In this article I will try to outline why the rise of ‘Turbo Folk’ in Bosnia makes no sense and should be stopped immediately.
This article was not intended to be written as a formal reference document, but is rather an account of a ‘reformed Sevdah performer’ (myself) who had taken a long time to realise the information presented in the paragraphs to follow.
Historical overview
Bosnia is an incredibly culturally rich and diverse country, which can be considered a ‘European cradle of civilisation’.
Bosnia has existed as a unique geopolitical entity for eleven centuries and was the place where the Charter of Kulin Ban was drafted.
It is the first ever written written charter from the territory covered by ex-Yugoslavia.
Bosnian kings were some of the most progressive thinkers at the time and have left behind numerous priceless cultural relics and rich traditions.
Empirical influences and Bosnian rule
Throughout centuries Bosnia found itself in many unusual political positions.
The presence and spread of the Ottoman Empire and its culture influenced the development of music culture in Bosnia-Herzegovina, particularly a specific lyric form named “Sevdalinka”.
Bosnia was also part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which brought accordion to the country.
In the past Bosnia also ruled Serbia and Croatia as part of its territory.
Throughout these moments of seismic cultural shifts, developments and movements, Bosnia maintained its unique identity and developed its own, highly unique culture.
This culture covered various aspects of life style including food, music (Sevdalinka – Bosnian traditional song), traditional outfits, various traditions such as Bosnian coffee drinking, architecture, interior design, hand crafts, furniture, etc.
Bosnian people stood strong, proud and determined to maintain, develop and continue their own values and culture, without infringing other people’s cultures.
Twentieth century mayhem
The twentieth century brought much turmoil to Bosnia.
While places like America were going from strength to strength, Bosnia did not miss out on being the epicenter of World War I and World War II.
Just as it recovered somewhat fully from the disastrous effects of World War II, Bosnia suffered an aggression from Serbia and Croatia during early 90s.
I cannot think of many countries in the world which have been through three ravaging wars in a single century in the recent history!
Each of the wars which happened in Bosnia had a silent, but incredibly destructive aspect to
it – ‘cultural genocide’!
This is the topic I would like to cover in detail in this short article.
Destruction of Bosnian culture
As Austro-Hungarian empire arrived to Bosnia, it naturally influences the Bosnian territory with its own cultural values which were radically different to Sevdah and rapidly diluted Sevdah traditions in Bosnia.
Traditional Sevdah instrumentation (Saz) was abandoned, while Austro-Hungarians imposed the use of accordion, Austrian traditional instrument.
Bosnians, in a move to save Sevdah music from total destruction, adapted Sevdah interpretations to accordion and made accordion the ‘modern musical heart of Sevdah’.
The rise of accordion based Sevdah accompaniments meant that musical values of Sevdah have already been altered somewhat, and were therefore no longer kept to their original form.
However, one could argue that the essence of Sevdah was still preserved by most prominent accordion performers that emerged.
Yugoslavian cultural imperialism
After the Austro-Hungarian cultural oppression, Bosnia became ‘the heart of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia’ at the end of World War II.
This socialist regime was seen by most as ’soft’, however in practice it meant that people of Yugoslavia were taught to sing partisan and pioneer songs.
These ‘Yugoslavian folk songs’ somehow grew out of this new political form and coincidentally nobody sings these songs now, proving that they were never real folk creations.
Yugoslavian regime ’softly’ brainwashed few generations of Bosnian youth from knowing and understanding almost anything of their real cultural heritage.
Yours truly was one of the victims of this horrible, long-term brain washing campaign, and proactively shunned any association with Sevdah music in my early stages of musical education.
Within this time (1950s to 1980s), however, there were some very important Sevdah recordings made by Radio Sarajevo and they made part of an important Sevdah cultural archive.
Turbo folk
However, one of the biggest cultural evils, which lives in the bones of majority of Bosnian youth even today started spreading itself only in the 80s and continued into the 90s.
That evil was called ‘Južni Vetar‘ (Southern Wind) and it originated in Serbia, unfortunate country which was equally (if not more) subject to cultural genocide as much as Bosnia.
Southern Wind essentially ‘lifted’ the sound of Lebanese and Egyptian pop, which, for example, can be regularly heard in various Lebanese sheesha bars in London’s Edgware Road today.
