On 30 September 2026 it will be exactly thirty-five years since Toma Zdravkovic died, and that is the date Sava Centar has booked for a memorial concert called "Pesme moje... vi za mene zivite". It starts at 8pm, with singers from across the regional scene performing his songs.

Zdravkovic is a case the Balkan music business produced exactly once. Born in Pecenjevce near Leskovac, he lived the way he sang, and left behind material that people born three decades after his death still know. "Kafana je moja sudbina", "Dotak'o sam dno zivota", "Prokleta nedelja" and "Eh Branka, Branka" do not survive because somebody keeps putting them on the radio. They survive because every generation finds its own reason to sing them. He mostly wrote the lyrics himself and they are autobiographical - unreturned love, and the kafana as the place where a life gets served out. That is the difference between a hit and a standard.

Zdravkovic's family, his wife Gordana Goca Zdravkovic included, is travelling to Serbia for the event, which turns a routine tribute concert into something closer to a family commemoration with an audience. The organisers say some of the biggest names on the regional scene will perform his songs, with Lola Radio backing the night.

Sava Centar makes sense as a room for this. It was built for congresses and big concerts, with acoustics that hold both a full orchestra and a voice with no accompaniment, and Zdravkovic is a writer whose songs work in either setting. The question hanging over every tribute concert is the same: is this covering, or is it interpretation. With material of this calibre, you hear the difference from the first verse.

Tickets through tickets.rs start at 2,550 dinars, about 1,340 denars. For Macedonians who hear his songs at every slava, that is far cheaper than Sava Centar usually implies.