Bosnian Hip-Hop, Musicology, and Working in Academia – Interview with BLI Alum Danielle Sekel

~ 8 minute read

On May 19, 2022, AC Study & Research Abroad Recruitment and Outreach Coordinator Max Shelton had the opportunity to sit down with Balkan Language Initiative (BLI) alum Danielle Sekel, who studied in Sarajevo, Bosnia in Summer 2019.

Danielle received her BA from Roanoke College in 2015 in Music and Literary studies and studied abroad at the American University in Bulgaria, which is where her interest in the cultures, languages, and particularly the music of the Balkan Peninsula was piqued. Since completing BLI, Danielle has received her M.Mus from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she is currently pursuing a PhD in Musicology on the Ethnomusicology track. American Councils was eager to learn how Danielle’s experience on BLI influenced her professional journey.

In addition to pursuing her PhD, Danielle works as Outreach and Programming Coordinator for the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

How did you become interested in the Balkans, and in particular Bosnia?

I was pursuing my M.Mus (Master of Musicology) with a focus on Bosnian. I wrote my M.Mus paper on Bosnian hip-hop and chose to go to Sarajevo to work on my language skills and get a feel for the field. Since, I’ve been focusing on Bosnian music in my doctoral work.

My interest in the Balkans came via an indirect path – I think we (in the field) have all heard this story quite often. When I was at Roanoke, I wanted to study abroad, but I needed to find a place where I could get credit. So, I went through list of approved programs and landed on American University in Bulgaria. While there, I took music courses, sang with the choir, and took a course on Bulgarian folk music. I learned a ton about the musicology of the country, though I didn’t even know Ethnomusicology was a thing! I became deeply interested in folk music (of the region) and with my literature background, I realized that there were a lot of avenues to explore. Upon returning (to the US), I eventually wrote a large literary review on everything that had been written about Bulgarian music.

This was when I came to learn about Donna Buchanan’s work at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and I came here to study Bulgarian folk music. Finding language programs to participate in is difficult, especially lesser-taught languages. At that time, University of Illinois wasn’t offering Bulgarian, but they were offering BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian), so I came to Bosnian through Bulgarian, which I think is not a standard route – a lot of people come from a Russian-speaking/studying background.

So, I started studying Bosnian and was awarded several fellowships, completing my second year of study through American Councils BLI Program. It was a random spur of the moment decision to study Bosnian, but I found the depth of available materials greatly interesting. I connected immediately and deeply with people in Sarajevo and the people I met in the field. Those wonderful conversations and academic offerings have put me in the position I am in now.

What was the highlight for you on BLI?

My host mother was a local music teacher and professional pianist, which was a beautiful pairing – kudos to whoever paired us! It was definitely intentional and I appreciate that. She is a pianist that would teach music lessons in the home, she would take me to concerts, and introduce me to other musicians and local cafes. One time, she was performing and didn’t have anyone to turn her pages. A few hours before the concert, she announced “Here’s a black dress – you’re coming with me to turn my pages!”  

When we went out to cafes and bars, she would force me to dance and over meals, we would talk about her own research and she would introduce me to local musicians. She was in Vienna during the war and wrote her own thesis on Sevdah* in the war diaspora. We would play vocabulary games… she was really into forcing me to use the language.

What was a typical day like on BLI?

There was no such thing as a standard day!

On weekdays, I would take the 20-minute walk to my lessons and would spend most of my day learning the language. It was really valuable because the teacher catered to my needs. We worked hard on grammar and speaking. There was a lot of focus on conversation and we looked at different musical pieces and song lyrics. I was able to understand different nuances thanks to my teacher. Words in lyrics can have different meanings depending on cultural context, so I was able to understand so much more than I would have by using a dictionary or Google Translate.

My language partner was available in evenings and we would occasionally go on hikes together. He was younger than I was and he introduced me to his friends, which was useful to see what kind of music younger people in Sarajevo were listening to because I work on hip hop.

It was amazing that I only spent two months there - the program gave me so many things I could use in the future.

What got you interested in Bosnian/Balkan hip hop?

