New Song by Ansambl Dah Ljubavi – Zauvijek

This is the brand new video by the always-wonderful Ansambl Dah Ljubavi!  The text and translation are below the video.  They are one of the best young performing groups in Bosnia, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do in upcoming years!

Zauvijek

Dođi mi nisam ti daleko
Dođi mi samo pređi preko ponosa
Tako blizu sam ti ja

Vrati me ti u svoje snove
Vrati se sve je ovdje tvoje
Da li čuješ glas što ti srce doziva

Spasi me ti od ove moje tuge
I od ovog gorkog plamena
Spasi me da osjetim ljubav vječnu
Da zauvijek rob sam tebi ja

Dođi mi nađi me u sebi
Ljubav je skrivena u tebi
U njoj je sjaj što duši daje mir

 Forever

Come to me, I am not far from you
Come to me, overcome your pride
I am so close to you

Come back to my dreams
Come back, all that is here is yours
Do you hear the voice from my heart that calls you?

Save me from my sadness
And from this bitter flame
Save me that I may feel your love eternally
That I may be evermore your slave

Come to me, find me within yourself
Love is hidden within you
In that is the radiance that gives your soul peace

Songs for Srebrenica

Today is the 16th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.  Here you can see a march to commemorate the victims and their families.  There are many things on my mind about the beautiful country and people who remain, and have flourished and blossomed even after these relatively recent tragedies, but I don’t know how to express them.

Here are the Bosnian and English versions of Burhan Šaban’s new song for Srebrenica; as always, it’s much better in the original language!

Today is Muslim World Music Day!

“Muslim World Music Day is an online effort to identify and catalog all the recordings of Muslim music in the world. It will be a step towards making this culturally significant body of work readily available to people around the globe for study and enjoyment.”   Read More

I wanted to do more for this.  Things have been busy here, but really I have no excuse.    Anyways, try to participate in some way, at least by checking out their site linked above.  Here are some great videos to get you started!
 

Debu – Sarayda (Palace Troubadour)

Debu is a group of mostly Americans living in Indonesia (more about them a couple posts down).  In this video, they are singing in Turkish.  For some of the lyrics and translation, open this video in youtube and see the comments section.

Abida Parveen – Jab se tu ne mujhe diwana

Abida Parveen lives in Pakistan, and is a legendary singer of Kafi and ghazal.

Kareem Salama – Makes Me Crazy

The latest video from American Muslim country singer Kareem Salama

Shaykh Hassan Dyck and Muhabbat Caravan

Sorry it’s not too clear; they will be in Prague again next month.

Hor Rejjan – Ya Resulallah

Rejjan is a young choir from Sarajevo.

Brand new video from Debu – “Malam Ini”

Check out the new video from Debu!  This is “Malam Ini” (this night).

You can buy their songs here.  (type “Debu” into the search engine)

Muslim World Music Day

“The ARChive of Contemporary Music, the Arts Initiative at Columbia University, and Columbia University Libraries present an unprecedented collaborative project to catalog and celebrate the diversity, beauty and cultural importance of Muslim music.

Muslim World Music Day combines elements of an academic teach-in, a crash course, and a virtual town hall meeting with an innovative crowdsourcing process. A collection of individuals and institutions from a variety of disciplines will work together to create awareness and understanding of the chosen subject in a compressed time frame.

Muslim World Music Day will be a live online effort to identify and catalog all the recordings of Muslim music in the world, in one day. It will be a step towards making this culturally significant body of work readily available to people around the globe for study and enjoyment.”  Read more…

O Zefire with video and translation

This was originally a qasida called Banet Su’adu by the Prophet’s poet, Ka’b ibn Zuheir, written to express his love for him.  It was translated into Bosnian and adapted by Džemaludin Latif-zade el-Bosnevi, one of Bosnia’s best living poets.  I’ll write more about him in a later post, Ako Bog Da.

This video is of Halid Bešlić, you can also find the mp3 of Aziz Alili singing it – that version is more well-known –  here (mouse over “donload mp3,” then “ilahije i kaside,” and select “ilahije download/1.”  Scroll down a bit to look for Aziz Alili).  The text here in italics is the chorus.  Yes I am aware that he sings it a bit differently in this video, but I thought it was the best version 🙂  Poor guy was in an accident last year; that’s why his face is like that.

O Zefire

Ti si Sunce koje blista s nebeskih visina;

Drugi resuli su zvijezde što sjaje iz tmina.

O, zefire, kad poletiš do medinskih strana,

Poselami onog što ga moja duša sanja!

Ti si kao cvijet nježan, kao Mjesec ponosan,

Ti si more od ićrama, najljepši ti si san.

