An almost ordinary story.
My father was a singer and my great inspiration as long as I can remember.
It was because of him I attended elementary music school as a young boy. I played accordion and sung in a choir.
In my early teenage years I started to play in a rock band. We kept playing for years.
That was a great time, a lot of gigs and unforgetable moments.
When you're young, you have so many plans and dreams.
I was just about to follow them, unaware that something life changing was approaching.
The war.
I was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Hercegovina, a city under siege that was constantly bombarded and attacked from the surrounding mountains.
It was a kind of war never seen in the modern history.
Civilians were deliberately and systematically targeted and eleven thousand people were killed, among them 1601 children.
To live under those circumstances, mostly without food, electricity or water,
was just a brutal way of surviving day by day.
After more then two years, in July 1994, empty, with a raped soul, I came to Sweden.
It took me a lot of time to get myself together after what I had been through.
I couldn't listen to or enjoy music for a long time.
In all desperation and confusion my friend and I started a band, just to check if it would still work.
It did and suddenly we found ourselves playing in different places in Sweden and Denmark.
A couple of years later I began to record my own music in my little home studio.
The war is over and I'm grateful that I survived.
It burnmarked me for life but in a strange way it also helped me to realize that I am alive only if I never lose faith in love.
Samir Bajramovic
