Hanan Hadžajlić

Hanan Hadžajlić–in conversation with Alexey Munipov

 

Hanan Hadžajlić (*1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

 

Requiem Ex Machina for six amplified voices (2022/2023)

Voices I & II for singer, tape and video (2025/2026)

Sarajevo Vlog–a short documentary (2025)

 

How did you decide what you would do when you got this commission? How did you set the idea, the structure—everything behind the piece?

 

We got the first commission three years ago for the first edition of Balkan Affairs, presented at the Music Biennale Zagreb. Since the topic is very specific… by that I mean dealing with the Balkan wars, where you cannot just skip the fact that genocide and many horrible, inhuman things happened… It was not easy to decide what to compose. I tried to avoid making cringe sample library of traces representing pain, suffering, injustice, horror. Because it could go in the bad direction, even become exploitative.

 

The main reason is that I was not in the war, thank God. But I know many people who were–people who lost family members, some lost parts of their bodies. That is extremely difficult. My generation grew up surrounded by war related narratives, but I never felt adequate enough to go there directly.

 

Make music about war and after it. Seriously? Make music for the war… Well, it could work, war is very popular business.

 

Requiem Ex Machina is a subtle comment on the topic of war primarily through the prism of the Abrahamic religions. I used excerpts from Orthodox prayer, a melody from the Adhan–Islamic call to prayer, silent dhikr–and fragments of the Requiem text. Also quote from The Prince by Machiavelli. The subject itself was too frightening for me, and I immediately thought of Mozart’s Requiem, which is both sublime and scary. So there’s a reference to Mozart as well.

 

In the Balkans we were always surrounded by politics, as a loud public topic. In a way, it’s some kind of routine. In the 1990s, nationalism and populism were very popular. Balkans were the pioneer.

Now the West is going through the same thing, while in the Balkans, we could give lectures on it. But I wanted to step away from estrada-style commentary in music work. I needed something spiritual. I went to the source–because during the wars many people kept returning to religious matters. And I consider it beautiful.

 

Last year we had a different commission, for Voices Festival Berlin and ECLAT Festival Stuttgart–to conduct interviews with people from our countries, to talk about war and all that came after. Of course, if you ask people who started the war and who is to blame, you’ll just get another war. So I decided to talk about normal life. My questions were about everyday vibes, living together, cooperating. We need that in order to survive. And we in the Balkans know that.

I live in Bosnia, which is, besides being multiconfessional, also truly multicultural. Being surrounded by this diversity is a blessing–especially in a world where everything is becoming too similar. A lot of racism and all this discriminatory behaviors everywhere. That’s why, more and more I condemn linking culture to pride without a bigger, valid reason. If culture is hard work, voluntary actions, making food for orphans, all that society can truly benefit from, ok.

 

Just don’t tell me about »my culture« as something that defines me, my basic value, places me above someone else and how I should be proud of it, whatever the »it« is. High race, super powers, spoiled, privileged mentality, truly, whatever. That is nothing to be proud of. It is shameful that we still replay same topics in 21st century.

 

The third commissioned work, actually for ECLAT Festival, is mostly about that concept of being ‘proud’ of something you didn’t have to do anything about, personally.

As a coda, I wrote two pieces–basically songs for Johanna Vargas, soprano of Neue Vocalsolisten. Part I–Children of Abraham was premiered at Voices Festival Berlin and made in collaboration with Mohamed Aziz, as a chorus author and video coauthor. Party II–My Name is Eve is written for ECLAT Festival. Voice, tape and video, drill, trap, contemporary music. Yes, it’s outside the new music market canons–or the »sample library« genre, as I call it. Usually it takes three seconds to identify which genre you belong to. And if you mix two sources–you’re instantly labelled »experimental«. Meaning: we don’t know how to market this. Well…haha.

 

The text also refers to the children of Abraham and Eve. So, I begin and end with this theme. Because the idea of division–of separation–is deeply embedded in every Abrahamic religion. Adam and Eve, Abel and Cain, the very concept of the devil… Even the sky and the sea were divided. Everything came from one soul, and everything was split. There is always this moment of betrayal. Even in Abraham’s family tree there is division. That’s the world we live in. My Name is Eve addresses rage, identity, internalized violence, migrations, questions of inherited versus chosen identity. Eve is like modern Cassandra, reading the details and also calling out the thieves in the market. A symbol of female power, intelligence, intuition, and territoriality–the archetype of »problematic woman«, singing the songs for war. Against being proud of stupidity.

