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Music · ·2 min read

A night with sevdah: where to hear Sarajevo's blues

Smoky rooms, slow songs, and the genre that holds the city's whole heart.

By Nedim Hadzimahmutovic ·Sarajevo

Sevdalinka — sevdah for short — is a kind of folk music you can’t quite categorise. It is older than blues but feels like the same emotional language. Slow, melismatic, drenched in longing. The word itself comes from the Arabic sawda, meaning melancholy.

A musical performance during Baščaršijske noći — sevdah played in the old town under summer evening light.
Live performance during Baščaršijske noći. Photograph: Funky Tee, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

If you have one night in Sarajevo, give it to sevdah.

Where to find it

  • Kafana Sevdah Art House. The most reliably good live sevdah in the city. Small, intimate. The musicians come close enough you can see the calluses on their fingers.
  • Pivnica HS. Beer-hall energy, but with sevdah singers on certain nights. Check the calendar.
  • Inat Kuća (the Spite House). Historic restaurant on the north bank of the Miljacka. Occasional sevdah evenings. Order ćevapi and ask the waiter when the music starts. We have a long page on the house’s history.

What to drink

Šljivovica (plum brandy), neat, in a small glass. Sip, don’t shoot. If you don’t drink, ask for boza, a fermented millet drink, lightly fizzy, slightly sweet.

What to listen for

Sevdah is built on repetition with tiny variation. The same line, sung again, slightly different. A note bent further. A breath held longer. It is a music about the way grief, or love, sits in the body, and the way singing it out makes it bearable.

You won’t understand the lyrics. That doesn’t matter. The musicians know. When the bill arrives, the table will pretend to fight over it — say plaćeno! (it’s paid) if you want the small victory of having moved first.

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