This style of techno, quazi pop-folk, fused horribly together into an idiotically appealing bubblegum of subliminal, openly sexual semi-musical hooks, flooder the Middle East, Turkey, Greece and Serbia, penetrating as far as Bosnia!
The biggest paradox in it all was the fact that this music was marketed around as ‘narodna muzika’ (folk music)!
However, within this fallacy, lies a ray of hope.
Turbo folk – the curse of the modern Balkans
Turbo folk has nothing to do with Bosnian folk music.
However, it’s still going very strong in Serbia and Bosnia, where Bosnian immigrants, lead by Lepa Brena, built an entire empire from selling this recycled tat to unaware Serbian peasants, who enjoy a good ‘booty shake’ after a hard day in the fields.
Many listeners in Yugoslavia were wise enough to hear the ‘Turbo Folk conspiracy’, so much of the youth opted for listening to Yugoslavian rock music, which was a form of ‘musical safe haven’.
This music was influenced heavily by the parallel ongoing hippy movement in America.
It is highly paradoxical that the hippy movement was a form of freedom movement where the rock musicians were taking influences from folk music of England and emergent Black folk of modern America and it in itself a certain form of ‘turbo folk’.
However, it could be argued that much of the music from bands like Leb i Sol (their adaptations of Macedonian traditional songs in specific) and later Yugoslavian rock groups were actual ‘light forms of Turbo Folk’, just delivered in a more ‘tasteful manner’.
Turbo folk musical scales are structured in such a way as to aid the listener in becoming somewhat paranoid, catalysing use of alcohol and smoking of cigarettes along with increased levels of promiscuity amongst men and women, influenced by sexual images within the music and videos of most turbo folk songs.
I have heard a Serbian musician friend make a comment in the past that his analysis indicated that musical structure of Turbo Folk music has been one of the aiding elements in creating the ‘warring zombie mentality’ amongst the people of the latest war of 1990s in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia.
Unfortunately this ‘zombie state’ can also be observed amongst Bosnian youth of today – take a seat in Sarajevo City centre and observe a young girl religiously repeat the lyrics of the latest Turbo Folk song, while staring in the distance with an ‘empty look’ in her eyes.
This empty look is a common product of a human being blindingly consuming and following these agitating, false and highly sexually suggestive lyrics of this ultra-commercial ‘musical form’.
Light at the end of the tunnel
However, two solid decades of recycling the very same, disposable. one dimensional, ‘musical’ concepts becomes too much even for ‘the zombie’.
New generations of musically educated and gifted Bosnians are starting new movements as an antidote to over-saturation of meaningless Turbo Folk.
Sons and grandsons of Sevdah performers from decades ago are starting their own movements and are bringing back to life their own interpretations of Sevdah songs, while enjoying significant following in the process.
Sevdah is coming back as a healing to the cultural and spiritual wounds of Bosnians, who now increasingly want to simply relax and enjoy the simple and highly effective sound and message of traditional Sevdalinka, which has over centuries filled Bosnian hearts with peace, love, happiness and melancholy
Summary
Bosnia is a land of great and unique cultural heritage, which over the last century has been subject to extreme forms of cultural genocide.
Commercialised, ad hoc fusion styles of music have diminished the significance of Sevdah in the ears of every day listener.
Bosnia, however is now coming into a new cultural era, in which the regular person is sick and tired of recycled Turbo Folk rubbish and are coming back to appreciating the real beauties of Sevdalinka and real values of Sevdah heritage.
Published on 24th October 2009
Slazem se u potpunosti s articlom, vrlo fino objasnjeno, good job!!! Dosta je vise smeca zvanog turbo folk, dosta..
adis on 24th OctoberI believe Bosnia existed even before Kulin Ban. As Back then nations existed in a tribal fashion, and they were often called by the neerest river to them and guess what, river Bosnia existed even during the Roman times..
Ned on 25th OctoberFair comment Ned. It’s an interesting observation you make. I was trying to deal with the official, written, historical evidence.
Obviously with the possibility of there being pyramids in Bosnia, the whole history may prove to be only the tip of a big iceberg. However, at the time of writing we do not have enough credible evidence to justify this.
We wait to see what ends up being proven or not. However, even the official history shows that Bosnia has existed for over 10 centuries.
