SEVDALINKA

Sevdalinka is the urban folk song of Bosnian Muslims. According to Enciklopedija Jugoslavije (1969), its origins are to be sought in Slavic lyrical oral poetry and Oriental music. The circumstances under which sevdalinka emerged and developed were created by the penetration of Eastern culture with Islamic characteristics, while its longevity was made possible by the part of the Balkan population that accepted Islam. However, the historian and culturologist Smail Balić (1994) believes that the main elements of Bosnian music have remained independent and cannot be attributed to a purely Eastern origin despite the influences of the Arab-Turkish musical tradition through Turkish songs in the Balkans and through Islamic spiritual song. According to the Czech ethnomusicologist Ludwíg Kuba (1953), this song was subject to “Muslimism” because of its charms. Oriental influence enriched the song.

The first reports of the existence of this lyrical oral poem, which was named sevdalinka only in the late 19thcentury, point to the late Middle Ages. Although the testimony to an unusual event that was connected to sevdalinka dates back only to the second half of the 16th century, more than a hundred years after the fall of the Bosnian Kingdom, according to the literary historian Munib Maglajić (2016), this type of love song most certainly emerged earlier than this earliest known report of it being sung. The story goes that a duke from Split, whose name is still unknown, used to send annual reports to the Venetian Senate, one of which contained the description of a romance that took place in the Split marketplace in the spring of 1574, between a young man named Adil from Klis and a girl named Marija from Split. This significant testimony was published by the Croatian writer Luka Botić in his translations from the Italian, who later also wrote the poem Bijedna Mara (Poor Mara), on the topic of forbidden love between a Muslim youth and a Christian girl. 

In his text “Sredina i vrijeme nastanka i trajanja sevdalinke” (The environment and period of the emergence and existence of sevdalinka), Maglajlić (1997) saw the cradle of sevdalinka in a distinctive urban environment with all the necessary institutions, when town neighborhoods (mahalas) had been fully constructed. Depending on the householder's capacities, houses in these neighborhoods had the necessary spaces: a fenced yard with a postern and ašik-pendžer (a type of window especially constructed for love talk) – in a word, when life began to proceed in surroundings which constituted the well-known background for the types of happenings in sevdalinka. Consequently, a proper understanding of sevdalinka requires knowledge of the cultural context, of its practice, of its multilayered meanings, of the culture of habitation, and even the architecture of Bosnian houses and yards. Speaking of the confluence of our folk music, but of the Eastern element in sevdalinka, the literary historian Muhsin Rizvić described it as a song of “Slavic-Oriental emotional fertilization and convergence: Oriental by the intensity of passion and by the force and potential of sensuality in it, and Slavic by the dreaming, inconsolable, painful sentiment, by the breadth of its emotionality” (Rizvić 1969: 455). 

On the level of its music, sevdalinka has often been described as a poravna song which is performed to the accompaniment of the saz – a distinctive stringed instrument brought to Bosnia by the Ottoman Turks. On some occasions sevdalinka was also sung with the characteristic sound of turning a pan on the sinija (a low-lying round table). This was practiced by women. The saz requires a smaller musical space and its subtle sounds suit the singing of sevdalinka. At the moment when sevdalinka left the intimacy of the houses described above and entered the public space, which intensified on the eve of the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire and the arrival of the Austro-Hungarian administration, its mass popularization began. It revealed its extremely distinctive ability to adjust, which distinguishes it from other oral literary genres. In the new circumstances, sevdalinka was more and more often sung to the accompaniment of the accordion, an instrument of Western origin, previously unknown to the culture of the Bosnian population. Unlike the saz, the accordion is an instrument which requires a large musical space. The distinctive openness of these songs is a phenomenon discussed by the folklorist Đenana Buturović (2011) in her essay on sevdalinka. She highlighted the fact that sevdalinka is susceptible to the changes of a given moment, depending on the performer and on the taste of the audience receiving it. During its centuries-long existence, sevdalinka has adjusted to different influences and circumstances. In terms of performing, this includes the appearance of sevdalinka on the radio, followed by its mass acceptance and popularity in the mid-20th century and even today, when we witness a new, modern “adaptation” of sevdalinka to new musical genres and trends. It should be noted here that its popularity reached a climax when, following the model of this oral tradition, poems by famous writers began to be used as lyrics, which eventually acquired the “vesture of well known tunes”. The most significant authors of the early 20th century included Safvet-beg Bašagić, Aleksa Šantić and Osman Đikić; and other authors, who belong to the younger generation, appeared later.

