The epic singer
Avdo Medjedovic'

"The best method of finding singers was to visit a Turkish coffee house, and make inquiries there. This is the center for the peasant on market day, and the scene of entertainment during the evening of the month of Ramazan. We found such a place on a side street, dropped in, and ordered coffee. Lying on the bench not far from us was a Turk smoking a cigarette in an antique silver 'cigarluk' (cigarette holder). He was a tall, lean and impressive person. At a break in our conversation he joined in. He knew of singers. The best, he said, was a certain Avdo Medjedovic', a peasant farmer who lived an hour way. How old is he? Sixty, sixty-five. Does he know how to read or write? Ne zna, brate! (No, brother!) And so we went for him and ordered coffee for our new friend […] While we were waiting for Avdo to arrive Began told of his life.

Finally Avdo came, and he sang for us old Salih's favorite of the taking of Bagdad in the days of Sultan Selim. We listened with increasing interest to this short homely farmer, whose throat was disfigured by a large goiter. He sat cross-legged on the bench, sawing the gusle, swaying in rhythm with the music. He sang very fast, sometimes deserting the melody, and while the bow went lightly back and forth over the string, he recited the verses at top speed. A crowd gathered. A card game, played by some of the modern young men of the town, noisily kept on, but was finally broken up.

The next few days were a revelation. Avdo's songs were longer and finer than any we had heard before. He could prolong one for days, and some of them reached fifteen or sixteen thousand lines. Other singers came, but none could equal Avdo, our Yugoslav Homer."

From: Albert B. Lord, "Across Montenegro Searching for Gusle Songs" (typewritten manuscript, March 1937. The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, Harvard University)