Sevdalinka

Čaušević Leja Grabovica Asja

Sevdalinka, or sevdah is type of traditional songs from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The term
sevdalinka for this kind of songs became widely accepted by the end of 19th century. Before
that, it saw usually called sevdalija. Sevdalinka, sevdah was named after a Turkish word
which was took from Arabs... „sevda“ which means love. Although sevdalinka is a song of
Bosnian space, it eventually broke into Bosnian villages but it still left it's deepest roots in the
Bosnian cities. Women in cities were protected from male eyes. They didnt have any way of
expressing their feelings, so they did it through songs. Therefore sevdah also means
„feelings“. Sevdalinkas have very specific and noticeable characteristics, such as the
melodies, rhythm, and expression that distinguish them from any other genre in the Balkans.
The origin of the word Sevdah is the Arabic word ‘säwdâ’ translated as ‘black gall’ , a
substance combined with the feeling of melancholy in Arabic and Turkish cultures.
Sevdalinkas have been created by people of Bosnia while practising their traditions, which
make up Sevdah. But the most popular question that the pople are asking is „What actually
sevdalinka is?“ One explanation of what sevdalinka is comes in the form of a short story.
“What is sevdah?” an old man asks a boy. “Sevdah is when my father is singing and crying at
the same time”. Sevdalinka is a type of song, sevdalinka is the mirror of soul and mental
state. Most musicologists, however, have a hard time defining sevdah. The first theorical
description of sevdalinka in general was offered by Muhsin Rizvić in his paper „Ogled“. In
antient times there was a hunger for education, expression of feelings.. people found comfort
for all the hunger in a song full of love, and expression of it, sevdalinka. Today sevdalinka is
not so popular but also not forgotten. Sevdalinka recieved well-deserved and appropriate
attention in the first lierature encyclopaedias in the Šotkavian language area, which appeared
in the 1970s and 1980s. Tradition of singing sevdalinka is a special story. Sevdalinka is really
a beutiful art, oral art, it was also there in ancient time, so it has changed from that time to
21th century. Kepping most of its traditional elements throughout the centuries, sevdalinka
has gone through some recent gender and sexuality norm changes, with singers such as Božo
Vrećo and Damir Imamović challenging the regular ideas that sevdalinkas must be sung by a
woman to a man or vice versa. While sevdalinka previousle existed in population, it became
most popular when Islamic civilization came to Bosnia and Herzegovina. True singers and
„translators“ of sevdalinka are mostly dead, except for a few who are protecting sevdalinka
from getting forgot. About a century and a half ago, it was far more than a folk tradition,
people actually lived within the song as the song lived through them and there was many
places to visit to learn about it, but today there are only few places to visit to see what
sevdalinka has to offer, for example Kuća Sevdah, THE place for all-things-sevdalinka. The
love between the young boy and girl is the source of most sevdalinkas. The richness in tone
and melody was first investigated by ethnologist and musicologist Ludwig Kuba. The only
one to examine the issue of the function of figures of speech in the oral transfer of the
sevdalinka in detail was rhe German Slavist Wolf- gang Eschker. Sevdalinkas described the
bridges, the white mosques all over Bosnia; the urban treasures of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian
towns that are Sarajevo, Banjaluka, Mostar, Trebinje, Travnik, Tuzla, the magical beauty of
the girls of Travnik, Livno and Prijedor as well as the rivers Vrbas, Bosna, Neretva, Buna and
Mošćanica. The first and well documented trace about the Sevdalinka reaches far into the
XVI century and is interestingly linked to Split. Some of the popular artists of sevdalinkas are
Himzo Polovina, Safet Isović, Hanka Paldum, Halid Bešlić, Božo Vrećo... In its original form
Sevdalinka was a solo song, without accompainment. With arrival of Ottomans,
accompaniment of a solo voice became popular form of interpretation. One needs to be ‘in
Sevdah’ in order to perform Sevdalinkas in the best way possible. In other words, they will
not sound good with lots of background noise. During the rule of Ottoman Empire over
Bosnia the succes of Sevdalinkas in Bosnia grew to some 4000 known Sevdalinka texts of
today. Unlike most musical types, in Sevdalinkas the singer leads the song, while the
accompaniment follows the singer. Sevdalinkas are a unique mix of Eastern and Western
influences which sound is different from all neighbouring folk successes. Called the blues of
Bosnia, sevdalinkas are often compared to American gospel and Portuguese fado.
