The Crooked Bow: The Art of Gusle and the Oral Tradition among the Serbs

Heroic songs are sung most often and liveliest in Bosnia and Her-
zegovina and Montenegro and the southern hilly parts of Serbia. In
those places even today every house has a gusle, and particularly in
the homes of shepherds; it is hard to find a man that does not know
how to play [...] In the southern parts of Serbia (around the rivers Sava
and Danube) it is already rarer to see gusle in houses but I still think
that you could find at least one in every village... In Srem and Bačka
and Banat,48 ) one can see gusle only with blind people, and other people
would be very ashamed to hang “blind men’s” gusle in their houses,
and so in those parts nobody else sings.49)
In their experience interviewing guslars, Parry and Lord discover-
ed that no particular occupation contributed more singers than any
other, but that professionalism was limited to beggars.50) This confirms
Vuk’s observation of almost a century before, even though the region
of Bosnia where Parry and Lord were conducting research and north-
ern Serbia where Vuk noticed this trend of blind guslars are quite far
apart; therefore, this seems to be one similarity all regions share. In
Parry’s experience, gusle was the chief entertainment of the adult male
population, and that guslars were always present in kafanas, or taverns,
where it was common for men to gather in the evenings; every kafana
had a guslar in its service.51) The kafana was a very important place for
the Muslim population especially during the month of Ramazan, when
Muslims fast during the day and feast at night. This was an important
event for fostering gusle singing because it was not only a month that
brought the community together in the evenings, it was an opportunity
to hear gusle for the whole night, and this is one of the reasons Muslim
epic songs are often quite long in comparison to Christian epics, in
order to be able to provide continuous entertainment for every even-
ing of a whole month.52) In cases like Ramazan, there was semi-profe-
ssionalism among guslars during this time, simply because of the
sheer amount of entertainment that had to be provided in all Muslim
populated communities.53) There is in fact little written about profe-
ssional guslars in Christian communities, whereas it was known that
professional Muslim guslars were employed by Turkish and Muslim
nobles as permanent, much respected members of their courts.54) In
slight contrast, gusle had a more home-centered role in Christian co-
mmunities, particularly in Serbia and Montenegro. Although he wrote
more than 150 years after Vuk, Miodrag Lalević, in his observations of
the Montenegrin community of Vasojevići, points out that the gusle
had the status of a “sacred object.” He said that gusle were regarded
as a symbol whose place was in the house: “They are rarely taken out
of the house, and many, particularly the older people, will never sing
with gusle in a kafana nor will they take a gusle door to door. It is very
shameful to say, ‘He carries his gusle like a blind man’.” 55) Although
there were Christian professional guslars, the majority of guslars were
amateurs who played for themselves and for their families, without
any particular cause, but also for special events such as weddings and
slavas, or Serbian patron saint celebrations. At such occasions, the
guslar would be seated at the head of the table while he played, and
for the whole time he played, the women present would stand out
of respect.56)
In their analyses of gender roles in gusle playing and singing, the
observations of some folklorists and ethnographers differ from those
of Parry and Lord. Lord and Parry, in their observations of mostly
Muslim guslars in Bosnia and Montenegro, claimed that the world of
the kafana was “a man’s world” in which neither Muslim nor Christian
women were allowed.57) Vuk, when he wrote about the songs he collected,
clearly differentiated epic “men’s” songs, in the heroic epic genre, from
“women’s” or lyric songs. He described women’s songs as being sung by
one or two women “for the sake of their own conversation,” whereas
the men’s songs are meant to be sung for others to listen, which is why
“in women’s songs, one listens more to the singing, whereas in men’s
songs, one listens to the song.”58 ) Although the kafana was not a place
that women frequented, there were many women who did know how
to play the gusle. In the previously mentioned excerpt from Vuk where
he described the role of the gusle in Serbia, the complete quotation
actually mentions women: “It is hard to find a man that does not know
how to play, and many women and girls know as well.”59) Lalević, in
