Chapter 05
Southern Rooms, Kafana Song and Music across a Disputed Map
4 min
Vranje's urban song is one of Serbia's most distinctive lyrical traditions. Long melodic lines, flexible pulse and concentrated ornament give the singer room to shape longing, pride and hesitation. The repertory reflects an Ottoman-era town and its later transformations. It is connected to neighbouring Macedonian, Bulgarian, Kosovo and Roma practices without being interchangeable with them.
What to listen for
Staniša Stošić, born in Vranje, became a major interpreter through radio and recording. In "Lela Vranjanka," his controlled vibrato and careful rise into the refrain make emotion accumulate. He does not hurry the line. The accompaniment supports the voice with measured colour, preserving a sense of intimate address even in a studio arrangement.
Vasilija Radojčić brought another commanding voice to southern and Kosovo-associated repertories. Her recordings show how radio singers could carry local material into a national and Yugoslav broadcast field. The orchestra, microphone and arranged introduction are part of the work listeners know; they should not be mistaken for an untouched village original.
Kafana music depends on presence
Kafana repertory can include starogradska songs, sevdalinka, Romani songs, composed folk hits, tamburica pieces and urban romances. The singer works at close range. A held note may quiet a table; a familiar opening may trigger collective singing; an instrumentalist may repeat a verse because a guest requests it. Recordings capture songs, but not the full economy of attention.
Sofka Nikolić became a star of interwar Belgrade's kafana and recording culture. Born in the Bijeljina area in Bosnia and raised within a Roma musical family, she performed across the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and recorded commercially in the late 1920s. "Cojle, Manojle" was strongly associated with her in Belgrade. Her biography belongs to Roma, Bosnian, Serbian urban and Yugoslav histories; none cancels the others.
Sevdalinka requires the same honesty. A song such as "Kad ja pođoh na Bembašu" is tied to Sarajevo and Bosnian urban memory even when a Serbian singer performs it in Belgrade. In Sandžak, Bosniak singers maintain local lyric and religious repertories while commercial connections run toward Sarajevo, Novi Pazar, Belgrade, Podgorica and diaspora cities. The voice often tells that history more accurately than a national genre label.
Ćazim Čolaković gives that history a local human voice. Born in Sjenica and later based in Sarajevo, he recorded "Kad pogledam sa bedema" in 1982; the song became closely associated with Novi Pazar. Its Sandžak relation comes from performer, place and circulation together, not from relabelling the wider sevdalinka tradition as Serbian property.
Kosovo must be heard through named communities
Kosovo declared independence in 2008; many states recognize it, and Serbia does not. Current cultural life operates through Kosovo institutions as well as Serbian-community institutions with links to Serbia. This political reality is not simple. A musician's workplace, language and community can all be named without deciding sovereignty through melody.
Nexhmije Pagarusha, an Albanian singer born in Pagarusha in present-day Kosovo, began at Radio Pristina in the Yugoslav period. "Baresha," composed by Rexho Mulliqi with words by Rifat Kukaj, joins an expansive soprano line to an arrangement that frames pastoral imagery with art-song scale. It is a landmark of Kosovo Albanian music and wider Yugoslav broadcasting. The song marks the territory's Albanian musical history; it does not make Pagarusha a Serbian artist.
Jordan Nikolić, a Serbian singer born in Prizren, worked at Radio Pristina and devoted much of his career to Serbian-language songs from Kosovo and southern Serbia. "Pećka kandila" places his clear, ornamented tenor in a repertory associated with the Serbian community and Orthodox cultural memory around Peć. Naming that community does not erase Albanian, Roma, Turkish, Bosniak, Gorani or other music from the same geography.
Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian musicians in Kosovo have their own identities and varied relations to Romani, Albanian, Serbian and Turkish-language scenes. Wedding bands cross language lines because professional survival requires wide repertory, but multilingual skill should not be used to dissolve identity. Credit the musicians and ask how they describe themselves.
Commercial folk remade the southern sound
From the 1960s onward, accordion-led newly composed folk music joined regional melodic signs to radio orchestras, singles, cassettes and touring. Singers such as Silvana Armenulić, Toma Zdravković and Predrag Živković Tozovac became Yugoslav stars. Their lives and repertories crossed republic lines. Armenulić was born in Doboj in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Zdravković was born in Aleksinac in Serbia and developed a songwriter's intimate kafana persona; Tozovac came from Kraljevo and combined performance with composition and accordion knowledge.
Toma Zdravković's "Dotakao sam dno života" turns a large arranged folk ballad into first-person confession. His slightly frayed tone and delayed phrasing keep the lyric human. The song belongs to commercial authorship and recording, even though listeners may experience it as collective memory.
The south is therefore not a reservoir of raw material for Belgrade. Vranje, Niš, Novi Pazar, Leskovac, Prizren, Priština and many smaller places produced artists, broadcasts and audiences. Political borders and forced migrations changed those circuits, especially during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo war. Responsible listening acknowledges rupture while preserving the names of people who made beauty within and across it.
