Amira Medunjanin at Kanli Kula in Herceg Novi on August 2 - the Bosnian Billie Holiday at the twentieth Guitar Art Summer Fest

Amira Medunjanin sings on August 2 at the Kanli Kula fortress in Herceg Novi, as part of the twentieth edition of the Guitar Art Summer Fest. The concert starts at 9 pm, and tickets are 3,500 dinars through tickets.rs.

Medunjanin was born in Sarajevo in 1972 and is today the most recognisable voice of sevdah outside Bosnia. She learned the sevdalinkas from her mother, and her fascination with that oral tradition deepened during the siege of Sarajevo, when she hid in a coal cellar and lost family members. That biographical layer is not decoration in her performance; it is audible in the way she phrases.

Her career began as a guest on the album A Secret Gate by Mostar Sevdah Reunion in 2003, and the debut record Rosa came out two years later and drew strong reviews in Britain and across Europe. Then came Zumra, Amulette, Silk and Stone, Damar, and Ascending from 2018, a collaboration with the Norwegian chamber orchestra TrondheimSolistene. The British music journalist Garth Cartwright called her the Bosnian Billie Holiday, a comparison that refers to the way she turns the tradition inside out and finds new forms in something centuries old.

Kanli Kula is an open-air fortress above Herceg Novi with a view of the Bay of Kotor, and one of the more attractive summer stages on the Adriatic. The Guitar Art Summer Fest is celebrating its twentieth year, and this season's programme also brings Diego Baliardo's Gipsy Kings and the Rosenberg family to the same stage.

Tickets are sold through tickets.rs at 3,500 dinars. For an audience from Macedonia that is a few hours' drive to the Montenegrin coast, for a voice rarely heard in a setting like this.