You have announced on Instagram that with your new single ”Ćilim” a new band’s era has began. What is hidden behind that message?
Our band has worked for a long period of time where we paid a big attention to the smallest details with a lot of creative concept. We simply love to pay special attention to the relation of our band and our appreciated audience trough music as our basic tool of communication and everything written and photographed as well. This way our new song ”Ćilim” has been publically presented on exactly the tenth year anniversary of our first single ”Evo srcu mome radosti”. Considering the circumstances in past two years which have overtaken our planet and paralyzed the complete music industry, we have felt that on our tenth anniversary the time has come to hit the brakes, stop for a moment, take a deep breath and start over.
We have started with the song ”Ćilim” which is only one piece of puzzle of our new fourth studio album named ”Zavrzlama”.
New album for a new beginning of a new era which will be marked with originally written songs.
What brings the new album? Why the name Zavrzlama?
Zavrzlama is a tangled, playful, colorful, knotted musical bouquet where we wanted to present sevdalinka in our well known performance as a spring from which the other music from this addition flows. The music is vintage tavern and newly composed written by contemporary musicians in traditional style. Sevdah is a long term nucleus of our creativity in which we combined other music styles that we love, so the concept that we accomplished on this album is a product of our long term exploring in the field of music, ethnomusicology and experimental approach to tradition. The name od the album came from the idea that our lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina are so tangled and influenced by different traditions and religion which represents ”Zavrzlama” (knot). In this knot our rivers, their tributaries, and streams which thigh our mountains that reach so high from where we can see the whole planet, where we spread sevdah with different instruments, rhythm structures and lyrics with a bit of love, humor and tragedy. Zavrzlama is our sevdah which we knitted with our entire heart in this music album.
Divanhana is known by combining traditional music with jazz and pop music of 21st century as well. Will the new album bring us similar sounds?
Absolutely yes. The band kept its specific way of work and recording in studio which is a hybrid of analog and digital. We wanted to keep the moment where the band sits in a room (in Divanhana) and plays the songs from this Album for its soul with pleasure. That is the reason why we recorded this on an analog tape which kept the heat and dynamic of our music, it’s authenticity and character and afterwards we put it in a digital process which brought modern sound. In this process a big help was contributed by a Slovenian producer Janes Križaj, who spread our sights and orders with his experimental approach, and we hope that our fans will be able to feel that and to experience this album as a new era of our band.
How satisfied are you with your audiences interest for your music, which is very different from todays mainstream?
We have often emphasized via media that the point of Divanhana’s work is that the members of the band are happy and satisfied with their work, and we think this should be the case with every other creative person in the world. From this perspective we have never simply had the need to be likeable to the audience, so we had just let the music connect us with our fans. We believe that we had a bit of luck because we took sevdalinka as a foundation of our creativity so we kept one part of the audience who fell in love with sevdah with older performers. We still had to work very hard of course to get the younger audience to like us, and together with our respected colleagues of Bosnian sevdah scene, we have managed to place sevdah in the mainstream sphere of todays popular music styles which currently lead our planet.
Can “Zavrzlama” reach the success of “Zukva” from 2015, which got amazing reviews on world’s level?
We can certainly hope due to our own success and the success of our colleagues from Bosnian sevdah scene, who have achieved a lot of positive reviews from worlds media. Through hard work, sevdah has become extremely appreciated in this huge family of world’s music, and we can say it closely stands with Fado or Flamenco, and attracts the audience, the promoters and journalists as a magnet. Our new album “Zavrzlama” will be published 28.01.2022. by CPL Music from Germany. It will enter the worlds media bloodstream, so we can expect all kinds of reviews and criticizm. We consider the reviews from foreign listeners who haven’t been familiar with our traditional music more objective than locals (which we also appreciate a lot) and we are certain that all of them will help us develop more in our future creative work.
Considering the fact that you have performed all over the world and that sevdah is typical for Bosnia and Herzegovina, how does the world’s audience understand and value this genre?
Our albums have had world wide distribution for many years trough British ARC Music and Turkish Kalan in the past and German CPL Music now, so the audience has already had a chance to hear some Bosnian tones so far. There have also been many world music festivals we attended, so the audience had the opportunity to hear our traditional song and sevdah doesn’t sound very exotic for a long time now. We can’t forget that sevdah has been influenced by music all over the world from east to west including even some rhythm structures origin from South America. All of that makes sevdah more and more popular out of borders of our country. Nowadays during the concerts around Europe we don’t have the need to explain the meaning of sevdah, because most of the audience is already familiar with it’s origin, history and the emotion that sevdah brings.
During the recording of the new album, you have also recorded a short documentary by Al Jazeera, what will it bring us?
Yes, we have continued our collaboration with Al Jazeera Balkans and they wanted to take a peek behind the walls of Metro Studio in Ljubljana, where we recorded “Zavrzlama” during the February of 2020. We are lucky that serious TV Productions are interested in our work in order to show our respectful audience the layers of our creative work. The movie should be presented after the release of our new album in February 2022 to be exact, and it will show the process of making Zavrzlama in details, and our 10 years work in world music as well. We hope that it will show all of our love and magic we have created for years.
After the previous albums were released, they were followed by big tours, do you plan something similar with Zavrzlama, having in mind that Corona virus pandemic isn’t over yet?
We are truly aware of the time we live in, and as a band we put the health of all the people all around the world in the first place. It is true that previous albums were followed by tours, but right now it is very hard to plan anything for sure. Our band, including all of our associates certainly wish to spend 2022 in concerts with our beloved audience and to spread sevdah all around this colorful planet, if the epidemiological situation allows it, of course.
During pandemics you have released “Quarantine EP” which was recorded by mobiles in home atmosphere. What was the impression of this period on you, and did this “forced rest” help your creativity or not?
The truth is that a certain period of time that we spent in isolation, we use to communicate to our audience by social networks trough many quarantine performances of our songs which led to a humble EP edition named “Quarantine EP”.
https://divanhana.bandcamp.com/album/quarantine-ep
These two last years during the pandemic we have spent finalizing the above mentioned album. Finishing the final touches of the album in improvised home studios. Collecting notes from different ends of the world, playing and creating online with associates was really delicate and complex, where you had to be a musician a psychologist and a serious motivator. This time that we have survived with songs from the new album, and emotions knitted in them, most certainly shows that “Zavrzlama” will be our most special edition.
You have collaborated with different Artists in the past, including Turkish singer Suzan Kardes, and American Broadway singer Breadley Dean, can we expect something similar in the future?
For our band, collaboration with different artists represents exceptional honor and pleasure. Every single one of them teaches us something new and helps us spread the limits of our creative work. This album as well has written notes from different ends of the world, where colleagues and musicians from South America, Switzerland, Turkey, Croatia and Serbia have left us and our audience a part of their soul so we can step together with love and sevdah in new dimensions of our closeness.
The band is well known by their remarkable outfits as well, is this the way to stand out or is this the real part of your image? Who creates these outfits, and do you have anything special for the new album?
We have been lucky to have two amazing associates who have been in charge for our outfits from the very beginning, on and off the scene. Our dear Irma Saje and Vanja Ciraj, working under design label OSHYOSH have been responsible for Divanhana’s clothes and the idea for the first logo as well. Al of these years they have worked very hard on band’s outfits putting the tradition in some new frames, different from certain stereotypes which usually connect to it. Each new album brings new outfits and your dear readers will have the opportunity to see the photos of the new outfits, which will follow our new journey with “Zavrzlama”.
You can preorder the new Divanhana’s album “Zavrzlama” starting from today via many streaming platforms: https://bfan.link/zavrzlama
