Igrali se Konji Vrani: Black Horses Romped

The Serbian group of female singers led by Svetlana Spajić is probably the best known and undoubtedly the most prolific example of the movement to revive and preserve traditional rural polyphonic song in performance, a movement that began many decades ago in Yugoslavia and now continues in its successor nations. Though the focus of their work is the collection and presentation of music sung by ethnically Serb populations in Serbia itself, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, the musical styles here are linked to place, rather than to ethnicity.

The contrasts between the extraordinary harmonic sideslips of ‘Oj, Mladosti Alaj Mi The Žao’, a song from central Croatia; the more comforting thirds and fifths of Western Bosnia's ‘Kad Ljevčansko Žito Zatalasa’ and the powerful dissonances and shivering ornaments of ‘Igrali se Konji Vrani’ from Mount Ozren in northern Bosnia are regional rather than anything else. Indeed, the singers may have departed the place years, or even generations ago, while still singing the songs of their, or their parents' original home. The translations of song titles are, unfortunately, often unidiomatic, and sometimes quite misleading, but that should not detract from the richness of the songs themselves and their stunning performances.