Karleusa Concert in Lucani Canceled a Second Time
Jelena Karleusa's concert in the center of Lucani was canceled for the second time in a month, after residents spent hours protesting outside the House of Culture over public money spent on the show.
People gathered for hours outside the House of Culture in central Lucani before the scheduled start time. Jelena Karleusa’s concert had been announced for 8 PM on Sunday, September 20, and while the stage in front of the building waited for the performance, the square filled with a different kind of sound: chants of “Pumpaj, pumpaj,” slogans against President Aleksandar Vucic and, according to the citizens’ group One Team from the local Assembly, the song “Izadji mala.”
After roughly an hour and a half of waiting, Karleusa left the area set up for the performance and the concert was called off. It is the second time in a month that the same scene has played out on the same square. Police were present in large numbers but did not intervene.
How many people were actually there
The number depends on who you ask. N1, citing a statement from One Team, reports several hundred residents gathered across the wider city center and several dozen people inside the fenced-off area right in front of the stage. Vreme and Nova.rs, for their part, put the crowd inside that fenced area at around twenty, meaning that even if the show had gone ahead, the audience would have been fairly modest for a performer of Karleusa’s stature.
What all the sources agree on is that the singer spent about an hour and a half in the area set aside for the concert, that no one got into a physical altercation, and that once it was all over, the stage stood empty.
Who is paying Karleusa
This is where the story gets complicated. The first date, scheduled for August 29, was supposed to be paid for by the municipal Cultural Center in Lucani, and on that point N1, Vreme and Nova.rs now agree: the amount was around 35,000 euros. Nova.rs itself, however, reported a different figure on August 29, the day the first concert was canceled, citing the same One Team group: 3.2 million dinars from the municipal budget. Converted at the standard exchange rate, that comes to around 27,300 euros, not the 30,000 a rough, imprecise conversion would suggest, and not the 35,000 euros other sources cite today. Whether this is the same amount presented two different ways, or two separate offers altogether, cannot be determined from the available reporting.
For the second date, the one that also fell through last night, Vreme and Nova.rs report that the performance was paid for by a local company, at a cost of around 30,000 euros. One Team claims something else entirely: that the money came from a private individual from Lucani whose name has not been disclosed. As far as is known, neither version has been officially confirmed by the municipality itself.
When the first date was canceled in late August, One Team did not mince words about its satisfaction:
Thanks to the public and to the citizens’ group One Team, the punishment for our ears and the extraction of 30,000 euros from our budget, known as Jelena Karleusa, have been canceled.
At the time, the same group also claimed the concert had been organized “in secrecy,” with no public announcement of the venue or the terms of the performance. Three weeks later, the scenario repeated itself almost detail for detail: a new date was announced, the square filled with protesters again, and the singer left without singing a single song.
Lucani is thus becoming a rare example of a town where, twice in a row, the same dispute over the same performer and the same public money has ended the same way, decided by the square, not by the stage. Who will pay Karleusa’s fee next time, and whether that will be known before the stage is even set up, remains an open question, much as One Team put it back in August: under a veil of secrecy.
