It has finally happened. The famous Bosnian Sevdah vocal artist Amira Medunjanin, widely known for her angelic voice and melancholic stage performance, has arrived today to Boston MA, where she will start off with her debut performance tour in US and Canada. Her North American tour coincided with her freshly released album “DAMAR”, which in Bosnian colloquial language means “Jugular Vein”. The album was released in mid October and was recorded at the Real World Studios, which is one of the most renowned studios in UK, owned by famous Peter Gabriel. The studio is located in the countryside, at the outskirts of Bath, giving to the artists like Amira a sublime recording atmosphere and experience. She worked on the album for two moths with some amazing artists like Damir Imamović, who wrote the lyrics and composed one of the newly released songs “Pjevat Ćemo Šta Nam Srce Zna” (We Will Sing As Our Hart Pleases). The other authored song “Damar“, titling the album, was written by Maria Krznarić and composed by Boško Jović. Her musical recording team were; Ante Gelo (guitar), Bojan Zulfikarpašić (piano), Boško Jović (guitar) and Zvonimir Šestak (bass).

The remaining six songs are centuries old, traditionally sang, lyrical remakes. Amira became famous with her soulistic approach, applying the modern and contemporary, jazzy styled, melancholic rythamed melodies to the already audience proven traditional lyrics. Sevdah is the soul & blues of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sevdalinka is it’s national artistic treasure. For centuries, it has been a part of the daily living of the yearning Bosnian man and woman, a boy and a girl, who for different reasons, mainly due to unrequited love, could not be together. The lyrics were usually born out of a real and unfortunate love, then it would be carried over from generation to generation, spilling through out rural places, towns and villages. Out of what initially was a private court love story telling, eventually become a widespread artistic melodic expression, conquering the harts of audiences in the land and of surrounding countries in the Balkans, and recently the rest of Europe, Canada and United States.