Beauty as Defiance in Time of War: The Cellist of Sarajevo

Vedran Smailovic used high-risk cello performances to memorialize the 22 civilians killed in an explosion during the Bosnian War.

Cellist Vedran Smailovic plays in front of a flower wreath, on June 8, 1992, where people were killed in a street of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. Georges Gobet /Getty Images

It was May 28, 1992, the early days of the Bosnian War. Into the dust and debris of Vase Miskina Street in Sarajevo strode a strange figure, carrying an instrument case and impervious to the distant rumble of explosive shells battering the city. He wore a tuxedo, as though he was on stage at a posh concert hall instead of walking through a warzone where the only backdrops were the husks of bombed-out buildings.

The musician stopped in the middle of the hollowed-out marketplace, set up a plastic folding chair, and took his cello from its case. He seemed to be plucked from another world, a saner time, and dropped into the nightmare of the siege of Sarajevo like a falling star. The musician’s disheveled hair and sagging mustache stirred in the breeze as he placed the instrument between his knees. Surrounded by broken stone and twisted metal, his eyes deepened, and he began to play Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor.

The mournful moaning of the cello rose from the almost empty square, spiraling skyward like a prayer, its sweet strains discernible even underneath growls of explosives or the snaps of sniper fire. In the cellist’s music, something lived on—something the people of Sarajevo had thought was lost. The little, crumbling street became a fragmentary haven of humanity amid ruin and carnage.

With his music, the cellist, Vedran Smailovic, honored the dead, not because he knew them, but because they were his fellow human beings. He repeated this performance every day for 22 days, in honor of the 22 innocent victims killed by a mortar shell that exploded there the day before, on May 27.

This simple act of defiance turned him into a legend the world-over: “the cellist of Sarajevo.”

The "Momo" and "Uzeir" twin towers burning on Sniper Alley in downtown Sarajevo as heavy shelling and fighting raged throughout the Bosnian capital on June 08, 1992. GEORGES GOBET/ Getty Images

A Bloody War

Vedran Smailovic was born on Nov. 11, 1956. His musical career began early when his father organized the family into a musical group, “Musica Ad Hominem.” Smailovic went on to become the principal cellist for the Sarajevo Opera, and was living in the city when it came under siege in April of 1992 during the Bosnian War.

The Bosnian War was part of a chaotic and bloody conflict that occurred during the breakup of Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Bosnia and Herzegovina, formerly part of Yugoslavia, declared their independence. However, within Bosnia and Herzegovina there were three major ethnic and religious groups: Bosnian Muslims (or Bosniaks), Orthodox Serbs, and Catholic Croats. The Bosnian Muslims formed the majority, and the Serbs, fearing their dominance, decided to create their own, separate country. They began killing and expelling the Muslims and Croats from it. They received military assistance from nearby Serbia to accomplish this—with the ultimate goal being a new, ethnically “pure” state.

The complicated conflict exploded out of control, leading to an extremely bloody war during the early 1990s. One chapter in the war was the brutal siege of Sarajevo—Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital—by the Serbs. It lasted 1,425 days, from April 1992 to February 1996. It was the longest siege in modern military history, longer even than the siege of Leningrad during World War II. According to some estimates, over 11,500 people were killed and 56,000 wounded.

The Cellist of Sarajevo

During the siege, Smailovic witnessed a mortar shell hit a line of people waiting for bread outside a bakery, killing 22 and injuring many more. It was this atrocity that inspired Smailovic to make his musical memorial for 22 days in a row.

Smailovic knew he couldn’t stop the bloodshed. He knew he couldn’t bring back the dead. But he knew the power of art to defy the darkness, to maintain sanity in a time of insanity.

One reporter asked him if he was crazy to play cello in the middle of an active war zone. He responded, “You ask me am I crazy for playing the cello, why do you not ask if they are not crazy for shelling Sarajevo?”

In addition to his 21 encores for the victims from the bakery, Smailovic also played at graveyards and funerals for the dead of the siege. In doing so, he repeatedly risked his life because Serbian snipers specifically targeted funerals to cause greater fear and suffering.

Vedran Smailovic playing Strauss in the bombed National Library in Sarajevo on Sept. 12, 1992. Michael Evstafiev /Getty Images

Yet like hope itself, Smailovic survived the war—though he had a close call once when his cello was destroyed. He fled the carnage in 1993, traveling to Ireland. Today, he resides in Northern Ireland, in Warrenpoint, in an apartment that looks out over the silver-blue waters of Carlingford Lough. There, he composes music and plays chess. He also works as a conductor and performer.

Smailovic’s small act, his assertion of normalcy, his reminder of the permanent things during a time of upheaval, inspired people around the world. Other musicians paid homage to Smailovic, including composer David Wilde, who wrote a solo cello piece in his honor entitled “The Cellist of Sarajevo.” A children’s book and a novel were written based on Smailovic’s acts of heroism. Though born out of the dark days of a specific conflict, Smailovic’s action had universal resonance. The pearl of his artistic memorial, formed under the extreme pressures of war and the worst sorts of horrors, appeared pure and dazzling before the whole world.

Smailovic didn’t seek fame, however. He did only what seemed right at the time. As he told The New York Times, “I am nothing special, I am a musician, I am part of the town. Like everyone else, I do what I can.”

Through the power of his art, Vedran Smailovic transcended time and war . He became a symbol of and a medium for that quiet, persistent beauty that can’t be effaced by cruelty.

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