Bosnia's Billie Holiday

Article about sevdah singer Amira Medunjanin.

Reviews have labelled Amira ‘Bosnia's Billie Holiday’, and the comparison holds a certain truth. Billie and Amira are both vocal revolutionaries - Holiday reinvented jazz singing, while Medunjanin is turning sevdah inside-out, enraging an older generation who contest her experimental jazz leanings.

The Thompson Hits The Fan

Marko Perkovic (Thompson) is hitting Sarajevo, and the covers of two Bosnian weeklies (Dani and Slobodna Bosna).

For more on Thompson, the controversy, and some great blogging on Balkan culture and politics check out the Illyrian Gazette

Bell in Sarajevo

Martin Bell, a BBC reporter who covered the siege of Sarajevo (where he was injured by shrapnel); has returned to Bosnia. In September he will lead a tour through Croatia and Bosnia. You can read about his return to Sarajevo here and here.

Sarajevo Winter Festival

Featuring art, cultural, literary, film and musical events.
http://www.sarajevskazima.ba

(Thanks Dan for the link!)

A sad anniversary

Probably every day is the anniversary of someone's death in the wars in the former Yugoslavia; today is the anniversary of the 1994 market place bombing in Sarajevo by VRS forces; which killed 67 and wounded 142.

Children laying flowers.

A prayer.