At the level of language, the distinctive feature of sevdalinka, compared to the love poetry of neighboring oral literature trends, is that its verses, i.e. the introductory lyrical frames, describe many Bosnian and Herzegovinian or Sandzak towns and their individual picturesque sites.

With respect to the lyrics of the songs, they have an amazing breadth and diversity of themes and motifs. The motifs range from joyous encounters and rendezvous to sudden difficulties and entanglements, anticipation full of uncertainty and anxiety, the myth of the magical power of the black eye and the girl's curse, to painful farewells, heavy disappointments, and even despair.

In order to present an example, the author of this text offers a description of one of manysevdalinkas: “Wisdom based on experience springs from some songs, which are a call to caution, restraint, and the voice of reason despite the yearning for love, which does not always lead to the happiness that is coveted:Ko te hoće, ne podmeći mu se, / Ko te neće, ne nameći mu se(Do not yield to the one who wants you, / Do not impose on the one who doesn't want you). On the other hand, faith in the power of love often corresponds to hurt pride: here, losing is not a loss, particularly when a girl goes to another man and a resigned young man responds –you got what you asked for. In such sections we can see that love has won, that it was actually never in question; though the same does not apply to its participants, who are often, and brutally, victims of their own popularity and arrogance, who punish both themselves and their sweethearts with inaction, as well as by underscoring the truth that will eventually prevail:Neka je, nek se udaje! /Dugi joj danci petrovski, / Kratke joj noći jesenske, / Kad prvo jutro ustala, / Sa svoga srca uzdahla, / 'Gdje si mi, dušo, Mujaga?'(Let her get married! / Let her Peter's Days be long, / Let her autumn nights be short, / When she got up the first morning / She sighed from the bottom of her heart, / 'Where are you, my dear, Mujaga?') (Efendić 2021: 7-8).

References:

• Balić, Smail (1994) „Narodna muzika“, u: Kultura Bošnjaka, muslimanska komponenta, Zagreb 1994. II izd.

• Buturović, Đenana (2011) „Sevdalinka. Naučni esej“, Znakovi vremena, god. XIV, br. 54. Zima 2011, 28-45.

• Efendić, Nirha (2021) „Slovo o sevdahu“, u: Zaboravljeno blago. Stotinu bosanskih narodnih pjesama sa notnim zapisima, prir. Semir Vranić i Zanin Berbić, Sarajevo: Buybook.

• Enciklopedija Jugoslavije (1969), Zagreb: Jugoslovenski leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža.

• Kuba, Ludvík (1953) Cesty za slovanskou písní (1885-1929), Praha: Státní nakladatelství krasné literatury HUDBI A UMÉNÍ.

• Maglajlić, Munib (1997) „Sredina i vrijeme nastanka i trajanja sevdalinke“, u: Bošnjačka književnost u književnoj kritici, knjiga II, prir. Đenana Buturović i Munib Maglajlić. Sarajevo: Alef.

• Maglajlić, Munib (2016) 101 sevdalinka, Dubrovnik: BZK Preporod Dubrovnik, 2016.

• Rizvić, Muhsin (1963) „Ogled o sevdalinci“. Izraz, Sarajevo, XIII, br. 11, 454-466; pod naslovom „O lirsko-psihološkoj strukturi sevdalinke“, u: Narodna književnost /Izbor studija i članaka o narodnoj književnosti, Sarajevo, Svjetlost, 190-200.