Sarajevo is a scarred city. There are craters from mortar attacks in the streets, and bullet holes in the facades of residential buildings. There are cemeteries at every corner it seems, most are Muslim, some Jewish, some are Orthodox, some Catholic, for faith could not stop bullets, neither during the Siege of Sarajevo 1992-1994, nor during WWII, nor WWI, which began in Sarajevo in 1914.
Sevdah is the traditional music of Bosnia, stemming from the time of the Ottoman Empire. The name Sevdah comes from the Arab word for melancholy, Sawda: Sad poems telling stories of love forbidden or lost, of grief and loss, of heart ache and pain, traditionally sung by women in the Arabic modal systems of Hijaz, as are the muezzin’s calls for prayers.
“Sevdah will be sung after any war,” Zaim Imamovic said, before he died in 1994 at the age of 74. He was to Sevdah music what Carlos Gardel is to Tango. Everybody in Sarajevo knows the words of the Sevdalinkas, the songs, and they cry as they sing, as they dance.