his observations of Vasojevići also mentions women: “With regards to
women and gusle, although in Vasojevići it is believed that gusle are
not for women, in practice there have been such examples.” 60) Gole-
mović discusses how a woman might have come to learn the art of gusle
singing: she likely would have been bestowed with the privilege if she
stood out from other women with her “qualities,” ones which would
have been judged by masculine standards. He quotes Luka Grdjić-
Bjelokosić who wrote that the women who play gusle are “tomboys.” 61)
The most famous woman guslar was Olga Kovačević (1852-1892) from
Novi Sad who, despite being a woman, was extremely popular.62) How-
ever, she was limited to songs that mentioned mothers, fiancées, sis-
ters, and Srpkinje, or Serbian women. Nevertheless, she achieved great
fame and success in a field predominantly reserved for men.63) Elka
Agoston-Nikolova points out that because of Vuk’s designation of
men’s and women’s songs, he might have developed a bias that prevent-
ed him from collecting valuable women’s songs. He found that on his
trips to Herzegovina that women’s songs actually mixed heroic and
lyrics elements together and focused on individual emotions. She also
mentions Matija Murko, who during his extensive travels in Yugoslavia
in the 1950s, found that women did sing epic songs, and said that they
were the keepers of the best of the oral tradition.64)
Analyzing the function of epic songs, Croatian historian and folk-
lorist Tvrtko Čubelić emphasizes that epic gusle songs are polyfunctio-
nal, meaning that along with their didactic function, they have an im-
portant artistic-philosophical function, meaning that they paint a
picture of the society’s world and life views, but in a particularly artful
way.65) The idea that the gusle were the means by which the Serbian
people preserved their national identity was particularly popular du-
ring the First and Second World Wars, the First having started only
two years after Serbia finally gained independence from the Ottoman
Empire. Articles from the time poetically describe the role of gusle
among the Serbian people: “There is one thing which the Turk could
not take away from the Serb – the heavenly gift of poetry; that continu-
ed to dwell hidden in the breast of the southern Slav. His body was
enslaved, but his soul was not; his physical life was oppressed, but
his spiritual being was free [...] The Ottoman power in Europe is in
ruins now, a wreck in the path of a national earthquake which the
Guslar has prophesied for five hundred years. The Guslar has done his
duty, and he stands today in a blaze of glory at the head of the united
and victorious nations of the Balkans.” 66) Such passionate discourse
was popular during all times of war, and indeed the living tradition
continued to create songs about “modern” battles, such as the various
Serbian Uprisings between 1804 and 1817, right up into the twentieth
century and even about the civil war in the 1990s. One author pointed
out that “there is a close relationship between the fight of the guerrillas
in the Yugoslav mountains and the poetry of the South Slavs. This link
between poetry and the fight for freedom is nothing new in the history
of the Yugoslav peoples.”67) Whether listening to guslars perform on
the battlefield incited men for battle or not, there is an undeniably
important role of the gusle in all Balkan cultures, especially for the
Serbs, since it is overwhelmingly the means by which national stories
and songs were preserved during half a millennium of foreign rule
which prevented any form of cultural or artistic renaissance. The de-
velopment in the complexity of the heroic epic genre is remarkable
considering these circumstances. The art of singing with gusle is still
popular in Serb-populated lands today: there currently exist 37 guslar
associations in Serbia, 22 in Republika Srpska, and 19 in Montenegro.68 )
Although the authenticity – as defined by Parry and Lord – might
be decreasing rapidly (if it is not already completely extinct), the art
form will likely never be forgotten nor will it go out of style simply
because of its importance in Serbian culture. Also, the importance of
people like Vuk Karadžić to the Serbs and his collected ethnographic
studies will – albeit ironically – ensure that future generations will be
familiar with the tradition of story and song transmission in a time
when illiteracy was the norm and certain populations, like the Serbs,
forbidden to overtly cultivate any sort of art or culture. As the guslar
Radovan Bećirović Trebješki said, “Monasteries and the crooked bow
– that is what saved the Serbian faith.”69)

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