Adil Maksutovic: "A Real Castle Above the Vatican"
The singer described a party at a castle above the Vatican in Rome, where Ceca, Aca Lukas, Serif Konjevic and Sladja Allegro performed alongside him, and revealed who managed his career.
Singer Adil Maksutovic, in an interview with Telegraf published on August 27 at 1:01 p.m., described for the first time the most lavish party of his career: a celebration at a castle above the Vatican in Rome. The same conversation was picked up by the portal 24sedam that same day at 1:07 p.m.
He gave the interview ahead of a performance at the Nacionalna kasa club in Belgrade, where he opened the club season after a summer spent touring the region. Although he was performing in the capital, his wife and children were not with him. As he explained, family generally doesn’t come along to club and restaurant gigs, unlike concerts.
A Castle Above the Vatican
Asked to name the most beautiful party he has attended, Adil points to the celebration in Rome, organized by a host from Paris.
“It really was a proper castle,” he said of the venue, describing an atmosphere that extended down to the cutlery and the chairs.
The party lasted two days. By his account, Ceca, Aca Lukas, Serif Konjevic and Sladja Allegro performed alongside him. Adil did not give a specific price for that particular celebration. He mentioned a figure separately, speaking generally about large Roma celebrations organized outside Serbia: he said that unless the host is exceptionally wealthy, such parties cost between 200,000 and 500,000 euros. That estimate came before he started talking about the Rome celebration and was not presented as the price of that specific event.
Performances at parties like these, Adil adds, typically last eight to nine hours, and sometimes stretch to twelve, since hosts ask performers to stay until the celebration ends.
Who Managed His Career
In the interview, Adil also spoke about who helped him build his career, something he had long avoided discussing.
“My career was managed from the very start by the father of my girlfriend at the time. Dzej was the father of my girlfriend at the time,” the singer said, referring to the late Dzej Ramadanovski, father of his wife Ana, with whom he has two children following a breakup and reconciliation.
Asked about relationships within the scene, Adil kept it brief: “When we end up in the same room, all of us know very well who is who.”
He also touched on the difference between singing at weddings and performing in clubs. “It’s incomparably harder to sing at a wedding. That’s a fact,” he said, explaining that wedding hosts request songs he otherwise rarely performs, while at club and restaurant gigs the setlist stays largely the same, with maybe ten more cover songs than usual.
Once Gold, Now a Fixed Fee
Adil also compared how big performances used to be paid versus how they are paid now. He says a fixed fee is negotiated today, whereas in the past, instead of money, performers were sometimes given expensive gifts, such as a gold crown, the kind the late Saban Saulic once received, or gold coins.
Ahead of this interview, the singer also performed in Zenica, in front of five to six thousand people. He says it was his first concert in that city in twelve to thirteen years.
Reality TV, Then and Now
Adil was also a reality show contestant, back when such projects, as he explains, featured already established or semi-established singers and actors brought in for a specific role, rather than purely for drama. That’s why, he says, shows like “Dvor” or “Farma” shouldn’t be compared to today’s reality formats, whose viewership, in his assessment, has dropped and narrowed down to arguments. He adds that performers’ microphones used to be turned up so the music could be heard, while today it’s the microphone of the contestant picking a fight that gets turned up while a singer is performing, which he believes has stripped music of any real place in those shows.
He also commented on social media, where he isn’t particularly active. He believes there should be legal consequences for baseless insults, arguing that a street argument used to be settled quickly, whereas today anyone can write whatever they want without consequences.
Still, Adil singled out the details of the most expensive gig of his career, the party at the castle above the Vatican, as a standout moment of the conversation, noting that such celebrations rarely reach the public since hosts from Paris and Vienna typically keep them for their own private archives.
