Pavle Aksentijević is a living, breathing repository of Serbian music, both sacred and secular, as well as an icon painter and member of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Here he is performing with a group called Zapis. Consider hunting down his work on record, or check out samples over at Youtube.
Serbia
[Video] Block Out (Nikola Vranjković) – Beograd Spava
I’m a fan of the Balkan singing voice, as it is rich in the way Tom Waits and Paolo Conte are. This is a new name for me, presumably out of Serbia. I’m looking forward to hearing more from Block Out.
[Poem] ‘Dawn Breaks In Krusevac’ by Alasdair Sclater
Facebook’s Eastern Orthodox Christian bard has posted a new poem in honor of his trip to Serbia:
Summer speaks
In the game of the dawn
Speaks the world in birdsong chorus
So wonderful stand the trees
In the window framed
Framed in the memory that speaks
The beauty of the new day
Cooing of the doves
In the beauty of their calls
So wonderful in the speech of morning made
And in the distance the sound of trucks
All is calm and all is peace
In the speech of the day made whole
Breaks the light
On the horizon distant
In the beauty and the wonder spoken well
And all about
The new day comes
In it wonderful possibilities now spoken
Tweet the birds
In the new game of territories
All the world spoken in want
And n the times
When comes he day
All in its wonderful possibilities given
Sun again to stalk the land
Further will run the river
The Rasina now in spate
Speaking all the water that in this country
The problem of floods made
And yet speak the sounds so peacefully
In all its glory the world made
In so much wonder a new day spoken
Bless the return of the sun
In its life
Greet the day so strong in possibilities
A new world can be made
In the beauty of the day that comes
After the darkness of the night
And life begins again
A Miscellany Of Tasteful Music 