 

Did you use your childhood memories when working on this piece? And more broadly, do you feel that the experience of the 90s in the Balkans is part of your identity as an artist, even if you didn’t experience the war yourself?

 

All my childhood I moved from place to place like a nomad. I was born in 1991 in Slovenia, and I lived there for 14 years. I spent almost every weekend in Zagreb, Croatia. Then I moved with my family to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. I also studied in Belgrade for almost four years, and travelled a lot across the Balkans. My family origins are In Montenegro. So, if you ask me where I’m from–I honestly don’t know how to answer.

 

 

My childhood memories are from television–these super old men giving speeches, and crowds cheering. Just like now. Only the old ones died, and the actual ones act like they’re going to live forever. Every time those morbid people were on TV, everyone would look around, afraid something might happen. We grew up surrounded by stories of children who lost their parents. We were warned not to touch objects on the ground–because they might be explosives hidden in toys. We were told that not all people are good, and some people just want to kill children. Directly or indirectly, you grow up surrounded by this narrative. And if you live in a place that isn’t »your« place, you are always perceived as »the other«. That was me–my whole life. Even my name and surname were strange to everyone.

 

There were benefits too. It became part of my artistic identity. I began as a flutist, then became a composer, then moved into music production. I’ve always improvised. And if you try to place me in a market–you can’t. One day I’m more flutist than composer. Another day–I’m something else. It’s nomadic.

The moment someone tries to trap me into idolatry, being a follower, or a nationality, or a location, or a paradigm, or a market, or an industry, or a discipline–I can’t. This is deeply connected to my background.

 

Why do you think this subject–the Balkan wars of the 1990s–has remained so untouched by contemporary composers from the region?

 

Well, I don’t think there was an organisation–with funding–that was interested in this theme before, and that worked with composers from the market we come from. Why did we never work on it? Because it was not the right moment–and there was no money to support it, I guess.

 

Composers seem split on this. Some will tell you music can’t really express anything–it’s just sounds. Others insist everything is political: working with sound is political, and so is the identity behind it.

I work in different industries. One is contemporary art music, the other is popular music. Through my academic education, I definitely learned the idea of self-referential music: the perfect system, music as its own closed world. That exists, absolutely–especially in the second half of the twentieth century, when composers experimented with systems and tried to find languages that could work without an extra-musical narrative. I respect that.

 

The other aspect is music that carries an external narrative–which can be anything. You can call it political or not, but basically everything is political. Everything you show in society–especially today–becomes political. This is a time when people are being silenced. There’s a kind of sedative effect of social media–repetition, scrolling, consuming content. The more you consume, the less time you have to create something, to offer something.

 

So, in this mass-scale hypnosis and repetition, showing up with something original is political. That’s one part of it.

 

And what I learned from the popular music world–which isn’t funded by organisations or foundations choosing certain topics, but by people who listen–is that what people love is a kind of creative, original nonchalance. Whatever you do, whatever you think about, it’s the energy, the nonchalance–that sense that you don’t really care. Because the artists who really succeed–the ones people make successful with their attention–tend to be the ones who don’t follow the industry, the ones who are nonchalant. So maybe that’s the most political thing.

 

I keep coming back to the concept of »your« own, original, discovered, developed cultural identity, to placing yourself in a context that you choose or abandon or whatever–as long as it is your own. I think that’s very political today: being someone who doesn’t define people through banal labels, but stays open. It means being less judgemental, which is not easy at all. But we can learn new things and sometimes free ourselves from what we think is our security system. But it is not.

 

At the same time, if you really look through the prism of politics, even that self-referential, »pure system« approach is political too. Think of the twentieth century: some of those composers had the conditions for it. Their job was to think about art, read books–this culture of intellectualism, sitting and discussing books and ideas. They had time, and they had funds. It was also a moment when young people could get very high positions–some kind of cleaning after bad politics.

 

Now it’s capitalism. It is about strength, flexibility and repetition. Now it’s not important how much information you have if you can’t use it. It is about how many squats you can do while doing something else at the same time. Whatever you do becomes a demonstration of your skills and your beliefs. And today, when you’re fighting for survival where you are, choosing to be nonchalant–doing whatever, trying to say to people, »Hey, let’s hang out, let’s not be people with identity industry labels«–that’s political. It’s a bit childlike, but yeah.

 

What did it feel like when all of you, the composers involved, were suddenly in the same room? Was there any tension, or did it feel easy?

