BALKANBEATS - Robert Soko DJ-Set

Robert Soko (BalkanBeats Inc./BA/D) On 12 September, Robert Soko brings his legendary Balkanbeats party series to Gretchen: a night where Balkan brass, Eastern European pop and driving club beats have been coming together since the late 1990s. In the late 1990s, when Berlin was reinventing itself and clubs were more promises than business models, Robert Soko began something that would later become its own universe: music from the former Yugoslavia, Roma brass, turbo-folk and Eastern European pop blended with breakbeats, hip-hop and electronica. Loud, excessive and emotional. Balkanbeats has always also been a piece of diaspora history, with music caught between homesickness and excess, between political fault lines and pure escapism. It is not about museum archives, but about friction. The phrase “Jebo te Kunst” was not marketing back then, but an act of defiance directed against elitist ideas of culture and the notion that certain sounds only work in concert halls. In 2026 especially, this attitude is more relevant than ever. ________ For this event, we offer reduced-price tickets to make culture accessible to people with smaller budgets, too. These allocations are limited and available only through TixforGigs. We trust you to assess your own situation: if you can, please book standard tickets and leave the reduced-price allocations to those who are currently having to save very carefully.