The Cellist of Sarajevo

Ever since I attended one of their concerts several Decembers ago, Trans-Siberian Orchestra has been one of my favorite associations with Christmas.  I’m a sucker for rock/orchestra fusion, and the modernized carols for which TSO is best known make the season feel like Christmas to me more than any other music can.  This is useful for getting into the holiday spirit, since I currently live in a part of the country where singing “the weather outside is frightful” in December can plausibly refer to a heat index that damages house plants and necessitates that children and the elderly stay inside.

Possibly TSO’s most famous song is the lead song on their 1996 breakout album, titled “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24.”  You’ve heard it.  It’s an instrumental mashup of “Carol of the Bells” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”  It’s also the song most people associate with the group, even if they don’t know its title.  The obvious question, which somehow didn’t occur to me until I’d been listening to the song for over a decade, is what in the world does the title mean?  What does Sarajevo have to do with Christmas Eve or those carols?

The short answer is that the song was inspired by a “historical” event, which I’ve placed in quotes because the TSO musicians got many of the details wrong--at least, according to my thorough research, exclusively using Wikipedia.

The song is inspired by Vedran Smailović, a Bosnian-born cellist who once played in the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra.  During the violence of the Siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s, Smailović became an unlikely symbol of hope by playing his cello in various bombed-out buildings around the city.  He's actually inspired a number of works, from cello arrangements to books (not all of which pleased Smailović, apparently).  He also inspired an American metal band called Savatage, which later became the rock component of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  The Savatage/TSO members understandably loved the idea of a musician defying mortal danger and bringing hope into areas of devastation.  However, the heroic cellist they've imagined doesn't quite match the real Smailović I've described.

In interviews, some of the TSO members described the cellist as an elderly man saddened by the destruction of his beloved homeland.  Smailović doesn't quite fit that account; he was born in 1956.  Also, the band's depiction of the man playing right in the midst of shells going off all around him, which is what the song is supposed to represent, is probably somewhat dramatized.  What puzzles me most is that, ironically enough, I can't find any clear reason why Savotage associated Smailović's story with Christmas.

It may be the case that Smailović was simply a legitimately inspiring figure whose story was embellished and distorted through numerous retellings, which is unfortunate.  It's a terrific enough story of hope without being diluted by exaggeration.

Regardless of the historical accuracy of its inspiration, Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 is still one of my favorite Christmas songs.  And, as Dwight Schrute would attest, any Christmas song that promotes an irresistible urge to air guitar rightfully deserves a place in the discussion of all-time classics.  If Santa exists, I imagine TSO is what he pulls up on the sleigh's mp3 player when he needs to make critical time over those vast stretches of arctic wasteland.  It's the ideal option for getting pumped up and staying energized through the oft-draining holiday whirlwind.