Robert Soko grew up in Zenica, central Bosnia, listening to western music – to rock and roll.
In 1990 he left Bosnia and came to Berlin. He took a job as a taxi driver and started hanging out at the Arcanoa, a punk bar in Berlin’s immigrant quarter Kreuzberg with his Yugo friends. The Arcanoa became their domicile. Soko put on his first parties there.
He played Yugo rock, new wave, punk, ska, the music he had grown up with.
After years of listening and playing western derived rock, punk and ska, Robert Soko found himself returning to his ethnic Balkan music roots, the roots he had rejected as a youth in Bosnia.
He, and the genre he created, BalkanBeats, have come a long way since And people loved it. Women grooved to it. Guys pogoed to it. It was a sensation. The press took notice. From the Arcanoa Soko moved to the Mudd Club in Berlin Mitte. Soko began taking his parties to other cities around Europe, to New York and L.A
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