folk
costumes that are specific to the particular religious/national groups.
Nowadays the Internet provides a window into the shared and sometimes contested
Bosnian musical traditions. Rather than attempt to describe the music in words, I will take
the reader on an online tour of performances that illustrate this article. Contemporary
Bosnian musical culture is an amalgam of historical influences going back two millennia.
There is music that stems from the Illyrians, the indigenous inhabitants of the western
Balkans; the musical heritage of the Slavic people that migrated into the Balkans from
the northeast in the fifth century AD; strong influences from the Middle East brought
by the Ottomans, who governed Bosnia for 500 years; and Western music from Europe
and America that has had an influence in Bosnia for the past 150 years.
The contemporary Albanians consider the Illyrians to be their forebears and contend
that the poorly documented Illyrian language was the ancestor of Albanian. When the
Slavs entered the Balkans, they intermarried with the Illyrians, and throughout Bosnia,
the Slavic language became dominant, but many Illyrian musical practices nonetheless
survived. The most striking is a diaphonic (two-voiced) style of singing with vocal contortions
almost like a yodel. These songs are called gange, linguistically the same as the
Albanian word for song, kange. The following web site has dozens of examples of gange
from the Bosnian-Croatian border region:
www.imota.net/html/ganga_u_zvuku.html
Choral singing in larger groups was a Slavic village tradition brought to Bosnia. This
video shows a group of male singers from Kotor Varos, in north-central Bosnia:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeS9CH-LI-Y
As for instruments, an ancient pre-Slavic type of bagpipe in Bosnia is the diple. It has a
double, two-voiced chanter and no drones:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiBo59Cd5b0
Bosnia lies on the route between Central Europe and the Middle East. Middle Eastern
influences entered Bosnia even before the Ottoman Turkish conquest in the fifteenth
century. Around the tenth century, a one-string bowed lute called the gusle spread to the
Balkans, where it was exclusively used to accompany epic singing. Epic singers recount
tales of historic battles and make up new heroic songs about recent conflicts—even
about modern-day heroics in soccer tournaments. Because the songs usually portray
conflicts between the ethnic groups, they typically provoke heated exchanges:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA9CR5gpCwA&NR
The mid-Eastern culture brought by the Turks has proven to be a decisive influence
shaping Bosnian culture. In Bosnian instrumental music, the most widespread instrument
is the family of long-necked Turkish lutes with a pear-shaped body: the largest is the saz,
and other variants are the sargija and baglama. The classic Turkish style of playing and
singing to the saz was adopted in Bosnia, with singing in the local Slavic language replacing
Turkish. Selim Salihovic, a saz player from Sarajevo, accompanies singer Emina Zecaj,
one of the most noted singers of the older type of sevdalinka, urban Muslim songs:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJVyc7MEZQ
Another singer, Rajko Simeunovic accompanies himself on saz:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcsAIw8HQ-E
The sargija is a smaller, often more crudely fashioned village version of the saz. The sargija, often as a duo with a violin, became the favored accompaniment for
a genre of village singing that shares much of the harmonic basis of
the gange. This is an instrumental piece by a violin and sargija duo:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyfqVV13KS8
Gusle, a one-string instrument used to accompany epic singing. Photo: Rick March
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This video features violin and sargija, with singing and a kolo circle dance:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhSYYUNe8LM
In the twentieth century, Western instruments became more frequent
to accompany sevdalinka. A clip from a 1960s film about the
assassination in Sarajevo that set off World War I depicts a 1914-style
sevdalinka group with guitar, violin, contrabass, and tambura:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Nmfbi5HN4
Over the next few decades, other Western instruments, such as the
accordion, clarinet, and drum sets, were adopted by sevdalinka musicians.
Most recently, the synthesizer has often been added to sevdalinka
groups. The synthesizer has even replaced the sargija in some village ensembles.
The most up-to-date sevdalinka singers have instrumentation akin
to contemporary rock bands, as in this performance by Hanka
Paldum:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGT68c886oo
This Internet tour of the world of Bosnian music demonstrates
how centuries-old musical traditions continue to be practiced. The
region’s Illyrian, Slavic, and Ottoman music formed an amalgam
that is being updated today using new Western instruments. The
Bosnian musical heritage continues to evolve, both in Europe and
in the Bosnian communities in the United States.
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Rick March is the folk and community arts specialist for the
Wisconsin Arts Board in Madison, Wisconsin. He lived for
several years in Croatia while researching the folk music of the
western Balkan region. He is currently completing a book on
South Slavic tamburitza music, to be published by the Institute
of Ethnology and Folklore in Zagreb, Croatia.
Contemporary
Bosnian musical culture is an amalgam of historical influences going back two millennia.
There is music that stems from the Illyrians, the indigenous inhabitants of the western
Balkans; the musical heritage of the Slavic people that migrated into the Balkans from
the northeast in the fifth century AD; strong influences from the Middle East brought
by the Ottomans, who governed Bosnia for 500 years; and Western music from Europe
and America that has had an influence in Bosnia for the past 150 years.
Ornate carving on a dvojnice, or
double flute. Photo: Rick March |
This article appeared in Voices Vol. 34, Spring-Summer 2008. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society today.
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