Serifovic in Vranje: 'Dad, bring the child up front'
The singer closed the Days of Vranje festival with her first ever concert in the city, told the crowd her genes belong to Vranje as much as to Kragujevac, then stopped the show for one child.
Marija Serifovic has played Vranje for the first time in her career. The concert on the town’s main stage was scheduled for Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 10 p.m., and it closed the Days of Vranje festival.
She said as much herself, from the stage, before she had sung a single note. The set opened with material from her latest album and only later moved to the songs the crowd came for.
What did Serifovic tell the crowd?
That her family line does not stop at one town. She told the audience her genes belong to Kragujevac as much as they belong to Vranje, and that people should know it. The crowd answered with applause.
The line was not filler. Serifovic is from Kragujevac and has been introduced that way for two decades, so she explained the southern connection herself, in a town where she had never once performed. The audience in front of her spanned every generation, from small children to pensioners.
The girl with the sign
Partway through the set she stopped singing. She had spotted a small girl in the crowd, held up by her father, carrying a sign with the singer’s name on it, and she spoke straight to him.
“Come on, dad, slowly now, bring the child up front,” she said from the stage.
The invitation went to the father, not the child, and it was the only point where the show paused. Since the set started at 10 p.m., a good part of the concert ran past midnight, which puts that moment on Sunday, August 2.
From Vela Luka to Vranje
We covered Serifovic a few weeks ago in Vela Luka, where she told the audience from the stage that she had not come to listen to a concert. That sentence travelled for days and stuck to her as shorthand for how she handles a crowd.
Vranje pushed the same instinct the other way. Same microphone, same habit of addressing people directly, different reason for doing it: this time the music stopped for one child in the front rows.
The setlist
The running order moved from newer tracks toward the ones the crowd sings back. She performed:
- “Po meni ne sudi”
- “Pametna i luda”
- “Deo proslosti”
- “Jedanaest”
- “Bol do ludila”
- “Dolazi ljubav”
- “Molitva”
- “U nedelju”
“Molitva” is the song that won Serbia the Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki in 2007, and it is still the hinge of every concert she plays, no matter how much new material goes into the set.
Three days of Days of Vranje
The festival ran from July 30 to August 1 under the slogan “Vranje in the heart, merak in the soul,” with Serifovic booked last. Ahead of her came:
- the “Zvuci vranjske trube” brass orchestras, July 30 at 9 p.m.
- folk ensembles and cultural societies, the same day at 7.30 p.m.
- a literary evening with author Jelena Bacic Alimpic, July 31 at 7.30 p.m.
- a concert by Snezana Djurisic, Radisa Urosevic and Ceda Markovic, July 31 at 9 p.m.
- a vintage car parade, August 1 at 4 p.m.
- a children’s concert by the “Stevan Mokranjac” music school, August 1 at 7.30 p.m.
Around the music, an ethno bazaar with a book fair and a small summer studio ran all three days, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on the upper promenade. The programme opened on July 30 with a noon presentation of the “Vranjska gradska pesma” project, and exhibitions in the town park and the National Museum followed at 6 p.m.
The schedule says something about how the town built its closing night. The first two days went to local ensembles, brass bands and veteran singers, and the final 10 p.m. slot was handed to a name that had never sung in Vranje before.
