Louis

Louis, born Ljubiša Stojanović in Leskovac on 25 June 1952, was a Serbian singer and songwriter whose music took in jazz, world music, folk and pop-folk. He got his stage name at the age of nine, when he sang Louis Armstrong songs. He went to the secondary music school in Niš and then to the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, where he studied voice and composition with arrangement and folklore.

He joined the Niš association of entertainment and jazz musicians in 1969 and worked as a professional musician from 1970, and he was among the first to bring jazz together with Serbian folk music. In 1971 his modern arrangement of the sevdalinka "U Stambolu na Bosforu" won first prize at the Knjaževac festival, and he also won a pop festival in Japan with a song built on the folk music of south-eastern Serbia.

His first album, "Ne kuni me, ne ruži me, majko", came out in 1982 and sold well, and he sang its title song at Hit parada in 1983. That year he toured the Soviet Union from October to December, and in October 1984 he reached first place on the Yugoslav popularity chart; "Dudi, s puno ljubavi" (1984) went platinum. More albums followed: "Srcem i dušom" (1986), "My Way" I and II (1987), "Evo me opet" (1988), "Hajde da se pomirimo" (1990), the live "Louis (uživo)" (1993), "Louis" (1999), "Pogled iznutra" (2001), "Čarobnjak" (2005) and "Ciganski san" (2008). He sang "Majko, nemoj plakati" at the Zagreb festival in 1988, and in 1994 he was officially recognised as a pioneer of ethno pop.

In 2006 he and Flamingosi won Beovizija with "Ludi letnji ples", then finished second in the Evropesma final with 60 points, four behind No Name, despite getting the most televotes. In 2008 he won the Vrnjačka Banja festival with "Srce ničije". He often played for charity, with a yearly concert in Negotin for children without parents, and in 1985 he gave the takings of a solo concert to hungry children in Ethiopia.

Louis gave his last concert on 22 July 2011 at the club Jež in Sarajevo. He died in a road accident between Feketić and Vrbas on 31 July 2011, aged 59, just as his last album, "The Last King of Balkans", recorded for the Dutch label Snail Records, came out. He was buried on 4 August 2011 at the Zbeg cemetery in Borča, and his son Marko Stojanović Luis is also a musician.