Music

Bosnian Culture: Music

Classical music found its place of distribution, especially in Catholic churches and mosques; musician of some importance was F. Bosanac (Franciscus Bossinensis), active in sec. XVI. The Austrian occupation in 1878 led to an improvement in the musical life. In Sarajevo in 1881 he gave his first concert in 1900 was opened the first school of music. The National Theatre was built in Banja Luka in 1930 and the Sarajevo Opera was founded in 1946 by it, two years later, came the Philharmonic Orchestra. The music education and musicology has its fulcrum in the Academy of Music, founded in 1955. Among the contemporary composers remember J. Majer (1888-1965) and J. Pleciti (1901-1961). § The popular song is the characteristic ojkanje (lament), spread to Croatia and other neighboring regions, consists of a 2-part voices with alternating trills. Muslim populations sing songs reserved to men alone also prevalent in the cities, where once were executed in public places accompanied by accordion. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in rural areas, is still very popular and listened to the music of popular tradition as the sevdalinka, a kind voice with accompaniment firsarmonica or a few other tools, which severely suffered the influence of Turkish music: among interpreters are to be reported Safet Isović (b. 1936) and Himzo Polovina (1927-1986), a psychiatrist who was one of the most acclaimed performers of this genre of popular songs. Even the musical tradition has suffered the repercussions of the civil war, and currently listening to sevdalinka is limited to the older generation and non-urbanized. Since 1960, in the early nineties, the capital has been the epicenter of the so-called "school of pop-rock of Sarajevo", which initiated the spread of the rock around the territory of Yugoslavia. Only with the end of the war the Bosnian music production has leaned on the international scene, especially in the wake of the films of Emir Kusturica, who was assisted in the soundtracks of his works, especially the musician Goran Bregovic (b. 1950), star Yugoslav rock as early as the seventies. Bregovic's music blends the rhythms of gypsy brass, the polyphonic popular Bulgarian origin to elements in the rock world. Also known in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the band Zabranjeno pušenje, in the eighties began to mix the garage rock to traditional folk sounds and rhythms, after the war, with the name of the band No smoking Orchestra has recorded the soundtrack of the film Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat.