I could give you driving directions in most Balkan cities, from Prizren, Kosovo, to Mostar, Bosnia lol. I could sing you a song in the Split dialect, and translate it into normal Bosnian/Croatian or Serbian (I cheat - just remove half the ij's, but it's 99.9% accurate). I could explain to you why Novi Sad is where it is, or why Novi Pazar (very Muslim, but in Serbia) used to be a big deal. I could even link you to the 6'4" Bosniak chick (Slavic Muslim) model-turned-singer, married to a famous Turk, splits her time between Novi Pazar and Istanbul, singing a hilariously tongue-in-cheek song with a chunky Serbian blonde:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY2tmeUrbmE
One calls the other a terrorist, the reply is "Fascist!", on it goes lol Fun times. Also, that song is a great example of my favourite difference in Balkan music - when they roll the end of a word while singing (think an English singer singing "I will always love you-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou...", it's always the last syllable in English songs that gets rolled. In Balkan music, it's often - usually, even - the second-last. She sings "grada" (city, conjugated for the sentence). English singers would do grada-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah. But they do gra-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-da.
Quote:
Svi mi kažu da si egoista - Everyone says you've a big ego
da si pravi ljubavni fašista - That you're a real loving facist
imaš sve al nemaš srce - You've everything except a heart
ti si kao Pablo Eskobar - Just like Pablo Escobar
za ljubav - When it comes to love
Imaš pogled kao terorista - You look like a terrorist
za tvojim stolom služe samo kristal - Crystal only at your table
imaš sve al nemaš dušu - You have everything except a soul
emotivno hendikepiran - Emotionally handicapped
za ljubav - When it comes to love
A nama se pije samo limunada - All we want is to drink lemonade
jede čokolada negde izvan grada - Eat chocolate somewhere outside the city
tamo gdje se pleše samba i lambada - Some place they're dancing samba and lambada
romba romba - Dance/Party
romba romba - Dance/Party
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I can even go into some detail (contemporary and historic) about the differences between Skopje's carsija (old Ottoman market) and Sarajevo's Bascarsija neighbourhood. Spoiler, Skopje's is less touristy and a more authentic example of the same thing lol).
Even the Skylines of the Past thread, today they're talking about old Montreal versus what replaced it. And what instantly comes to my mind is Sarajevo. When the Austria-Hungarians annexed it from the Ottoman Empire, they were SUPER careful not to upset the Muslim population. So the Central European-style architecture is like a ring around the Ottoman core. They destroyed nothing. It's like a brick wall, instant transition from Ottoman to Austrian.
So here is Ulica Ferhadija (Ferhat Pasha Street), facing toward the Ottoman core. A couple more Austrian buildings, then instant Ottoman:
Ferhadija Street. by
young shanahan, on Flickr
And looking the other way:
Sarajevo - Baščaršija - View towards Ferhadija by
cinxxx, on Flickr
And even... a lot of Bosnian Muslim folk music sounds, to us, quite Spanish. I know why.
When the Jews were expelled from Portugal and Spain, they walked east through Christian Europe until they reached Bosnia, which was the very first place they were welcomed and allowed to settle. Some of the most crucial Bosnian Muslim folk songs, their equivalent of our "I'se the B'y" or "Ode to Newfoundland", are just Ladino (Jewish Spanish) melodies with new words. Spanish Jewish music is to their folk music what Irish music is to ours... it informs basically every instrument, every note.
So you get stuff like this as a Muslim folk song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEhq_ElIelQ
Quote:
Zapjevaj, dušo - Sing for me, my darling
pjesmu što mi stvara bol - The song that hurts me
ja tebe ljubim - I love you
a ti jedva znaš za to - But you barely recognize it
Na ovom svijetu - In this world
samo tebe imam ja, znaj - I have only you, please know
Molim te, dušo vrati mom životu sjaj - Please darling, bring the light back to my life
molim te, dušo, molim te, rano - Please darling, please sweetie
vrati mom životu sjaj - Bring the light back to my life
Malo je, malo dana - There are so few, so few days
da bi mi ostala sama - To leave you alone
malo je, malo noći - There are so few, so few nights
da čekam kad ćeš mi doći - To wait for you to come to me
da jedno drugom bol stvaramo - To share our pain
dana je premalo - There are too few days
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To give you an idea just how HUGE folk music is there, as it is here (this is something that makes me a feel a strong sense of kinship) - same singer, same song, but he's performing it in Zagreb, Croatia. This would be like a Newfoundland folk band giving a concert in Halifax. You'd expect a good turnout, you'd expect them to know the pop hits, but you wouldn't expect this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULYap94wJPg
And, you know, on the topic of Jews. Almost all of Bosnia's Jews were killed during the Holocaust. But Bosnia, for a small country, has quite a few people recognized by Israel for saving Jews. Most touching to me is this family:
That picture is from the early 1940s in Sarajevo, under German occupation. The unveiled woman and children are Jewish. The Muslim woman is hooking her arm like a friend to cover the yellow star armband. A simple little gesture like that - if they got stopped by the police, they unlink arms, yellow Star is right there, no rules broken. But for the most part, they could then walk through unmolested and everyone would assume it was a Christian friend.
Plot twist - the woman on the far left, her granddaughter was saved by Israel during the genocide in Bosnia, airlifted to Haifa in 1993, I think was the year she was rescued. That granddaughter converted to Judaism, became a bit of a TV celeb in Israel, fought in the IDF, etc. So the two families saved each other 50 years apart.
Quote:
The Hardagas were conservative Muslims, with the women covering their faces with a veil in the presence of strangers.
“Never before had a strange man stayed with them,” Yosef Kabiljo testified later to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial authority. “They welcomed us with the words: ‘Josef, you are our brother, and your children are like our children. Feel at home and whatever we own is yours.’”
The Hardaga women never again wore veils in front of Kabiljo.
Their saviours paid a steep price for helping Jews. Pecanac’s grandfather, Ahmed Sadik, was executed by the Nazis because he helped to forge documents with Christian names for Jewish families like the Kabiljos.
... [50 years later] ...
The phone lines to Sarajevo were down, leaving friends and family worried about their loved ones. Salih Hardaga, who had moved to Mexico in 1974, watched TV news programs, hoping for a glimpse of his sister or mother in Sarajevo.
In Jerusalem, too, the Kabiljos tuned in to the evening newscasts, unsure whether the Hardagas were still alive. While Mustafa Hardaga had died during the 1960s, the Kabiljos had stayed in touch with Zejneba and [her daughter, Sara] Pecanac, who was born in 1957.
They contacted an Israeli journalist who was heading to cover the war. The journalist passed on a message to a local community organization in Sarajevo that the Kabiljo family was searching for Zejneba.
A message was sent back to Israel that Zejneba, then 76, and her youngest daughter Sara were still in Sarajevo.
“There was no talk about leaving Sarajevo because there was no time,” Pecanac said. “One day things were OK. The next, soldiers were surrounding the city, the city was split into sections, and there were UN troops and snipers and bombings.
“It happened this fast,” Pecanac said, snapping her fingers.
Pecanac was stunned to hear the Kabiljos were trying to help.
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https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2...ars_apart.html
This is the level of shit I know about particular corners of the world, but absolutely zero about the Baltics lol
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