5 FOLK
SONGS Five Balkan folk songs, newly arranged.

One of the most beloved traditional songs of Serbia — a kolo, the Balkan circle dance, born in the Kosovo region and long sung at weddings and village gatherings.

It calls to a woman, Jana, to join the dance: the singer would sell the horse, even the house, "just so we can dance." Beneath the simple refrain is a whole way of seeing the world — that the joy of coming together is worth more than anything you own. (dušo, "my soul," is a term of endearment.)

Unlike the others here, "Ukor" ("Reproach") is not a folk song but a composed romance. Its words come from Branko Radičević, the first great poet of Serbian Romanticism, written in 1850; its most famous melody from Davorin Jenko — the composer who also gave Serbia the tune of its national anthem.

A young woman waits a week for a beloved who never comes, and her tenderness turns to jealousy and hurt as she imagines him in another's arms. Though it now feels as old and rooted as any sevdalinka, it was born of a poem.

A light, humorous village love song from Vojvodina, the plain of northern Serbia, carried by its tamburica tradition.

A young woman loves her "dika" — her sweetheart, her pride and joy — and would gladly love his whole family too. All except his father: the bossy father-in-law who never stops giving orders — shake it out, knead the dough, fetch the water. Behind the teasing refrain is the age-old, wryly funny truth of the Balkan village: when you marry the boy, you marry the whole household.

A Macedonian lament carried on the wailing refrain le le, lele — a daughter's question to her mother about the hardship of a life lived apart, of joy given away to others.

But the song does not stay in sorrow: it turns, and the mother is told to be proud that she bore a "lucky star," a child who will bloom like radiance for her native land. Where the tradition sings of a son far from home, Vesna reshapes the old song from a woman's point of view — a daughter — and the arrangement keeps its restless odd metre, a lilting 7/8 that leans, for one bar, into an open 4/4.

A playful courtship song from Pirot, the old carpet-weaving town in Serbia's far south-east, sung in the soft, un-standard Torlak dialect of the region.

A girl is teased about who gave her the little sash she's wearing — and she confesses, half-scolding, that it was "that cursed one," the boy on the little horse who walked her home last night and kissed her. The "curse" is pure affection; the whole song has the bright, dancing lilt of a village celebration. It was carried into the wider repertoire above all by the great southern singer Staniša Stošić.