No Simple Tavern Song

It’s sung in taverns, at weddings and birthday parties, and at social gatherings large and small.

Bećarac songs are usually funny, often a bit bawdy, and almost always about woes and misadventures of a romantic or sexual nature.

The musical form is valued as part of the patrimony of Croatia, so much so that in 2011 it was added to the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

What is Bećarac?

Bećarac music is a combination of singing and playing of one or more tambura, a family of long-necked, stringed instruments with a sound similar to a mandolin.

While Bećarac music may be sung and played in an impromptu manner, its more organized form is with a band, comprised of a lead singer and five or more tambura-playing musicians. The singer begins with a two-line or couplet verse, which introduces the theme of the song—it’s just as often an innuendo-filled boast of the singer’s romantic or sexual conquests, wealth or good fortune.

The tambura-playing chorus then answers with a verse of the same length, which usually contradicts or makes fun of the lead singer. This call and response may continue for just a few verses or for innumerable ones, depending on the energy of the band and the enthusiasm of listeners.

But improvisation is just as important, since the singer and his chorus are expected to try to outdo one another with their verses. They make up rhyming couplets—always decasyllabic—as they go, while keeping the melody and the thread of the story alive.

Accomplished Bećarac singers are highly regarded for their skills at this clever improvisation.

Tambura

The tambura — also called a tamburica or tamboura — is thought to have been introduced to Central Europe in the Byzantine ere — brought from Persia by the Turks. Its use was taken up by southern Slavic ethnic groups from Slavonia, which once extended beyond the modern borders of Croatia. Tambura music, along with folksong forms related to Bećarac, is also prevalent in neighboring Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.