World of Sevdah on 25th OctoberWhat can I say? There is hope that Sevdalinke will never die; like Himzo Polovina once sang “Pjesma o Emini nikad umriet’ nece”. Many of the beautiful recordings of Himzo Polovina, Safet Isovic, Zaim Imamovic, Zehra Deovic and others are still available; even though they are hard to come by here. I bought some beautiful albums at Sevdah Kuca in Sarajevo, or on the street across from the Begova Dzamija last summer. Let us hope that the forces trying to shatter Bosnia and to erase its wonderful people and culture will not succeed. I would very much like to return and enjoy more of it. What are the prospects?
Ahmed Karim on 13th NovemberAnyway, I saw also some wonderful youthful performers, like Zanin Berbic, incredibly proficient on saz; he’s still in his teens. It’s too bad that Mostar Sevdah Reunion no longer exist; their CD “A secret gate” has the most beautiful and heartfelt rendition of “Imal’ jada k’o kad aksam pada”; if possible it surpasses even Himzo Polovina’s version. But, many of Himzo Polovina’s older recordings (and theresx are his best) can only be found as mp3 at the bosnaprkosnaodsna web site: a good remastered CD would of course be better.
It’s also too bad I did not find a CD of “Bosno moja divna mila” album, which my father bought when I was 5; which I cherish and treasure; I played it quite often for all the Bosniak refugees whom I met at the Bosnian cultural center in my hometown during the war; all the old people could relate to it; unfortunately the youngsters did not appreciate it so much. One girl even told me that probably her grandmother would have enjoyed it very much. Maybe today they have changed their minds, but I don’t know if young people relate to it much; However, they had a very good sazlija and singer at Sevdah Kuca in the Bascarsija, and all the times I went there it was well visited, adn not just by foreigners. It’s good to know that now high-quality recordings by Emina Zecaj and Amira Medunjanin are available, but I wish the music of the “good old times” were remastered and published in a high-quality edition. and that I could order it from abroad.
Ahmed thanks once again for posting a detailed comment.
We are trying to showcase real Sevdah on this web site and even many of the items which you mentioned can be considered as ‘not real Sevdah’.
For example, the song ‘Emina’ was written by a specific writer, while strictly speaking real Sevdah songs are written by people.
So what you see on this site are those songs which are written by people and there is no one specific author that can be named.
‘Emina’ is a modern song, written in Sevdah style.
I am fascinated by your writings nevertheless.
World of Sevdah on 13th NovemberSlazem se u potpunosti sa ovom analizom i s dozom olaksanja gledam na buducnost nase sevdalinke i sevdaha opcenito kao nacina zivota.
Htio bih napomenuti da slusajuci neke radio stanice u BiH dolazim do zakljucka da cak i neki pjevaci, vjerovatno jadni odrasli u tzv. turbofolku, pjevaju sevdalinku kao turbofolk, sto zvuci jako nakaradno.
Kroz sevdah se protura ekavica, prije bih rekao namjerno nego slucajno (jer u tom slucaju je i to vrsta agresije).
Zatim, dolazimo do apsurda da recimo srbijanski pjevaci trudeci se, odlicno otpjevaju sevdalinku razumljivo, na ekavici…S druge strane, bosanski pjevaci se jako trude otpjevati sevdalinku da sto vise lici na turbofolk.
Zamislimo kako slusajuci ove prve, nasa djeca (buducnost) ce misliti kako su sevdalinke zapravo srpske pjesme i na ekavici, a ove druge kako se zapravo sevdalinka treba pjevati kao turbofolk.
Da ne bih bio pogresno shvacen, nemam nista protiv Srbijanaca ni protiv ekavice, tim vise sto je sevdalinka pjesma svih naroda Bsne i Hercegovine.
Protiv sam izokretanja cinjenica i krivog (namjernog ili nenamjernog) tumacenja sevdaha i sevdalinke.
Tahir on 21st February@Tahir Fino sazeto. To je istina koja je jako zalosna. Takodje, mnoga raja koja ne voli turbo folk cesto zamrzi sevdalinku iz razloga sto je ona izvedena kao turbo folk pjesma i desi se dosta zabune da dosta raje misli da je sevdalinka i turbo folk jedna te ista stvar.
World of Sevdah on 21st February