Bosnia's 'Balkan Blues' earns UNESCO recognition

Every Friday, folk musician Enes Salman performs the Sevdalinka, an ancient form of love song from Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is included in UNESCO's National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage this month.

Sevdalinka, often called the Balkan Blues, is a melancholic urban love song from the 16th century. It is a mix of South Slavic oral poetry and the music of the Ottoman Empire.

Salman is one of a few musicians keeping the old tradition alive.

"I have been playing and singing Sevdalinka since I was 14," Salman said before a recent performance.

Enes SalmanKroki DIY (YouTube)

Sevdalinka, often performed as a capella or accompanied by traditional instruments like a lute, has been passed down through performances at family gatherings.

In recent years, novel interpretations of Sevdalinka by a few younger musicians have brought it to global audiences.

One of them is Damir Imamovic, whose father and grandfather were famous Sevdalinka bards. In 2020/2021, world music magazines Songlines and Transglobal awarded Imamovic the European Best Album prize.

Imamovic promotes Sevdalinka internationally through his SevdahLab project, which drummed up support for the song's inclusion on UNESCO's World Heritage list.

"I realized how little the public knows about the Sevdalinka genre and wanted to reveal the story behind that music," he said.

Zanin Berbic, 28, an ethnomusicologist who plays saz, a long-necked lute used in Ottoman classical music, says that Sevdalinka tells the story of Bosnia's history.

"Most of my days I spend either singing or playing Sevdalinka songs or reading or talking about them," said Berbic, who works as a custodian in the music department of Bosnia's Regional Museum in Sarajevo.

"Sevdalinka is my life."