Every Friday, musician Ines Salmán performs the Sevdalinka,
an ancient form of love song from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Sevdalinka was recently included in UNESCO's National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
Sevdalinka is often called the Balkan blues.
It is a somewhat sad form of urban love song that dates to the 1500s.
It is a mix of South Slavic spoken poetry and music of the Ottoman Empire.
Salmán is among only a few musicians keeping the tradition alive.
I have been playing and singing Sevdalinka since I was 14, he said before a recent performance.
Sevdalinka is often performed acapella.
That means it is sung without musical instruments.
Sometimes the performer sings with traditional instruments, like a lute.
This form, or genre of music, has been carried from generation to generation
through performances at family gatherings.
In recent years, younger musicians have brought modern versions of Sevdalinka to audiences around the world.
One of them is Damir Imamovitz.
His father and grandfather were famous Sevdalinka performers.
In 2020 and 2021, Imamovitz won awards from two world music publications,
Songlines and Transglobal, for best European album.
Imamovitz supports Sevdalinka internationally through his SevdaLab project.
The project helped build support for the music's inclusion on UNESCO's World Heritage list.
I realized how little the public knows about the Sevdalinka genre,
and wanted to reveal the story behind that music, he said.
Zaneen Berbits is a 28-year-old ethnomusicologist.
He works as a curator in the music department of Bosnia's regional museum in Sarajevo,
organizing, protecting, and bringing attention to music.
He also plays zaz, a long-necked lute used in Ottoman classical music.
He said that Sevdalinka tells the story of Bosnia's history. Berbits said, I'm Ana Mateo.