Where I’m From: Ključ, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Current Hometown: Seattle, Washington
Favorite Balkan Song: If I really had to choose, it would be “Kad Sve Ovo Bude Juče” by Dino Merlin. It’s a “sample” (a musical borrowing) of the song “They Don’t Care About Us” by Michael Jackson, but the lyrics that Dino writes are so powerful and, being a lyric-focused songwriter myself, the meaning just affects me so deeply. My hope is that one day I can write lyrics as meaningful as the ones in that song.
Favorite Balkan Dish: I had a long time to think about this while being away from my mom’s cooking while I was attending college in Philadelphia, and my favorite dish is definitely zeljanica.
Our Balkan Boss Babe collection was designed for all of the go-getters, the incredible women who aren’t afraid to follow their dreams.
Selma Ducanovic is one of these women — originally from Ključ, BiH, Selma is a musician, writer, actress, and one of our biggest inspirations. Her debut EP, What You’ve Done, is available now on Spotify. You can find more of her story below.
What made you want to start making music? Was there a certain moment in particular, has it been something that you’ve always enjoyed? How long have you been singing?
Ah, music. I don’t even know where to begin. It feels like it’s been a part of my life since my very first breath – I can’t remember a single moment in my life that music was not influencing me. Even now, certain songs and artists take me back to those times in my childhood where I was dancing and singing along to words that I didn’t even know yet.
I came to music, not through a momentary flash where I decided that this was what I wanted to do, rather I started doing music because it was natural and it just…happened. It was like I always knew that this was for me.
My earliest musical memory was of my 5th birthday. At the time, it was just me, my mom, my dad, and my little sister, Ena. We had just come to the United States two years prior, and we lived in a tiny little apartment in a poorer suburb of Seattle. It was the kind of apartment where the kitchen, dining room, and living room were all pretty much the same room and the “hallway closet” was only deep enough to hold a single, small vacuum and coats just had to find somewhere else to go.
In those days, although I’m sure my parents had many options to choose from, the only two albums I really remember them playing on the stereo were Dino Merlin’s 1989 album, “Nesto Lijepo Treba Da Se Desi” and his 1990 album, “Pet Strana Sveta.”
I guess my dad picked up on something, or maybe he just wanted to spoil me – I don’t know – but for my 5th Birthday, he gifted me with my very own Casio keyboard.
Now, of course, I was only five years old, and I definitely didn’t know how to play the piano, nor could we afford lessons to teach me. But you best believe I would play with that keyboard every day after I got home from preschool. Ena and I would have dance parties with the pre-loaded demo songs that came with the keyboard
It wasn’t until one new sister, two moves, and two schools later, that I started receiving an actual musical education. We had moved to a better neighborhood where people could afford to focus their energies on things like music and art and not simply on when the next paycheck is going to come.
So, I was blessed with teachers who genuinely cared about our learning. From Kindergarten to Third Grade, we did a wide range of musical activities from improvising on xylophone and drums to musical theory games, to even the classic elementary school instrument: the recorder. This was also the time that I started writing my own songs to get my feelings out. They were terrible. Trust me, I was no Mozart. But starting to write just furthered my investment into music. From the Fourth to the Sixth Grade, I sang in the choir, played violin in the orchestra, and finally started taking piano lessons.
Elementary school transitioned to middle school which became high school, the whole time I continued singing, songwriting, and playing the piano.
However, high school became extremely difficult for me as a performer. I had developed stage fright despite my love of performing, and my depression reached the highest peak it’s ever reached in my life.
These obstacles got so bad that I couldn’t even sing a scale in front of my choir class without panicking and choking up. Despite all the solos that I had received previously in middle and elementary school, I didn’t receive a single solo in all my time in high school. I thought I was a delusional failure and almost quit music entirely.
Thinking back on this period of my life, I wish I had listened to my gut and stayed out of my head. To this day, I feel like I’m playing catch-up with other musicians at a similar level as me because I had wasted that period of time on freaking out about myself instead of just studying, learning, practicing, and playing more.
