Zumra

Amira Medunjanin is Bosnia's most charis– matic contemporary singer of sevdah – the lyrical but melancholy song form that has come to characterise the Bosnian temperament. As Dennis Marks said in a recent radio programme Turkey in Europe: ‘Like Bosnia itself, sevdah weaves Turkish and Slav threads into a single fabric’. There are many performers giving a contemporary take on sevdah, as the excellent Piranha disc Sevdalinka shows TOTW in #45), or the duo project of Nataša Mirkovi and hurdy-gurdy player Matthias Loibner.

This disc is a more ambitious duo recording of voice and accordion with a powerful contemporary twist. It's Merima Ključo who is the driving force here, arranging the songs and playing a spectral accordion accompaniment. There are chords that sigh and stab and dark throbbing drones. But Amira's voice is always clear and true to the emotional content of the song. The opening ‘Kradem Ti Se’ is exquisite – a delicate poem of unrequited love that seems to hover in the air with chords unresolved and unfulfilled. It's a gem of a song. Zumra, the title of the album, means ‘emerald’, but it also means something that deviates from the norm. This is most extreme in the fifth song, ‘Mehmeda Majka Budila’, about a dark, unsettling dream – in which the accordion sounds like a pulsating swarm of bees as Amira manages to intone the melody over the top. The beautiful but elegiac Macedonian song that follows comes as a blessed relief. This is a brave and powerful record and I look forward to their London performance at the end of May. But I wish Amira and Ključo had let a few more moments of brightness and warmth into the darkness.