Zaim Imamović

Zaim Imamović was a sevdalinka singer, accordionist and songwriter, remembered as the leading sevdah performer of his time and a reformer of the genre. He was born on 26 August 1920 in Mrkonjić Grad. About a year later his family moved to Travnik, where he spent some fifteen years, and in 1936 they settled in Sarajevo.

In Sarajevo he trained in the textile trade and played a two-row harmonica his father had bought him. His brother Hadžo and sister Đula sang with the cultural society Gajret, and when the choir leader Cvjetko Rihtman heard Zaim sing, he kept him on. In the autumn of 1939 he left textiles for music.

On 10 April 1945, as Radio Sarajevo began broadcasting, he sang on the station for the first time: "Gledaj me draga", "Mujo kuje konja po mjesecu" and "Konja vodim, pješke hodim". He became a staff member, and it is said he sometimes slept under the piano so as not to miss the morning programme. Together with Rešad Bešlagić, Sulejman Džakić and others he shaped a sevdah style made for radio, a tenor with clear diction and a gift for ornament.

He sang newly written songs as well as old ones, the first being Jozo Penava's "Bosno moja poharana", and wrote many himself, among them "Sve behara i sve cvjeta", "Kono moja" and "O, jeseni, tugo moja". In the 1950s he recorded 33 songs in under three days for Jugoton in Zagreb, and many more for the Radio Sarajevo archive, among them "Lov lovio Muhareme". He sang with Nada Mamula, Beba Selimović and Safet Isović, and with his son Nedžad, a guitarist and singer.

He helped found the Ilidža folk festival, won prizes there and sat on its jury in 1969. He performed in Paris, Vienna, Sofia and the Middle East, represented Yugoslav radio-television at a folk festival in Marrakech, and received the city of Sarajevo's 6 April Award in 1979.

Zaim Imamović died in Sarajevo on 2 February 1994, during the siege, aged 73. A postage stamp with his portrait was issued in 1997, and in 2004 his grandson Damir Imamović co-edited Pjesma srca moga, a book of a hundred of his songs with a CD.