Muharem Serbezovski

Muharem "Mumo" Serbezovski is a Roma singer-songwriter, writer and translator, born on 2 May 1950 in Topaana, the oldest Romani settlement of Skopje. His family of eleven was poor, and his father, an imam, gave him a deep interest in Islam and its culture; he started singing young to earn money.

He released his first single, "Kalajđiljar Kalaj Japar", with songs in Turkish, at the age of twelve in 1962. Wide success came in 1968, at eighteen, with his second record, which carried "Džemile" in Serbo-Croatian and "Gili e halisake" in Romani, made with the help of the composer Stevo Teodosievski and his wife, the singer Esma Redžepova, and with the clarinettist Medo Čun. That year he sang "Hatidže" at the Beogradski sabor, and in the early 1970s he was a regular at the Ilidža festival, where "Ciganko, vatrenog oka" won the second audience prize in 1971.

In 1969 he followed Teodosievski and Redžepova to Belgrade, but in 1975 he settled in Sarajevo, drawn by its cosmopolitan and Eastern atmosphere, and he has lived there ever since. His music blends Romani music with pop-folk and especially Turkish influences, and he also looked to India: "Ramu, Ramu" refers to a character from an Indian film and "Ramajana" to the Hindu epic. In 1978 he went to the Roma festival in Chandigarh, where he met Indira Gandhi. He toured for seven or eight years with Toma Zdravković, worked with Sinan Sakić, and recorded with his brother Ajnur, a single in 1976 and an album in 1982. In all he has released twelve albums and 22 singles and EPs, and he kept returning to festivals, singing at Ilidža again in 2008, 2023 and 2024.

Since the 1980s he has also been a writer. His first novel, Šareni dijamanti, appeared in 1983, followed by Cigani A kategorije (1985), a volume of poems in 1999 and the essay Cigani i ljudska prava (2000). Continuing work his father had begun, he made the first translation of the Qur'an into Romani, published in 2005. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo and holds a master's degree in philosophy.

In 2006 he was elected to the parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina for a four-year term for Haris Silajdžić's Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina, wanting to represent the Roma; he left the party in 2010. His best-known songs include "Džemile", "Gili e halisake", "Ramu, Ramu" and "Ramajana".