VOA文化艺术2025--Bosnia's 'Balkan Blues' Music Honored by UNESCO

Every Friday, musician Enes Salman performs the Sevdalinka, an ancient form of love song from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Sevdalinka was recently included in UNESCO's National Inventory¹ of Intangible Cultural Heritage. UNESCO is The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Sevdalinka is often called the Balkan Blues². It is a somewhat sad form of urban love song that dates to the 1500s. It is a mix of South Slavic spoken poetry and music of the Ottoman Empire.

Salman is among only a few musicians keeping the tradition alive.

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

Sevdalinka is often performed a cappella. That means it is sung without musical instruments. Sometimes the performer sings with traditional instruments like a lute³. This form, or genre⁴, of music has been carried from generation to generation through performances at family gatherings⁵.

In recent years, younger musicians have brought modern versions of Sevdalinka to audiences around the world.

One of them is Damir Imamovic. His father and grandfather were famous Sevdalinka performers. In 2020 and 2021, Imamovic won awards from two world music publications, Songlines and Transglobal, for best European album.

Imamovic supports Sevdalinka internationally through his SevdahLab project. The project helped build support for the music'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 is a 28-year-old ethno-musicologist. He works as a curator in the music department of Bosnia's Regional Museum in Sarajevo, organizing, protecting, and bringing attention to music. He also plays saz, a long-necked lute used in Ottoman classical music. He said that Sevdalinka tells the story of Bosnia's history.

Berbic said, "Most of my days I spend either singing or playing Sevdalinka songs or reading or talking about them. Sevdalinka is my life," he said.

I'm Anna Matteo.

Daria Sito-Sucic reported this story for Reuters from Sarajevo. Anna Matteo adapted it for VOA Learning English.

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Words in This Story

a cappella -foreign term (music) singing without musical instruments

genre -n. a form of art that is distinct from others

audience -n. people who listen to a performance in a theater, on television or a public place

ethno-musicology -n. the study of music in a sociocultural context; the study of ethnic⁶ music

curator -n. a person who oversees a collection of certain kinds of objects

1 inventory   

n.详细目录，存货清单

参考例句：

• Some stores inventory their stock once a week.有些商店每周清点存货一次。
• We will need to call on our supplier to get more inventory.我们必须请供应商送来更多存货。

2 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

3 lute   

n.琵琶，鲁特琴

参考例句：

• He idly plucked the strings of the lute.他漫不经心地拨弄着鲁特琴的琴弦。
• He knows how to play the Chinese lute.他会弹琵琶。

4 genre   

n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格

参考例句：

• My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
• Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看， 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。

5 gatherings   

聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集

参考例句：

• His conduct at social gatherings created a lot of comment. 他在社交聚会上的表现引起许多闲话。
• During one of these gatherings a pupil caught stealing. 有一次，其中一名弟子偷窃被抓住。

6 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。