I didn’t stop playing entirely, but I was severely discouraged. In a last-ditch effort to prove something to myself, I got a vocal/songwriting coach in my senior year of high school. All of sudden, my love and passion for writing and performing reemerged and I grew in leaps and bounds. Despite having been loosely writing music since I was little,
Then came the time to apply to college. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do because, while I desperately wanted to major in Music Performance at a school like Berklee College of Music or even Julliard, I recognized that it might not be the best strategy for me because, due to my large steps backward in high school, I simply wasn’t good enough to get in and I knew this. I decided that my best option would be to redirect my career path ever so slightly.
In September 2015, I started school at Drexel University in Philadelphia as a Music Industry major with a Business concentration and a built-in Business Administration minor. Only 5% of the applicants in my year got into the program.
There, I learned so much valuable information about the music industry and was even able to turn the phrase “I have stage fright” into the phrase “I used to have stage fright.” And, for that, I’m immensely proud of myself.
For my senior project at Drexel, I wrote and recorded my very own EP called What You’ve Done, and while I know that it’s not perfect (and trust me if you guys knew all the drama that happened behind this, you would understand), but I actually did it and I’m very proud of myself.
In fact, my single “Seattle” has even started gaining small-time radio airplay on internet and community radio stations here in the Pacific Northwest. At this stage in my career, I couldn’t ask for anything more.
This was a long-winded answer to the question, but I feel like to fully understand why I chose this path in my life, you have to understand my history with this art form and how I can’t just release the pull that it has on me
Where do you go for inspiration/who inspires you?
Inspiration is a hard thing to define because sometimes it’s like a flash – it just comes to you and you have to hurry to get it all down on paper before it disappears. But then, sometimes you have to work at it and keep chipping away at a project until, after what feels like ages, the pieces finally click. So, for this reason, I don’t know if I “go” anywhere for inspiration, rather, if I can’t get the instantaneous flash, I force myself to keep chipping away until it comes.
That being said, every musician has their idols and, more significantly, every Bosnian has their inspirations. By this, I mean to say that we as Bosnians have been exposed to so much horror and at the same time so much strength from the people around us that it is often the people closest to us that serve as our strongest inspirations and motivations. For me, that’s my dad.
My dad is the strongest man I know. Not simply because I know about what he lived through during the war and all the stories he’s told me, but because he chooses to keep growing, to keep laughing and smiling to this day despite the very real terrors he endured that could break down even the strongest American Marines.
He’s built us a life here in America.
We went from that tiny apartment in South Seattle to a beautifully renovated home in North Seattle that is easily the prettiest and biggest house in our whole neighborhood.
But he didn’t just give me and my sisters a big, pretty house with his hard work, he gave us the financial security and the privilege to follow our wildest dreams. And, for this, I must succeed, I refuse to let him down and let his hard work go to waste.
What advice do you have for our fellow Balkan Boss Babes who are juggling a million priorities — how do you keep that balance between work and play?
Oooh, that’s a tough one mostly because I’m not sure how qualified I am to answer that. But I think the advice that I would give would be: don’t be too hard on yourself, but still be real with yourself.
What I mean by that is, if you need a break from working hard, whether that be a Netflix binge, a night out with the
For example, on rare occasions, I will throw away one whole day doing nothing, probably just watching Netflix. This has happened in the midst of finals weeks, before huge presentations that were supposed to happen two days later, etc, etc. I would sometimes joke with people about the time I’ve supposedly “wasted,” and I usually got the same response of how “lucky” I am that I don’t have as much work as they
This was pretty funny to me because usually, with my full course load as well as my music and my acting stuff on the side, I most likely had at least the same amount of work as they did, if not more. I didn’t let this bother me for the singular reason that I know myself and I know what I need.
I recognize when I’m getting overwhelmed and when I’m close to burning out. When this happens, I take a whole day to myself, a day where I have nothing “due” the next day, and I just watch Netflix.