It was a little seed that was planted in my mind while I was in Sarajevo. There are so many free musical events at any given time and I was there during a street festival where every night for several weeks there was an array of events happening throughout the old town. One night, a hip-hop group was playing and it was really interesting to me. There were timely and important conversations about what they (young people in Bosnia) were dealing with, including hilarious knocks on Bosnian life. This group is called Helem Nejse and they have an entire piece about coffee culture and how life in Bosnia revolves around coffee, but they also have songs about climate change, voting rights, and systemic oppression… These are young kids and they’re making very astute observations. “This is cool,” I thought, and gave them a like on Facebook and didn’t really think about it until I returned to the USA and started doing my research.

One of the songs I like is by a group called Dubioza Kollektiv - a much more well-known group in Bosnia. This group is from an older school than Helem Nejse that came about during the war. I started learning about the roots of the genre, which they were borrowing from MTV at the time. People used to gather around old TV sets and watch what was coming out of the west. Dubioza Kollektiv used MTV to learn about wartime discourse and then post-wartime discourse – it’s just fascinating. They started a studio called Post-War Sound Records – it was housed within one of Tito’s former barracks. There is all this layering going on that is so interesting to me.

There have been pieces that have been written about this layering, but a lot of them have been written in Bosnian. Having the language background has been so helpful in bringing this information to English readership. Hip-hop is becoming a global phenomenon and the Bosnian case is fascinating. Even if you look at diasporic Bosnian hip-hop – there’s a Bosnian born hip-hop artist in New Zealand who raps under the name “Genocide” about the war time events. It’s this huge network of different voices that are coming together to create this dialogue on post-war being.

Why is it important for Americans to study former Yugoslavia?

Former Yugoslavia is such an interesting case – I can’t recall learning about it in my primary education. This is just me positing this – but Yugoslavia always comes at the end of any history class. It’s reduced to a footnote in primary education, which is a shame. Even as an adult planning to go to Bosnia, Americans were wary of me going there from what they had seen on their TV screens decades before. There is a reductive and disinformed view of the region and what it has to offer.  

How would you advise American students interested in studying Bosnian or other Balkan languages?

It actually depends on where they are located within the US. There are plenty of interesting pockets in the US to learn about the Balkans. When I was in Pittsburgh, there was a dance group that did national dances. There are a lot of similar things in Chicago and Urbana-Champaign. St. Louis has its own  Little Bosnia! If you’re in one of those places, goodness, find a restaurant! Find a dancing group and see when they’re performing – there are ways to look outside of the university and the academy.

If you’re at a university, look for language and cultural centers. These centers cover a lot of ground and offer a lot of talks in different areas – it’s not just Russian historians all the time! Go to different talks even if they seem niche. You never know what you might learn. There are usually very interesting connections that pop up in these conversations.

It’s really important to have transdisciplinary conversations with different perspectives from various corners of campus to discuss these regions and topics.

What about for students who are interested in going into academia?

It’s important to realize you’re not in an echo chamber. At REEC, I was a teaching and graduate assistant, but they had an opening for a grad student to help facilitate one of their outreach programs with a pre-kindergarten program. The idea was to go in and introduce three to five-year-old children to a country from the region (Eastern Europe, Eurasia), do an experiential craft and the children learn some fun facts. You find these little threads that bring us all together to discuss ways of thinking and being that are rewarding and unexpected. Going into academia is not just sitting in a conference room talking about social theory or different cosmological beliefs in a place – you do get that too and that’s valuable – but if you look for the right areas, you can find ways to apply everything you’ve learned in unexpected ways.

A lot of students wonder whether area studies is a dead end that will leave them floundering. I’ve found you can spin it however you really need to – it’s a well-rounded curriculum that provides unique ways of approaching topics and problems. We see this with our students who go off to do a number of things and specialize their own experiences.

Which Bosnian hip-hop songs do you recommend listening to?

From the two groups I mentioned above:

Helem Nejse – “Eco Reggae Session” (contains explicit lyrics)

Dubioza Kollektiv – “Pionirska” (feat. Helem Nejse)

*Sevdah music is a traditional genre of music originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina