2008-06-08

Farewell, Šaban Bajramović

Šaban Bajramović: He deserted the army for love and formed his first band on Goli Otok. His music was gorgeous. In his life both his failures and successes were tremendous. The last few years saw him successfully reinventing his sound with the assistance of Cubismo, and more recently facing both health and material problems. He may have seemed indestructible to many. But today we have to say goodbye to the king of Roma music.

Link: This recent album review by Erika Borsos captures his quality nicely. And Toma Todorović has a fine remembrance in Politika.

3 comments:

Richard Byrne said...

Really really sad news.

Anonymous said...

I'm completely gutted about this.
What hurts the most is that whilst he was alive most of his 'friends' were nowhere to be found.
Now that he's dead they are all crawling out of the woodwork. All with the exception of Bregovic and Kusturica who were both banned from his funeral - not that they would have come anyway.

Its probably a little naughty of me but I'm sure that Bregovic's little drop had something to do with the great one...

Eric Gordy said...

Wow, you're the second person who has suggested to me that there was some kind of cosmic hand on Brega's ladder. I still remember the terror I had as a kid when faced with the temptation of trying to get the best looking apples that were always at the top of the tree, so it's hard for me to feel nasty toward the guy.

But yes, it's surprising and sad how little support Saban got. And if you really want to be depressed look at the comments in Politika on the article reprting Tadic's attendance at the funeral.

I feel lucky to have gone to hear Saban twice, once at a "comeback" concert in Novi Beograd in 1995, and once in his Cuban period at the Etno fest in Novi Sad a couple of years ago. That was a great one, Boris Kovac followed by Saban Bajramovic.