Selma Ćimić Zjakić was born in Foča and grew up in Bihać. Her earliest musical memories are of summer holidays in Foča at her grandparents when she listened to her grandfather and uncle sing beautiful, old and often forgotten sevdalinke on their outings on the banks of the Drina river.
She enrolled in music school at an early age playing classical piano music, but at school events and with friends she played the guitar and enjoyed a varied repertoire, yet least of all sevdah. Going to college in Sarajevo (she did not choose music as a profession, instead graduating from the Faculty of Civil Engineering) she continued making music as her college commitments allowed and in the final year she began singing in the women´s octet Collegium Artisticum, the only women´s octet in the region at that time.
Her arrival in Luxemburg and meeting Selma Schauls was a beginning of a wonderful friendship, filled with moments of joy and sorrow and music, so sevdah re-entered her life and this time in the “Selma & Selma” way… And it has stayed with her for over twenty years now.