Album: Saban Bajramovic

A Gypsy Legend, World Connection

At the moment, whenever I tune in to Charlie Gillett's show on BBC London, he seems to be playing Saban Bajramovic. And rightly so – the Serbian singer is clearly a giant talent, comparable in his own way to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Mari Boine Persen, someone capable of bringing their music to life with such vivid spirituality that it vaults with ease over the most impenetrable cultural barriers. In the former Yugoslavia, he's a household name, with a back catalogue of over 650 songs, but abroad Bajramovic is best known, if at all, for his contributions to the films of Emir Kusturica. A man whose scarred, careworn visage bears witness to a chequered past on the fringes of society, Bajramovic started singing while serving a five-year sentence for desertion in the 1950s, releasing his first record when he left prison in 1964, and promptly gambling away his earnings in a matter of hours. Small wonder, then, that his voice combines the anguish of rai with the soulfulness of fado as he sings these love ballads and plaints, some, like "Pelno Me Sam" ("I Am Imprisoned"), the lament of a prisoner unable to attend his daughter's wedding, doubtless drawn from personal experience. The music – a sort of Balkan gypsy jazz that blends fluttering whorls of accordion, fiddle and guitar with clarinet and trumpet arabesques – was recorded by the Mostar Sevdah Reunion group at the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, the most tangible result so far of the War Child charity. Recommended.