One of the most successful artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina Damir Imamovic with his concert at the Nikšić Theater, he will spoil the audience of the Nikšić Guitar Fest tonight.
Imamović, who has been one of the best representatives of sevdah in recent years, will perform with Ivan Đurić (violin) i Benjamin Drijenčić (trumpet).
His interpretation was characterized by critics as revolutionary for this genre and the winner of the award for the best artist of Europe in 2021. Since he has performed in Montenegro on several occasions, a higher ticket was always requested for his concerts, and in an interview with Vijesti, Damir talks about his performance at Guitar Fest, but also about the guitars and other stringed instruments he has been playing on for years...
Until now, you have been a guest in Montenegro, but never at a festival dedicated to the guitar. Will that make the repertoire different from the usual one?
Well, for sure there will be a few traditional compositions that I don't play that often, and which play to the harmony of saz, at least in the variant in which I perform it on the guitar. I mean here, first of all, some compositions from my earlier phase, such as "Mother Muju married a young man" and others.
As someone who plays the guitar, but also some other stringed instruments, what does it mean to you today?
I started resisting the guitar as an instrument almost a decade ago. I felt the need for something else. I started researching the saz and other similar instruments and came up with the idea of making a new instrument that should steal some of the sonority of the saz. That's how the instrument that I called "tambour" was created, which is a fusion of the saz body and the guitar. The builder made the Sazli part for me Camil Metiljević from Sarajevo, and guitar, at first, Mirza Kovačević from Travnik, and later Port of Zaletelj from Slovenia. I had to give up on a lot of ideas during the build and now it's actually a funny looking guitar. Nevertheless, I think that I will continue this process further and maybe come up with some interesting solutions.
It is always the virtuosity that leaves the audience breathless the most. Have you tried to have such shares yourself?
Actually, not that much. My main instrument is my voice and I use the guitar and other instruments functionally. Sometimes it's a little more virtuosic, but mostly I don't have any big ambitions. What remained was that boyish wish that maybe once in my life I would record an album that would be really "guitar" like that. But I'm doing so many different things that the idea is on hold right now.
Given that nowadays you are more focused on song questions, researching original music, how much time do you devote to guitar, do you still practice?
I try to always be in contact with the instrument, to always be in shape. Practicing has become more a function of the repertoire and some interesting scales and grips that I am exploring. As I said, with the voice, which is my first and most important instrument, it takes a lot of work and regular practice, since the sevdalinka is very vocally demanding. It is almost impossible for me to work parallely and equally ambitiously on voice and guitar.
It is known that in addition to the guitar you play tambourine, saz. Are you also a collector of stringed instruments from the guitar family and how many do you have?
I'm not a collector because I don't like instruments sitting around, not being played, and one person can't regularly play more than maybe two or three instruments. Whenever I accumulate more than that, I always try to get rid of them, sell them, or give them away to someone who will actually play them.
It is known that some local authors also made instruments for you. What should an instrument have in order to be "to your liking"?
It is a great mystery. Even industrially made instruments each have their own "soul". Some simply attract you, they have something interesting in their sound, or in their playability, so you can't let them go. It has nothing to do with the price or the popularity of the brand.
What instrument do you use to compose the songs you write?
Lately, a lot of the things I write have been created on the tambourine variant that I play now. Sometimes I borrow an interesting instrument from a friend. So, for example, I recently started playing the Persian tar, an instrument very similar to the saz and other similar instruments. I have already written several interesting topics on it. A new instrument always inspires.
Your previous album "Singer of Tales" won numerous awards throughout Europe and the world. Is the promotion of his concert still going on or have you already started working on a new project?
This year and last year I played many concerts with the "Singer of Tales" project. Unfortunately, the double bass player Greg Cohen returned to America, and the violinist Ivana Duric she got a permanent job that doesn't allow her to travel much. So "Singer of Tales" is now a trio in which I play with an Istanbul master of Ottoman classical music Derjo Turkan, who plays the kemenche or three-stringed lyre, and an excellent Slovenian double bassist Žig Golob.
Bonus video:
