‘No to fascists and homophobes!’: Damir Imamović, singing the soul of Sarajevo

Named best European artist at last week's Songlines awards, the Bosnian singer has weathered war and personal tragedy while bringing sevdah music to prominence

Damir Imamovi is pining for a curry. We don't have any Indian restaurants in Bosnia," he explains, and I've always wanted to try Indian food. Last year I was booked to play St Luke's at the Barbican, the Brighton festival, Manchester's Band on the Wall - it was going to be my first ever time in the UK and I'd been promised a trip to Brick Lane. I was so looking forward to it!"

Then the world went into lockdown and the Sarajevo-based singer and songwriter of sevdah - Bosnia's folk music, comparable to Portuguese fado and French chanson in its dramatic narratives - found his entire year cancelled. Imamovi's album Singer of Tales had won great reviews, yet the pandemic dispelled opportunities to reach a new audience along with his hoped-for curry. Being locked down in Sarajevo as a musician did feel odd as I'm so used to travelling," he says, adding that it would be unfair to compare it to the siege he and his city lived under between 1992 and 1996 during the Bosnian war. But I did feel a sense of cataclysmic deja vu: the empty streets, nothing functioning, everyone living in fear."