Trio Mustafa Sudžuka

Trio Mustafa Sudžuka was a small instrumental and vocal ensemble from Sarajevo, led by the clarinettist Mustafa Sudžuka, and it made some of the very first gramophone records of Bosnian music. Sudžuka was a Sarajevo musician who was already playing professionally by 1898, and the trio recorded in its home city, which is why it is on Muzika-Balkan under Bosnia.

On the record labels the group was called Bosanski Instrumental i pjevački Terzett, M. Sudžuka i Merkuš. The second musician, Merkuš, may have been Merkuš Alkalaj, born in 1886 and killed in the Second World War; the third member is unknown.

In 1907 the London Gramophone Company sent its engineer Franz Hampe to Sarajevo, and the trio recorded as many as 30 sides for it, issued on the cheap Zonophone label. Its repertoire was mostly Bosnian instrumental tunes and songs, with one song from Serbia, one from Vranje, four songs in Ladino and several Ottoman pieces, most of them marches. One of them, recorded in June 1907 as "Turski Djezajer marš", is the Ottoman march Cezayir marşı; according to the researcher Damir Imamović, Sudžuka is probably also the clarinettist on a 1900 recording of the same tune made in Paris during the World Exhibition.

The playlist holds the trio's recording of "Zaprosio Alija".