Hanka Paldum

Hanka Paldum (born 28 April 1956) is a Bosnian sevdalinka singer and founder of the record label Sarajevo Disk.

She is regarded as one of the best female sevdah performers of the 20th century and is popular in her home country of Bosnia as well as in the rest of the former Yugoslavia.

Hanka Paldum was born in the eastern Bosnian town of Čajniče to Muslim Bosniak parents Mujo and Pemba.

Paldum has an older brother Mustafa and two sisters, Raza and Rasema.

Her father was a logger and her mother wove carpets to provide additional financial assistance for the family, as her fathers salary was not enough to carry a family of seven.

Hanka, the oldest female child, began helping her mother with housework at the age of five.

When Paldum was seven years of age, her parents moved the family from Čajniče to the Vratnik neighbourhood within the Sarajevo municipality of Stari Grad.

Paldum started singing in the first grade, as part of the choir in her primary school.

She would continue singing throughout her childhood and recalled in an interview: "We went by train to my aunt's home, my mother's sister in Rudo. There were a lot of tunnels and when the train entered a tunnel, I would sing, and when it come out of the tunnel I stopped, because I was shy. The other passengers would ask who was singing that beautifully, and I just looked out the window as if it did not apply to me. But inside, my heart was leaping with joy."

At the age of twelve, Hanka's brother Mustafa, a member of the Bratstvo (Brotherhood) cultural association, encouraged her to sneak out through her bedroom window and sing at the association events, promising to "cover" for her.

She would sing for 15 to 20 minutes and run back home.

The director of the House of Culture named Marijan Ravlić, asked her parents to allow her to sing at some local events.

Her father allowed it, but with only with the presence of her older brother, Mustafa, who was no less strict than their father.

Then Hanka began to sing in amateur contests, which she often won, with the award being chocolate with rice or ten tickets for the cinema.

She shared the chocolates, while tickets for the theater remained unused because of her father's strictness.

After three years of struggle, Hanka proved to her parents her passion for music and said she wanted to enroll in a music school.

Her father told her she must enroll in a school that would lead to a secure career with which she could find a job that would earn her money.

Around that time, Hanka's father, Mujo became gravely ill and soon died of his illness.

They married soon after he graduated from the university in the late 1970s.

Shortly thereafter, he went to the mandatory service in the Yugoslav People's Army, and Hanka started her first big Yugoslavian tour with Meho Puzić.

Paldum recorded and released her first extended play (EP) in 1973, at the age of seventeen, when producer and composer Mijat Božović offered her his partnership in recording two singles "Ljubav žene" (The Love of a Woman) and "Burmu ću tvoju nositi" (I Will Wear Your Wedding Ring) alongside the big folk orchestra Radio-TV Sarajevo.

She recorded five more EP's in two years before releasing her debut studio album, I Loved Unfaithful Eyes on 13 February 1974

Also in 1975, Hanka won top prize at the festival of amateur singers called "Pjevamo danu mladosti" (Sing for the Youth Day), with the song "Pokraj puta rodila jabuka" (On the Roadside, a Tree Bore an Apple), written by Mijat Božović.

Her prize was a chance to produce a single for the record label Sarajevo Diskoton.

This song was not a big hit at the time, but with time it gained moderate success.

She continued her partnership with Mijat Božović, who believed in her talent and that she would become a big folk star.

He wrote a song for her called "Voljela sam oči zelene" (I Loved Green Eyes) which in a few months became a big hit; for a long time the song was Hanka's signature song, and is still a hit among people of the former Yugoslavia.

There is also a version in Slovenian.

After success with "Voljela sam oči zelene" she performed as a debutante at the Ilidža Festival with the song "Ja te pjesmom zovem" (I Call You with My Song).

The song was disqualified because one of the judges at the time, Milan Radić, who was a reporter, thought that the song was not worthy enough to enter the competitive part of the program.

However, after the songwriter Julio Marić insisted the song be placed in the competition, Hanka went on to compete.

This song became a big hit and has been covered by multiple other artists.

Hanka met her first husband Muradif Brkić, a student of literature at the University of Sarajevo, while she was in high school.

After three or four months of friendship, they began dating.

Her younger brother Mustafa died in 2007 of lung cancer, aged 49.

Paldum passed an audition at Radio Sarajevo and began voice lessons.

After two years of hard work, she made her first archival recordings for Radio Sarajevo.

They were sevdalinka songs, a traditional Bosniak genre of folk music.

Her first recording was her version of an old sevdalinka song called "Moj behare" (My Blossom).

She continued recording and recorded over a hundred sevdalinkas for radio archives.