Amira Medunjanin

Amira Medunjanin, born Amira Dedić in Sarajevo in 1972, is a Bosnian singer and interpreter of sevdalinka, the traditional love song of Bosnia. The Observer described her as "one of the great voices of her generation", Uncut wrote that her voice "hovers enticingly between East and West", and the music journalist Garth Cartwright called her "Bosnia's Billie Holiday" for the way she finds new forms within a centuries-old tradition.

Her first recording came in 2003, when she sang "Mujo đogu po mejdanu voda" as a guest on Mostar Sevdah Reunion's album A Secret Gate. Two years later she released her debut album, Rosa, on Snail Records; it was very well received in Britain and across Europe and was among the candidates for album of the year.

In April 2009 came Amira Live, released by Gramofon, recorded at her concert in the Bosnian Cultural Centre during Jazz Fest Sarajevo 2008. The studio album Zumra, made with the accordionist Merima Ključo, followed on Harmonia Mundi / World Village in 2010, setting traditional melodies from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia to new accordion arrangements, and Amulette appeared on the same label on 3 October 2011.

Silk and Stone, released by Aquarius Records in May 2014, won her some of her best reviews: The Guardian gave it four stars for her "intimate, pained and gently compelling voice", and Nigel Williamson in Uncut called it a "career-defining third album from Bosnia's finest export". On Damar she worked with the Serbian pianist Bojan Z and for the first time added new compositions to the old songs; the album was ranked among the 40 best in the world for 2017 by the Transglobal World Music Chart. Ascending, with the Trondheim Soloists, and For Him and Her (Croatia Records, 2020) followed.

In November 2024 she returned to the renovated Sava Centar in Belgrade for a concert of about two and a half hours built around her new album Homeland, with Bojan Zulfikarpašić on piano. Besides sevdalinkas such as "Moj dilbere" and "Što te nema", the programme took in Macedonian songs like "Eleno kerko" and songs by Kemal Monteno, Silvana Armenulić, Dado Topić and Miladin Šobić, and that night she closed with Azra's "Ako znaš bilo što".