On August 22, the Niš Fortress hosts one of the biggest names in Balkan pop - Dragana Mirković arrives with a concert on the fortress plateau, under the open sky in the heart of southern Serbia. For a Macedonian audience that has sung her songs for decades, this is an event within easy reach, just a short way from the Niš border.

Dragana Mirković, born in Požarevac in 1968, is the best-selling singer from the former Yugoslav space in the nineties - with nearly seven million records sold. She began her career in the eighties as part of the cult collective Južni vetar, and then built an empire of her own. The 1991 album „Dobra devojka", sold in over 700,000 copies, is one of the best-selling records of all time in the Balkans. Hits like „Spasi me samoće", „Kad bi znao kako čeznem", „Milo moje što te nema" and „Simpatija" remained evergreen decades later.

Serbian radio stations declared her „Singer of the Decade" as early as 1993, and in 2008 viewers of the Bulgarian channel Balkanika voted her the most popular singer in the Balkans. She is also known for high-budget music videos and elaborate choreography in the Janet Jackson vein - an element that turned her appearances into a spectacle, not just a concert.

The concert on the Niš Fortress plateau is scheduled for 9 p.m. Tickets are on sale through tickets.rs. For anyone weighing the trip, Niš is one of the closest Serbian cities to the Macedonian border, which makes this show a logical destination for a summer outing.