The album dedicated to Smilja Kotur, one of the last keepers of the Jasenovac singing tradition, presents a valuable selection of songs from the rich oral heritage of Western Slavonia. Born in Jasenovac, Smilja Kotur preserved throughout her life a large repertoire of old songs once sung in everyday and ritual contexts–during circle dances, village gatherings, holidays and family celebrations. Despite the difficult historical circumstances that marked the fate of this region and its people, song, as noted in the booklet, “slowly and inevitably filled their lives again,” restoring to the community a sense of belonging and continuity. In the ninth decade of her life, after nearly three decades of silence, Smilja found a new singing circle–a group of young singers from Belgrade who devoted themselves to learning the songs of Jasenovac and reviving this nearly forgotten repertoire together with her. As Svetlana Spajić writes, encounters with attentive and curious listeners often triggered “an avalanche of songs from the singer’s memory,” and some of the songs included on the album were chosen only shortly before the recording sessions. The album features songs of various forms and functions–from archaic lyrical melodies to those traditionally performed in the pleteno kolo (woven circle dance), such as “Vijalo se pero paunovo”, “Oj, djevojko što u kolo nećeš”, and “Majka j’ Mari kose plela”. These songs represent remarkable examples of oral poetry whose variants can also be found in anthologies of Serbian folk lyric poetry from Western Slavonia and Croatia. As emphasized in the booklet, Smilja’s repertoire opens a “door to the past,” revealing songs in which ancient motifs, memories and ritual practices of a nearly vanished world still resonate. This album represents the first collection of recordings of Jasenovac songs performed by Smilja Kotur, and at the same time an important contribution to preserving and understanding the traditional vocal heritage of the Serbs of Western Slavonia.

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