It's not all about pop music

Famous Bosnian musician Damir Imamović created a special style of contemporary sevdah with his interpretations.

During his career, he passionately researched traditional music, and since 2007 he has been writing tracks, not only for himself, but also for other performers in the spirit of sevdalinka. The current album "Singer of Tales", on which he worked for three years, despite the current pandemic, is slowly winning over the audience, as well as critics, which is confirmed by the numerous awards that have arrived at Imamović's "address" since its release. The album, which includes 11 songs, is dedicated to sevdah as the art of telling stories, and was named after the book by Albert Lord, an American expert on epic poetry, who traveled through the Balkans in the 20s and became familiar with the traditional oral poetry of this area.

Imamović talks about his success in the world, as well as awards, for Magazin...

Several months have passed since the release of the album "Singer of Tales", and in the meantime you have received significant awards, one of which is from the National Association of Music Critics in Germany, which is like the German Grammy for the best album of traditional music. Does this mean that the doors of the world industry are slowly opening for artists from the ex-YU area and that they can compete equally with colleagues from developed countries?

I think it's been happening slowly since the 1990s. That opening of the international scene is very important and mainly includes us who deal with the traditional music of our areas, some jazz musicians and the like. Of course, it doesn't come by itself and you have to make a good effort so that your work reaches the audience, journalists and critics of other countries. It's refreshing because you learn that there are other standards, that it's not all about pop music. Surely the music of many would be much poorer if we only worked for one market.

You had excellent reviews for the album in the British, German, Dutch and South Slavic press. How much does that mean to you?

Well, of course it does. Everyone sees it differently and it's very exciting to read reviews that come from completely different perspectives. Unfortunately, there is a lot of superficiality both here and in the world, so there are quite boring texts and presentations. But it can surprise you when you read something giftedly written. There is that in our country and on the international scene.

Your album was on the first place of the world list "Transglobal World Music". Given that your album was voted for by world critics and thanks to their votes it was at the very top, was it so well received by the audience?

Judging by the listens and interest in the album, it seems so. Unfortunately, only when the material from the album comes to life in concert, some new connections happen, some deeper contact with the audience. For now, due to the pandemic, we are prevented from doing so.

You are not in favor of asking questions like "whose song is whose", which "belongs" to the ethnic collective. Will we ever learn to regard the composition of these areas as our own and not divide ourselves?

Maybe someday we will, but I believe less and less that my generation will see it through. It's touching when a group loves a song so much that they consider it "theirs". I would honestly like it to be because of the beauty of the song and the desire of each of us to inherit something noble and beautiful from our collective. Unfortunately, I think that it is more often about something else - a morbid, nationalistic desire to exclude everyone else from it, to make them feel bad in some way, to make the neighbor's cow suck.

The album "Singer of Tales" is a cross section of sevdah and its stories in their present day version. How important it is to present this genre in a more modern way. Is that also a way to get closer to the younger population?

I have never made music thinking about such pragmatic things as "getting closer to such and such an audience". I always started from melodies, harmonies, rhythm, the way of telling stories. Who will recognize themselves in it and who will find it beautiful, important, meaningful, I cannot influence that. When I started singing, I was 26 years old. Maybe that contributed to the younger audience recognizing something for themselves in my song. Today I'm 42 and I'm doing what I've been doing since the beginning - I'm always trying something new. As far as I can see, it reaches various generations without any particular 'targeting' of mine.

And through the author's work, you save yourself from being forgotten. You write for yourself, but also for other artists. How important is it to preserve it through new compositions, and not just by singing old ones?

Songwriting often comes naturally. From the first song "Dva se draga" from 2007 onwards. I wrote that melody to the text of an old ballad whose melody, at least at that moment, was lost. I just wanted to sing it and I gave it my melody. Later, I did the same with the lyrics - I felt the need for it to be about something and then I wrote it myself. So far it has proved quite successful. I've also written a lot for theater, film, video game music, and more. I'm learning a lot from that process. I'm kind of discovering myself as a craftsman and I like that feeling a lot.

Due to the current pandemic, you were not able to present the album live to the audience because the entire tour was cancelled. How much and did it slow down the process of winning the audience when it comes to the tracks from the "Singer of Tales" project?

It sure is. As I said, the material from the album must come to life in front of the audience, at concerts and other performances. Recording the album is only part of the story.

When making music for plays, you know how to use traditional motifs. Given that you have discovered that you are also making music for video games, how much ethnic motifs can you slip in there?

In the music I make for other media, I am not guided so much by my passion for traditional music. The most important thing is to support the musical vision of the director or author. Sometimes there is a need to make it really sevdalinka, but I also did many other things from other musical genres. For those of us who have our own way, sometimes it is very sobering when you have to be in the function of someone else's vision. For example, I doubt that I would ever have the opportunity to learn to arrange for a string quartet or choir for my projects. It is one wonderful game from which I learned a lot.

My wish is to contribute to the construction of new knowledge about Sevdalian culture

You also work as a lecturer and have a completely new attitude towards tradition. How important is it to find some new ways of traditional music?

Yes, it started sometime in 2011 when a fellow musician invited me to participate in his production workshop. I talked about sevdah, demonstrated important scales, rhythms, told some stories that fascinate me from the history of sevdah. I was surprised by how many people don't know the history of this music, even those who consider themselves fans and connoisseurs. I realized then that, in order to understand what I'm trying to do with sevdah, I have to work a lot on educating the audience. So I started doing workshops, lectures, I did a big multimedia exhibition about sevdah in Sarajevo in 2015. Then I wrote the first history of sevdah (the book "Sevdah", Vrijeme Zenica, 2016). My desire is to contribute to the construction of a new knowledge about that Sevdalian culture. Because, apart from simple ignorance, many of today's misunderstandings of that culture also stem from the conservatism of the language we use to talk about it. In that old language, which we inherited from the 19th century, the downfall of that culture is written. That is why new knowledge implies a new language.