Traditionally, sevdalinkas were an informal affair. Family and friends would gather and
someone would play an instrument—a clarinet, a guitar, an accordion—as they sang the old
songs, obtaining merak (pleasure) for the soul. Sevdalinkas were not just songs about
frustrated love; they were also songs about everyday life. Violin, guitars and other string
instruments, occasionally (such as oud, saz or šargija), the flute or clarinet (occasionally),
upright bass and the snare drum are the instruments that are usually used in preforming
sevdalinkas. Closely identified with Bosniak (or Bosnian Muslim) culture, and some say
rooted in the sound of the ezan, or the Muslim call to prayer, these songs spread across the
Balkans, adopted by Serbian kafana singers and Roma crooners such as Esma Redžepova.
Sevdalinka is a traditional genre of folk music from Bosnia and Herzegovina but is also
spread across the ex-Yugoslavia region, including Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia
and Serbia. With the end of the war, sevdah “moved” from the coffee bars to radio. Just four
days after Sarajevo was freed on April 10, 1945, Radio Sarajevo started working, marking the
beginning of the “golden era of sevdah”. By the end of the 1970s there was a “decline” in
interest in traditional music, which was caused by the appearance of record companies and
new musical trends.However, sevdah did not fall into oblivion. A decade ago, a new
generation of musicians came along and brought new musical genres and traditions to sevdah.
It is unclear whether sevdalinke are still composed today. The 4000 texts Bašić mentions on
his website used to be written by “the people of Bosnia” who “now only listen to turbo folk
music”. The Erlangen Manuscript is a collection of folk songs in Croatian, Serbian and
Bosnian. It contains 217 songs: ten belong to the folk poetry, the others are original folk
songs. The manuscript was discovered in 1913 in the library of the German city of Erlangen.
In the conclusion, sevdalinka is a very special type of Bosnian song, which are usually love
songs but also sometimes not. It was there since the ancient time so it changed from than to
now. Sevdalinkas were first written because women werent allowed to see men so the only
way to express their emotions were throughout the songs, thats why sevdalinkas are usually
love songs and about a boy and a girl. Sevdalinkas went from coffe bars to radio stations, also
many people wrote books and encyclopaedias. Sevdalinka is not only a song but also a
tradition and a decoration that makes Bosnian cities even more magnificent than they already
are. Its true that nowdays sevdah is not so popular as before, also many of the original writers
are dead but the fact that sevdah is not forgot even from the ancient times is beautiful. It
cannot be forgot because it is a Bosnian tradition and a type of song not similar to any other.
https://meetbosnia.com/story-sevdalinka-traditional-bosnian-song/#:~:text=Sevdalinka%2C
%20or%20sevdah%20is%20the,linguistic%20roots%20of%20the%20name
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http://www.spiritofbosnia.org/volume-13-no-1-2018-january/the-traditional-bosnian-song-
sevdalinka-as-an-aesthetical-musical-and-philological-phenomenon/
https://sevdalinka.info/en/interesting-facts/
http://feelbosnia.com/what_to_see_bosnia/attraction/the_sevdah_art_house/
https://scalar.usc.edu/works/turbofolk/sevdalinka--past-present-and-future
https://sarajevo.travel/en/text/sevdah-in-sarajevo/119
https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2016/a-sad-song-for-the-slavic-soul/
https://artumjetnost.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/sevdahpart1/
file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Efendic%20(3).pdf