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Islamic Studies 36:2, 3 (1 997) 151
character, and all that forms our unique pers~nality".'~ Indeed, according to
authoritative literary critics, the sevdalinkas are the most beautiful and most
artistically valuable parts of South Slavic folk poetry.30
Folk Music
According to Ludvik Kuba, the folk music of Bosnia and Herzegovina has three
scales more than are common to European folk music with its "major" and
"minor" scale^.^' Kuba was able to discover eleven scale-schemes in evaluating
the tonality of the sevdalinkas, the Bosnian love songs. Despite the intluence
of the Arabian-Turkish musical tradition through the appearance of Turkish
songs in the Balkans and through Islamic religious hymns, the main elements of
Bosnian music remain autochthonous and unique, and the assumption that the
melodies of Bosnian folk lyrics are of oriental origin is false. Only the religious
song is oriental in heritage, and then only partially so.32 With few exceptions,
the influences of oriental music upon the Bosnian folk song are retlected more
in tonality and nuance than in musical structure."
While the cradle of the Bosnian folk song and music was the feminine
world with its fragile beauty, its characteristic hopes, longing, love, and sorrow,
the poetic and musical creativity of the Bosnian Muslims was nurtured by the
vagariCs of their existence, the perpetual fluctuation between happiness and
sorrow, security and insecurity, pulsating life and agonizing desolation, hope and
despair. Wars, plague, and natural catastrophes ravaged this land, but the many
fires in the cities where the majority of the inhabitants were Muslims claimed
the greatest number of victims from the Muslim community. Bosnian music
thus was conceived in joy, matured in faith and perseverance, and born in
blessed sorrow.34
The rhythmic, melodic Bosnian music testifies to the existence of an old
and carefully cultivated chamber music. Some of the instruments played by
Bosnian-Herzegovinian musicians came principally from the Orient: the tlute
(diple, naj); violin (Cemane); guitars with oral resonance chamber (tambura); a
long-necked instrument played by plucking (tamburica); oboe (zurna);
tambourine (def); drum (davul); castanets; and the fiddle (gusle), a primitive
string instrument.
The vocal solo with instrumental accompaniment, especially with the
tamburitza, was carefully developed. Each of the sevdalinkas has its own
melody through which the folk of Bosnia have given worthy expression to their
creative musical urge, preserved in a wealth of ancient vocal techniques and a
variety of tonality and song forms; thus, a proper interpretation of the
sevdalinkas demands, in addition to a good voice, a special technical ability and
a feeling for folk music.
Choral music was not particularly fostered during the Turkish period,
and the only choral presentations in older times were certain types of religious
song, improvised congregational chants for festive occasions, and the song of
the dervishes (which, In the case of the Mawlawi dervishes, also had
instrumental accompaniment).