Goran Bregović Reconciles Religion With Music On 'Three Letters From Sarajevo'

Goran Bregović is one of the Balkans' most beloved musicians and composers. He grew up in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo witnessed the atrocities of war as a child — but he channelled the his home region's pain, as well as its and endless humor, into his music, and got his big break in the 1990s writing music for films like Emil Kusturica's Time of the Gypsies.

Bregović's latest project, Three Letters from Sarajevo, is an album anchored by three pieces for violin and orchestra, written as a metaphor for the three religions coexisting in Sarajevo: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. As Bregović explains, the different types of music are meant to illustrate tumultuous times we live in — times where "today we are good neighbors and tomorrow we can shoot each other just because we are from different religion. ... I like to understand music as a conversation," he says. "Music is language."

The album features voices from all over the world — from latin pop singer Bebe to Israeli folk rocker Asaf Avidan. Bregović joined NPR's Ari Shapiro to talk about it; hear their conversation at the audio link.

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