sevdalinka

Sevdalinka is a form of traditional folk music that is indigenous to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The form emerged when the oral poetry of the South-Slavic peoples merged with the musical influences of the colonial Ottoman Empire. As a people, Bosnians have practiced resilience through story-telling, oral poetry, and music for hundreds if not thousands of years. In fact, it was epic poetry, orally passed down through generations of Bosnians, that proved Greek epics such as the Odyssey and the Iliad were indeed orally recited before they were written down some time in the eighth or seventh century BCE. The malleability of our survival strategy has produced art with ties as far back as ancient mythology and as recent as the genocide of the 1990s.

Sevdalinkas are songs of longing. As a people who have been colonized, displaced, and stripped of their identities over generations, we have made the process of longing one full of beauty and precision. Every Bosnian carries sevdah. Practices sevdah. As Dino Merlin said, “neka me sevdah opije.” Which means let this longing intoxicate me, meaning we are all intoxicated, all the time, meaning, let this take me.

My own writing grapples with how sevdah sits in me. Specifically, as a Bosnian in the diaspora, my writing tries to explore what forms this sevdah takes, and how I am able to shape and reform this long tradition. Here are some sevdalinka albums I like and draw inspiration from: