"Sofka Nikolić
I first heard of her two years ago on Arhoolie's Tamburitza! Hot String Band Music, from the Balkans to America: 1910-1950 wherein was featured one of her songs "Kolika Je Javorina Planina" [Oh, How High Is the Javorina Mountain!], a wonderful tambourine driven piece that prompted me to go looking for more of hers.
At first all I could find of the internet was this: EMPIRE STATE - Paul Vernon recounts the course of recorded music in the last days of the Ottoman Empire
<..In the spring of 1931, the ever-alert Rodney Gallop reviewed a dozen recently
released Serbian records for the monthly Gramophone magazine;
"Not long ago an American walked into the Yugoslav Consulate at Geneva, and
with a curt 'Do you know this?' proceeded to whistle a selection of Serbian
folk-songs. When the Consul had recovered from his astonishment and asked the
reason for this musical display, the American revealed that this was his way of
asking for a visa to go to Belgrade for the purpose of making a talking-film of
the tzigane singer Sofka. If you want to know why the Americans thought it worth
while to have a talkie of Sofka, get HMV AM1073 and listen to her singing All
Pasina Pesma the song of Ali Pasha, the Albanian who ruled over Epirus
and Macedonia. Sofka is magnificent. She had not risen to fame in 1924-26 when I
was at Belgrade, but I picture her rather like the lithe figure of Kaya, who in
my time used to draw everyone to the tavern. She has the same deep voice and the
same wild despair in her manner of singing. She vividly expresses the pent-up
feelings of the Serbs through five centuries of foreign domination. As a friend
of mine out it; 'She sounds as though she were about to commit
suicide!"'>>"Veoma interesantan tekst i podatak iz tog vremena o Sofki Nikolic..taj covek je verovatno bio taj Karl Brent Cilton o kome pisu da je dolazxio da slusa i pisao studiju o Sofki. Mozda negde postoji i snimak-film njegov o Sofki u zenitu mladosi..videce se jednog dana.
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