 

If it were possible to create tension, it would be very interesting. I mean, like Big Brother. Actually, I have a suggestion. Next time rent a villa with a pool. And maybe live stream with audience calling, voting etc. Reality shows are the most popular on TV. At least in the Balkans. »Balkan Affairs.« Could work.

 

But no–we really became friends. Some of us talk very often, because we share similar opinions about what it’s like to be in the project. It’s a bit weird, but also interesting, because as I see it, all of these people are really normal.

I mean, tension can happen on practical things–like, »Do we want to do this part of the project this way or the other way?« But it’s nothing political. We think in similar ways. So, I don’t think any distinctions played out along national lines or whatever people call it. It was just about opinions.

 

So you didn’t feel like you were opening Pandora’s box by stepping into this topic?

 

I did. When we were talking about the interviews, I said: »If I’m going to really ask people who experienced war, I can’t do it. I would ask someone more qualified.« That is opening Pandora’s box. But if we’re going to talk about more general aspects of living together today–that’s okay.

 

People are complex: they can say one thing, think another, do something else. But in general, what you choose to show to the world on a platform like this festival–which is followed by many people and documented–that’s also what you think. All of my colleagues are open-minded and positive.

 

Margareta Ferek-Petrić, artistic director of Music Biennale Zagreb, said she sees this project as a tool for reconciliation. Do you feel the same?

 

These people didn’t do anything wrong to me–nothing bad. So as long as someone isn’t attacking you for some reason, or treating you unfairly, there’s no problem.

 

I don’t think reconciliation just »happens«. It needs to happen inside people’s minds. And that is complex.

For example–I cannot believe that in the 21st century we still have nations, borders, visas. Is this really the highest achievement of civilization–to close ourselves, more and more? Or the borders between disciplines? Or an education system that teaches many subjects, but connects nothing?

 

Of course these structures serve certain interests–but I don’t even blame the people in power most of the time. I blame the masses, because they still love to jump around celebrating weird symbols and identifying with »our nation, our culture«. Hannah Arendt said long ago: …the banality of evil. And I think stupidity is the biggest issue behind everything.

 

And if we want to talk about reconciliation–we need to know where we start. I hate the concept of »tolerance«. No one tolerates anyone for too long. People explode–and war happens. Better talk about acceptance. Progress. Change.

So I think borders need to be redrawn. Or erased. And this thing called a »new world order«, which is usually connected to conspiracy theories–could be a positive thing, if a new world order was truly based on justice and solidarity. Justice should truly be for all. But as we know, there is no justice in this world.

 

We would need a totally different structure of the world.

 

In your opinion–how much time needs to pass after a war before artists from the region can start working with it? Is 25 years a realistic minimum–as in the case of ‘Balkan Affairs’?

 

Look at the world today. Or even before.

 

Start at the beginning. What is the real issue? Territory? Religion? Let’s be honest. Do you understand that this conflict defines your entire life? Is it worth it? And one more thing: if your family is racist, nationalist and whatever, you need to step away from that narrative.

 

Family is important–but if you want to do your own thing, to save yourself and future generations, you need to be like: »I’m on my own, I know what I’m doing.«

 

Is there such a thing as a post-Yugoslav sound–something shared, even after all the divisions?

I don’t know what that is. Sounds depressive. Maybe there is, but I have nothing to do with that. Nothing ‘post’ or vulture style here. Only new, fresh on the market, best quality.

 

Also, right now I actually have more Moroccan influence in my music than what is considered Balkan. For many years after the war, when I was composition student with high grades, I avoided using Balkan folk material, because it was so easily associated with ethnonationalism. But I think that time passed. Narratives expired, lack of ideas, time of good hybrids and remixes. Now you can use whatever you want.

 

Also, Balkan music is very diverse, you can’t just put all into one box. But at least in the pop music industry, where people depend on collaboration, where money comes from audiences and streams, Balkan music is from and for all of us.

 

 Did you discuss this piece with your parents–and how did they react?

Aren’t you supposed to make music?

 

 Do you think a project like this can actually change anything–or make a difference, even in a small way?

 

Yes. But don’t like that the project is centered around war. I wish it was about new technologies, the future, and progress. Or at least symbolically erasing the borders. Visas. Classifying people. I don’t talk only about the Balkans anymore. This is just one small part of the world.

 

Project Balkan Affairs a platform where we can openly show that we are willing to go against dominant narratives. Populism, stupidity, recycling bad quality stuff.

 

Also, it is not so dangerous to talk about the Balkans, for now.

Let’s talk about… ah.

Let’s talk about censorship in the arts.