Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A traditional genre of folk music from Bosnia and Herzegovina, also popular in ex-Yugoslavia region.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Serbo-Croatian sevdalinka, from Turkish sevda.

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Examples

  • Pronek's sadness -- embodied in sevdalinka, the Bosnian blues -- makes novels of immigrant assimilation and adaptability utterly superficial by comparison.

    Anis Shivani: The Best Books of the Decade 2009

  • The ability to find beauty in the world as it is — laden with sorrow and evil — is, for a lot of Bosnians, related to the feeling of sevdah and expressed in the type of song called sevdalinka.

    Living With Music: Aleksandar Hemon - Paper Cuts Blog - NYTimes.com 2009

  • The ability to find beauty in the world as it is — laden with sorrow and evil — is, for a lot of Bosnians, related to the feeling of sevdah and expressed in the type of song called sevdalinka.

    Living With Music: Aleksandar Hemon - Paper Cuts Blog - NYTimes.com 2009

  • My favorite sevdalinka is “Ima L’ Jada K’o Kad Aksam Pada” (“Is There Sorrow as When Night Is Falling”), in which the beauty that is to be swallowed by the oncoming night is present in the mute nightingales, the sound of saz (a single-string instrument) accompanying late prayers and the shuddering of courtyard fountains.

    Living With Music: Aleksandar Hemon - Paper Cuts Blog - NYTimes.com 2009

  • My favorite sevdalinka is “Ima L’ Jada K’o Kad Aksam Pada” (“Is There Sorrow as When Night Is Falling”), in which the beauty that is to be swallowed by the oncoming night is present in the mute nightingales, the sound of saz (a single-string instrument) accompanying late prayers and the shuddering of courtyard fountains.

    Living With Music: Aleksandar Hemon - Paper Cuts Blog - NYTimes.com 2009

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