Balkan Beats

What I [Robert Soko] would like to convey to readers in Germany, Europe, and around the world is that Balkan Beats was a wave, a movement, a bundle of synergies, a moment in time, a sunbeam which made us ex-Yugos finally look sexy after all of those crazy, destructive, and pointless Balkan wars of the nineties. And music was the key. I saw that with our Yugoslavian punk rock we could not reach a new level of awareness. Yugo punk was a mere copy of Western musical styles. Nothing against it - I love it - but this is not ours. Turbo-folk is ours, but it is a despicable manifestation. In Yugoslavia of the nineties, turbo-folk was mostly pushed by the socialist regime to distract the nation and hypnotize the masses. It also mirrored and fed the glamorization of war criminals and war profiteers, to some extent. Some of the singers sang about national aspirations, but most of them sang about love and materialism and ficky ficky and fuck me here, fuck me there, your car and my boat – pure escapist bullshit, basically. What was missing was a place in the middle - what I called – and trademarked – Balkan Beats, which strove to preserve the traditional elements and flavors of the Balkans while giving them a new dynamic understandable to the West. And this is what happened. We managed to skyrocket Balkan Beats into a scene, a phenomenon and a genre of “world music”, next to tango, salsa, and reggae - and what have you. This book also deals with my alcoholism; my drug addiction; my rascally misbehavior and gross misconduct; my identity crisis; how my life fell apart at the seams – and then came together again. I don’t want to look stupid in front of people; at the same time I don’t want to present myself as a sleek, sanitized superstar. I am, when it comes down to it, just another Balkan bastard, e basta! Also important is the city of Berlin. Without Berlin, Balkan Beats would never have happened. This book pays tribute to the city that nurtured me in this, my musical adventure of thirty years standing.