‘OSMANE’ new single by Damir Imamović in Peaceful Radio Show 1538

‘King of Sevdah’, Damir Imamović, releases single OSMANE from forthcoming album ‘The World and All That It Holds’

Damir Imamović’, called “The king of sevdah music” by Huffington Post, is poised to release the single ‘Osmane’ from his long-awaited new album ‘The World and All That It Holds’. The album is due out on the iconic Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label on 19th May 2023. Imamović’s last album Singer of Tales was called “one of the finest works Bosnia has produced this century,” by Songlines Magazine. Here he teams up once more with the distinguished producers Joe Boyd (Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Pink Floyd) and Andrea Goertler, and with multi-Grammy™ award-winning sound engineer Jerry Boys.

‘The World and All That It Holds’ is the unique and exciting result of the creative partnership struck up with Bosnian American novelist Aleksandar Hemon. Music enhanced and inspired by literature; a new and acclaimed novel glowing with a rich and tangible soundscape.

‘Osmane’ (pronounced Oss-man-né) is the visceral response that Damir Imamović (pronounced ‘Im-mam-o-vitch’) had on reading Aleksandar Hemon’s epic tale. Rich in language and lyricism, it opens with the Great War where it starts, in Sarajevo. “… Both a love cry and a funeral march” is how Damir Imamović imagined ‘Osmane’, a deeply-moving and sombre ‘sevdalinka’ song that is charged with fatalistic emotion and devotion – a song of mourning, heavy with premonition: ‘If you die young, I will hide your traces’ reads the translation.

The impossible and everlasting love between two men, Osman a Muslim, Pinto a Sephardic Jew, is one to be kept hidden, traditional songs of forbidden love and yearning for home are the perfect means through which the two communicate both the shared joy of their love and their pining for the city they left behind, Sarajevo.  Of sevdah, Damir says, “For us who were raised with it, it has endless shades of sadness”.   Aleksandar Hemon’s seemingly contradictory words, give us deeper insight into the emotions at play: “Sevdah is not sad music […] but a means to convert the longing for what is absent into the celebration of what is present”.  Joy and sadness are intertwined in this song brimming with complex emotion.

An unadorned frame drum opens ‘Osmane’, before tambur, bass, beautifully rich vocals, and a weeping violin join, producing a slow cry that builds to become almost trance-like. The song features Damir on vocals and tambur and his highly accomplished fellow musicians, Bosnian Ivana Durić (violin), Serbian Ivan Mihajlović (bass) and Croatian Nenad Kovačić (percussion and backing vocals) and is one facet of the 11-song soundtrack that is this album ‘The World and All That It Holds’.  Damir Imamović’s music gives voice to the few things the lovers have which no one and no war can take away: their singing, music and different Bosnian identities. What Aleksandar Hemon has imagined, Damir Imamović has made real.

Damir Imamović has been recording, performing and touring sevdah on national and international stages since 2006. He has toured extensively across Bosnia-Herzegovina and from Europe to China, USA, India, Japan and Mexico. As well as being recipient of Songlines’ coveted Best of Europe Award winner 2021, Imamović won Best European World Music Album in the Transglobal World Music Charts 2020, was awarded Best Traditional Music by the German Record Critics’ Awards 2020 and has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Guardian, the BBC and more.

‘Osmane’ comes out on 20^th April 2023 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

Our first email about ‘Osmane’ was sent out on Friday and it is not impossible that some of you might be airing it today or have it scheduled in already for the days or weeks to come: if that is the case, we thank you and look forward to hearing from you. Greetings from here in London!

Composition and Lyrics
Damir Imamović

Performers
Damir Imamović (tambur)
Ivana Đurić (violin)
Ivan Mihajlović (bass)
Nenad Kovačić (frame drum and cymbals)Producers
Joe Boyd and Andrea Goertler

Recording Engineer and Assistant
Jerry Boys and Alan Omerović