I do this because (and this has never failed to happen) I know for certain the next 2-3 days immediately after that Netflix binge, I am going to be extremely, extremely productive.
The motivation is just there. This process is exactly how I was able to release an EP, a cover session, do an internship, and graduate early in the same year. And, at the same time, I’m able to distinguish this need for a break from my procrastination habits and thus push through and keep working towards my goals. Usually, I end up getting more done than my peers by the end of the week, despite losing that one day.
The point of my story is that you have to listen to yourself and not to other people because no one knows you better than yourself. Don’t make excuses, but be understanding. See yourself as you see your best friend. You know when your best friend needs a break when she needs a hug, when she needs encouragement, and you know when she’s just bullshitting. So, use this insight with yourself, and ultimately just be gentle.
What’s been your favorite moment so far in your music career/journey?
I’d probably say that my favorite moment so far in my music career was the release of my single, “Seattle.”
To give some context, I wrote this song while I was studying abroad in Melbourne, Australia for three months. Prior to that, I had done a three-month internship in Los Angeles, and before even that, I had spent six straight months in Philadelphia at school.
At that point, I’d been away from Seattle for almost a year and I was dealing with severe homesickness, the kind that I had never expected to have. I wrote this song and thought it was just one of those things that were too personal and should never see the light of day.
Fast forward to the moment that I was picking songs to go on my senior project EP. I had planned for six songs plus an interlude, but I was one song short of that. So, I dug around in my songbook and pulled “Seattle” out. My producer was the one who ultimately convinced me to put it on the record.
Then came the time to pick the singles and “Seattle” was not one of them. I had hoped to bury it within the EP. But, the time came to release my second single and the one I had wanted just wasn’t good enough yet to release. I decided to go with “Seattle” since it was one of the few songs that was actually finished. When the release date came around, my heart was hammering in my chest, I wanted to take it all back and cancel the whole thing.
Ultimately, the song performed really well for me being a nobody. I got such positive responses from my friends and random people online, that I went to bed at the end of that day with a big smile on my face.
In many ways, “Seattle” was a lesson to me to stop overthinking music. Just because I’m worried about, for example, the drumbeat behind one word at minute 1:53 of my song, doesn’t mean that someone is going to even notice it, and it definitely doesn’t mean that my song is destined for the trash. However, I think trying to not be a perfectionist is going be a life-long learning course for me.
What’s been the most challenging moment and what did you learn from it?
I don’t think there’s been a single moment of my fledgling career that hasn’t been challenging. That being said, a specific scenario did come to my mind with this question.
When I had finished recording my EP and handed it off to my producer to finish mixing, all of a sudden he stopped communicating with me and I never received tracks in order to give feedback. I had to fight on numerous occasions just to be able to hear where my music was at that moment and how the production was doing.
Furthermore, I had a deadline for this EP. Since it was my senior project, I had to submit it by that deadline or I would not graduate when I needed to. Due to these factors, I just don’t consider some of the songs on my EP good enough. And, if I had unlimited time, I would have taken the time to iron out all the issues and actually make my EP something that meets my standards.
This situation was really difficult to deal with especially since it was my debut EP. And, while it was hard, I did learn a lot from it. I learned that I have to not be afraid of being called a bitch because, ultimately, the EP was my product and it’s my name attached to it – it’s my name that gets the criticism. Next time, I have to be blunt and direct about my expectations and, if that person can’t deal with it, I have to find someone else. I shouldn’t be afraid to be “The Boss.”
Furthermore, I learned that you can’t always work with friends under the assumption that, because you are friends, they’re going to try and do a good job for you. You have to look at the bigger picture and find someone that will work hard and collaborate with you to make a quality product together and sometimes that person isn’t the friends you already have.
At the end of the day, I’m glad I had that experience this early on. I was able to experience this issue and failure on a low-risk level, learn from it, and in the future, I can release something that I’m fully proud of.