Kao sedef sjajni školjkin kada se rastvori,

Takav je tvoj osmijeh blagi kada progovoriš

Takav miris ne imadu ni zafran ni mošus

Kao zemljica što pokriva tvoje tijelo I kosu

Oh Breeze

You are a sun that beams from the lofty heavens

The other messengers are stars that shine from that

O, breeze, when you fly through Medina

Greet the one whom my soul dreams of!

You are like a tender blossom, like the proud moon,

You are a sea of generosity, the most beautiful dream

Like a brilliant white seashell when it opens,

So is your gracious smile when you speak

Such a scent has neither saffron nor musk

Like the fragrance of your body and hair

New albums from Tyson and Baraka Blue

I just wanted to direct your attention to two new albums by American Muslim musicians – Sound Heart by Baraka Blue and Year in the Life of Ty by Tyson Amir.  Both are excellent!  May God reward them and give them further success.  Here’s where you can buy them (or download them for free if you get there soon enough) and listen to the tracks.

Baraka Blue, from the Remarkable Current label

Tyson Amir’s bandcamp site

Videos from “Selam ya Resulallah”

From a concert in Sarajevo yesterday evening – which I missed 😦   Thank you, youtube user Saninpe!

Hor Hazreti Hamza:  “Jecajem te zovem ja”

Gazel:  “Sad Te zovem ya Rahman”  (a cappella)

Hor Bedem and Miralem Babajić:  “Vejsel Karani”

Hor Kewser

Hor Rejjan Concert and New CD

To promote their new album “Ya Resulallah,” Hor Rejjan performed for a packed hall tonight, along with special guests Hfz. Aziz Alili, Eldin Husejnbegović, Zejd Šoto, Miralem Babajić, Hor Hewser, and Hor Gazel.  I’m sure video from the concert will show up on YouTube, and I’ll update the post when it does.  For now, here are some of their music videos, and some photos from the event.  Great job guys!

With Gazel

Zejd Šoto

Hor Kewser

Eldin Husejnbegović (the girls next to me were going completely nuts – I didn’t realize he was that kind of popular!)

Hor Rejjan

With Hfz. Aziz Alili

Review of Concert

On Sunday night, about 10,000 people braved the cold weather to attend “Gazu u mom srcu” (Gaza in my heart), a giant concert held to raise money for humanitarian relief in Gaza. It was such a large concert, in fact, that it was held in Zetra, the Olympic stadium. The event was scheduled to begin at 7:00 pm, but people began filling the stadium over an hour in advance, and by 6:30 the hall was nearly full. The audience consisted of viewers of all ages, ranging from children to the elderly. The stage was beautifully set up, with white hanging lights and arches to the side of the stage. In the center was a screen, on which a slide show consisting of images from Palestine would be displayed throughout the event. To either side of the screen were sets of high bleachers, which began to fill up just before 7:00.

Several choirs from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina and other parts of the Balkans were scheduled to participate in the event and they began to file onto the stage, taking their places on the bleachers to enthusiastic applause. The members of each choir were dressed alike, for example the women of Hor Kewser were dressed in shiny red and gold outfits. The instrumentalists took their places in front of the bleachers, and the soloists, narrators, and hafizi (those who had memorized the Qur’an, and would recite it during the event) sat in the middle, just under the screen. Shortly beforehand, I had seen the Reis ul-Ulema, Dr. Mustafa Cerić, and his wife arrive and take their seats in the front row.

The event started promptly with a recitation from the Qur’an. There are many hafizi (Arabic: Huffadh) in the Balkans who have been trained at the Gazi Husref-Bey madrasa. Some of them, such as Aziz Alili, Burhan Šaban, Senad Podojak, and Mensur Malkić, who all participated in the event, are also very popular singers of ilahije. After most of the recitations, a narrator read the Bosnian translation of the passages.

I was familiar with many of the singers there, but not all of them. Some of those less familiar to me were pop singers. A highlight of the event, in my opinion, was Hamza Raznatović’s (lead singer of pop band MacBeth) rendition of the well-known ilahije “Dosta mi je Allah moj” (My God is enough for me – see him singing this at a different event on Samaha’s blog). After hearing Burhan Šaban sing a song in Arabic at the beginning of the event, I hoped that he would later perform one of his own songs, and he did – “Dođi Najdraži” (Come, Most Beloved – see music video of this song here). I think he performed this song because it describes the Prophet’s return from the isra’ and mi’raj, part of which took place at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Slides of the structure were shown on the screen during the performance. Another highlight was Aziz Alili’s performance of “Šehidi” (Martyrs – see video of him performing this song here), a song that was popular in Bosnia during and after the war here. I could see that many of the older people in the audience were deeply moved by the song. Interestingly, while the permissibility of musical instruments and female singers are hotly debated in many parts of the Muslim world, they appear to be non-issues here. The event ended with a brief speech and a du’a by Reis ul-Ulema Dr. Mustafa Cerić, and people began piling out of the stadium.