Imamović Damir

Damir Imamović (1978) is one of the leading contemporary sevdah artists. He appeared on the music scene in 2005 and launched a new wave of interest in sevdah, as well as an entirely new view of this old form. Born into a family of sevdah greats – Đula (great-aunt), Zaim (grandfather) and Nedžad Imamović (father), he grew up in close contact with the art. Following a degree in philosophy and having tried to avoid the family tradition for a long time, he gradually moved towards music as a profession. His contemporary sevdah path has been trekked via some of the key stages in the world, such as The Kennedy Center (Washington DC), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), CRR (Istanbul), Druga Godba Music Festival (Ljubljana), Balkan Trafi k (Brussels), TFF (Rudolstadt), Jazz Fest (Sarajevo), as well as collaborations with Jadranka Stojaković, Vlatko Stefanovski, Bojan Zulfi karpašić, Eric Vloeimans, Hüsnü Şenlendirici, Derya Türkan and others. Damir’s work on sevdah has also drawn the attention of numerous documentarians, and Marina Andree Škop dedicated the documentary fi lm Sevdah (2005) to his art. He has recorded six albums from 2006 to 2016, the last two presented as Damir Imamović’s Sevdah Takht (with Nenad Kovačić, Ivan Mihajlović and Ivana Đurić). The most recent one, Dvojka, was produced by Chris Eckman (Tamikrest, Bassekou Kouyate) and released by Glitterbeat Records in April 2016.

Since 2011 Damir has been active as an educator in the SevdahLab workshops and lectures. He has delivered lectures on sevdah at the Loyola University (Chicago), Faculty of Arts (Ljubljana), Musicology Institute (Belgrade), De Balie Centre (Amsterdam) etc. He has been hosting extended workshops in Sarajevo for several years. In collaboration with Ćamil Metiljević, master saz builder, and Mirza Kovačević, engineer and master guitar builder, Damir added a material form to his quest for new sevdah: tambur, a new instrument, combining the two, to a new sound and emotion.

http://www.damirimamovic.com/?lang=en