Svetlana Spajić: “I learned my ancestors’ sung aspect of language as my ‘second language’. But now I feel more like it’s really mine”

“Evo meni moga i mojega!” Svetlana Spajić proclaims, gesturing dramatically with hands and eyes. Her voice is filled with grandeur, as each Serbian word resonates with a clarity and depth that only a vocalist of Spajić’s ability can produce. “Evo, doš’o meni sivi soko! You understand?!” I don’t. At least, not the words, but the meaning and intention are clear, and this is her point. Svetlana is demonstrating a traditional, local mode of speech, welcoming an imagined guest into her home, bound in poetic language and ritual. “This world of orality was so developed among our [Serbian] ancestors,” Spajić explains. “The word, and what you communicate, it was so important.”

These linguistic explorations underpin Spajić’s work, itself spanning time, bringing ancient traditions into new. Gordan is an excellent example. The project’s second, self-titled album was released this May, with vocals from Spajić, drums by Austrian-born Andi Stecher and German Guido Möbius on bass and electronics. In writing, Spajić reports, the vocal parts sometimes begin abstractly, but often they’re based on ancient lyrical forms. One track (‘How A Mountain Fairy Divided the Two Jakšić Brothers’), for example, may be the only contemporary iteration of the bugarštica, a hefty, centuries-old epic form. But far from rigid or prescriptive, these songs slip between minimalistic slithers of Slavic tradition, with pulsing drums and melodic-rhythmic patterns, and noise-based avant-gardism, with concrète sounds and raw electronic feedback that dances with the vocals.

The Svetlana Spajić Group (Andreja Leko)

This exquisite whole sits at the more experimental end of Svetlana’s work, though other projects enter the realm, including with cassette-manipulator Lenhart Tapes, and psychedelic collective The Cyclist Conspiracy. Spajić’s sensibility for words equally lends itself to performance art. Notably, she worked with Marina Abramović, and, in 2011, on Robert Wilson’s The Life and Death of Marina Abramović. “He’s really a format in himself, Bob Wilson!” says Svetlana, still energised by the experience. “It’s not theatre, it’s like a new universe, and you need to learn how to move and function within that.”

Spajić is best known, though, for her expertise in traditional Balkan song. When we speak, she is preparing to leave for concerts alongside Miloš Nikolić, on the kaval flute, and Boško Vujačić, recounting epic tales with voice and bowed gusle. Spajić will primarily sing a cappella, as is common in this traditional repertoire, “be it solo, two-part, or polyphonic.” The latter is epitomised in the visceral incantations of the Svetlana Spajić Group (Pjevačka Družina Svetlane Spajić), a four-or-five-woman ensemble whose close harmonies and spine-tingling ornaments seem to echo down from ancestral spaces.

In many senses, they do. Svetlana’s profound connection to these sounds is grounded in elder communities. “I understood that I cannot do much by listening to field recordings,” she laughs, as if the idea were preposterous. “I started going to villages and [found] some 15 mentors of the first [generations], the bearers of these traditions.” Listening to Spajić singing, it’s difficult to believe it doesn’t come instinctively. But, she assures me, her upbringing in then-Socialist Yugoslavia meant being surrounded by “Western music and the Western organisation of language.” Older generations, contrastingly, “were born with [this song]; that was their native language.” For Spajić, the practice needs regular refreshing, to ensure her earliest experiences don’t dominate. “It sounds absurd, but I learned my ancestors’ sung aspect of language,” she says, rounding her hand, as if cradling this song, “as my ‘second language.’ But now I feel more like it’s… really mine,” she grins.

Spajić’s work is so rooted in immersion, detail, driven by heart and intellect, that it’s unsurprising she gets referred to as an ethnomusicologist. “Somehow it’s glued to me,” she says, although “I don’t have one day of formal music education. I never attended music school; I can’t read notes.” Spajić has developed her own system for tackling and teaching this mass of oral history, its complex tonal accents, prosodic nuances and vocal cues. Her method, using blackboard and chalk, draws “visual extensions” of vocalisations, with the syllable as the nucleus. “It sounds very abstract, but I guarantee once you join my workshop, when you find yourself being able to sing the most crazy wedding voice from [the Drina Valley], it’s very exciting!”

This is an oral tradition, Spajić emphasises, borne in human communication. Spajić’s understanding is informed by her time at Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies. “Some of [our ancestors’] experiences are so dark, like a big abyss,” she reflects. How do we even begin to close this abyss? “Through human experience,” she proposes, and, with a twinkle that just shines through the gravity of our conversation, “grandmother’s help. Like when you hear their testimony…” Later Spajić shares: “[in Serbian] we have the word predanje: ‘all the knowledge that I have, I give to you as a gift.’”

Through her own success, Spajić remains emphatic about the place of her mentors, noting octogenarian Obrad Milić, and the late Olga Krasojevic. Spajić radiates with joy as we discuss other “great bards” she has worked with. From Greek Domna Samiou to Moroccan-Berber Cherifa Kersit, her reverence extends across sounds and space. “Some of these moments are never recorded, or are anonymous,” Spajić says, recalling the time she led Albanian polyphonic group Ensemble Tirana. “But for me, it’s like, ‘I’m such a badass! Look what we did!’ Because I remember. You cannot be badass without others.”

Spajić’s work is grounded in history and yet looks to the future. “We need to invest the most expensive thing, and that’s time,” she advises, describing the resurrection of an almost-forgotten song as both sadness and “like digging something, you know, like a Sphinx from the sand or some miracle. That’s very exciting!”

Things change, though. Spajić recalls the moment she learned her great-aunt, who raised her, was a singer. “Imagine! She died in 2016, the night I was giving a concert with zeitkratzer, [performing] Serbian War Songs. And only two years ago her daughter told me she was a fantastic singer! I never heard she was singing!” Spajić attributes this to a “kind of humbleness, like forgetting,” and provincial modernisation. When radio and TV arrived, the rituals that pervaded everyday life disappeared. “These harvest songs or wedding songs of the past were considered primitive. So, they actually stopped singing and life changed rapidly.” Spajić worries she too has contributed to destroying tradition, making recordings in her 20s that engraved mistakes, “bugs,” into listeners’ ears. But change is complex, and as we discuss its inevitability, Svetlana’s daughter is next door, DJing. “She’s mixing some of my stuff! That’s how it goes!” Spajić laughs.

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue, read the magazine online – subscribe today: magsubscriptions.com