Lepa Lukic

Lepava Musovic, known professionally as Lepa Lukic, is a Serbian folk singer with a career spanning more than five decades. One of her biggest hits is "Srce je moje violina". Lepava began singing at about the age of ten, circa 1950 in her village. Her professional singing career began in the 1960s, when she recorded duets with singers Mica Stojanovic and Gvozden Radicevic. There are two versions of how Lepa got her solo recording deal. Her version says that on a bus ride to Belgrade in 1967, the composer Petar Tanasijevic was sitting behind her and tapped her shoulder and asked her if she wanted to record as a soloist, which she immediately agreed to. The next day, Tanasijevic offered her the song "Od izvora dva putica", which she recorded along with three other songs for her first album, released in 1967. The other version of the story, as told by Petar Tanasijevic, was that one night in autumn of 1964, on a bus ride to Aleksandrovac, he was sitting in front of Lepa as she sang a song which annoyed him, so he asked her to stop. She looked at him in defiance and continued singing. After they arrived to Belgrade and got off the bus, he asked somebody who that "uncivilized" girl on the bus was. He was told that she was just a "kafana singer". During the concert that night, he was in the audience when Lepa came onto the stage with accordion player Radojka Zivkovic to sing. He said that he shuddered and a chill went down his spine when he heard her voice on stage, even comparing her to popular sevdalinka singer Nada Mamula. After her performance, he found her backstage and congratulated her. He promised to write a song for her. As his version of the story goes, one year later he composed the song "Od izvora dva putica" and thought of her. He contacted her and gave her the song.