Bio Sam Pijanac
The background to this song begins with Orchestra LIKA.
Orchestra LIKA has been performing for well over 50 years. Although there have been some lineup changes over this period, for over the last 30 years the members have stayed the same: yours truly (John Lukich) accordion and vocals; Milan Sanader bass and vocals; and Michael Lukich bugarija and vocals. Things have gone full circle as at the very beginning of the journey these were the 3 who founded the band.
Why is this relevant?
Over the years, LIKA Orchestra has played many, many gigs in Windsor Ontario Canada. At one of the gigs, an acquaintance of ours Buddy, asked us to play this song “Bio Sam Pijanac” as he enjoyed this tune. Unfortunately, we did not know it – and never even heard of it really, so we had to disappoint him.
Flash forward a few years…the Windsor community hosted the Serbian Pavilion during Windsor’s Carousel Festival. As Buddy was one of the key organizers of the pavilion, he no doubt had some ideas for the entertainment they needed and hired us for the 3 day event (along with a Serbian kolo band aptly named “Kolo”, and the well known Lemon Bucket Orchestra).
Naturally, the least we could do was to learn to play and sing one of his favourites – so that’s how it came to be that LIKA learned to play the song…so I decided to record it.
With regards to the song itself, as the title suggests, it’s about someone who was a drunkard, or perhaps a better term would be an alcoholic. In typical Serbian fashion, he became this way because of problems over a sweetheart. We never know any details about her, but safe to say things did not go well and our protagonist started drinking heavily.
However, this is a song of redemption (of sorts) as the subsequent 2 verses state that he realizes that he was poisoning himself with drink; that he suffered many long nights and sad days with his faced washed with tears – but in the end, he vowed never to drink again, nor to give his heart to another.