BANJA LUKA, Bosnia (Reuters) – No more excuses! If you don’t have cash you can still tip Bosnian wedding musician Zeljko Djakic by tapping the bank card reader he has installed on the side of his accordion.
Treating musicians with money when requesting a favourite song in restaurants or at weddings is traditional in the Balkans, with people tucking banknotes in their instruments or pockets.
Djakic said the idea for installing a card reader on his instrument came to him after some jokers pulled their bank cards through an accordion bellows.
“I decided to outwit them and offer them to be able to tip musicians, if they really want to,” he said, adding he believed he was the first musician in Bosnia to come up with the idea.
But the usual cash tips still prevail, Djakic said.
Djakic, an electronic engineer by training, said he has always liked bringing technical innovation to his music, which he calls his hobby and love.
“It is a great joy for me when I see people enjoying at parties, made happy by music I play,” said Djakic, who started playing the accordion when he was nine.
He won an award at an innovation fair in Banja Luka in 2017 for adapting his instrument to produce acoustic sounds on one side and electronic sounds on the other.
He also has the ability to play music from the internet via a mobile phone and a special microphone attached to the accordion.
“If some guest wants to hear a song I don’t play, I switch it on from the mobile,” he said.
(Reporting by Dado Ruvic; Writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Frances Kerry)
