In addition to picking the tar out of any instrument you put in front of him (when we saw his one-man show circa 1980, he played guitar, piano, fiddle, banjo, dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, bodhran, juice harp, harmonica, and his entire body in a jawbonin’ solo), John McCutcheon is the master of the sanity amidst the madness ballad. (See Christmas in the Trenches, for example.)
Streets of Sarajevo is in a similar vein.
McCutheon plays in Ithaca Saturday, 3/28, Visit Cornell Folk Song Society for details.
More about Vedran Smailović via wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedran_Smailovi%C4%87
Nice image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Evstafiev-bosnia-cello.jpg