The Creator of the legendary Berlin Balkan Beats has a new party concept: Robert Soko to Arab Beats, where Syrian Refugees to meet German and international visitors, and you can celebrate.
The music is pumping, the booze is flowing and the Syrian refugees try to get to the past for a Moment from the heads. To the rhythm of Arabic Beats, you dance a traditional circle dance from the Middle East. One of them relies on crutches because he’s missing a leg – he is a casualty of war. Many here have seen great suffering and long walks. Now that you have completed your journey, it’s time to celebrate.
“I feel really safe,” says the Syrians Ali Hasan of the DW in front of the Berlin club Bi Nuu, in the Arab-Beats-parties. “From Syria, I came to Istanbul and I didn’t know anyone. Then I came here and now it’s all,” he says with a view to the Celebration. “I just want safety. I’m a peaceful guy, I do not have problems.”
The trauma of the war forget
The atmosphere in Arab Beats reminiscent of Berlin in the 1990s, when a group of Refugees in the Clubs and Bars of the city gathered together to forget about their war traumas with music, dance and alcohol: Bosnians from Ex-Yugoslavia. Like the Bosnians, today, the Syrians, the night life change in Berlin.
No wonder that, with Robert Soko, a co-organizer of the Arab Beats was also the Creator of Balkan Beats. In 1990, two years before the war in Bosnia, was drawn to the now 49-Year-old at the age of 19 years, to Berlin. He was reminded of taxi driver, with other Ex-Yugoslavs, he was at the time in a Kreuzberg Punkbar, a popular meeting place, “from Left, squatters, unnoticed artists, alcoholics, and other Lunatics,” as he.
Robert Soko
There Soko cassettes played with Yugo Punk and New Wave and didn’t have to pay in return for the beer. Through word of mouth, the parties were soon larger. Robert Soko added Gypsy music, soon more and more appeared, until he played sometime in Kreuzberg’s Lido, in front of hundreds of people and his party soon, exporting round the world, from London to Tokyo.
A human pulse
Meanwhile, Robert Soko works with the Sarajevo-born Dutch filmmaker Sergej Kreso on a Film, Kreso makes shooting in Arab Beats, films, DJs and dancers. While he had worked on the project, would have changed the circumstances in Berlin and Europe, said Kreso. “When I started, there was the big Problem with the refugees. A lot of people literally ran through the Balkans, on the same Route as Robert Soko, and I did.”
Robert Soko says he identifies with people in trouble. “With people who have left their homeland and in search of a better future.” This is the most natural human impulse. “And I welcome these people, all these people.”
For about four years in Berlin, a plurality of Arab parties, they are called “attention Hafla”, the “Flying Arabs” or “Arab Song Jam”, a weekly, a very popular Arabic jam session in the Werkstatt der Kulturen in Neukölln.
Rafi Gazani (front) is one of the DJs at the Arab-Beats-parties.
Arab Beats is the latest party series, which is directed not only to the Syrian and Arab refugees, but also the German and international audience. Uros Petkovic is one of the DJs in Arab Beats. The native Serb came in 2016, from Belgrade to Berlin, and Sokos is a Partner at Balkan Beats Sound System.
No Kitsch, modern and cool
“We want to make electronic, Berlin-based DJ Sets with clearly Arabic focus,” says Petkovic. “Not this cheesy Arab Disco, but really in the Berlin-style, modern and cool.” Petkovic’s Partner at the DJ console Rafi Gazani, an extravagant, half-Syrian, half Palestinian engineer, who now lives in Berlin as a DJ and works. “I came out of the Gulf region and discovered my creative side,” says Gazani. “So I started to dig into my soul.” Arab music is the from the Balkans are very similar. “It is as if it is somehow connected.”
Another Parallel to the beginning of the 1990s is the political climate Like at the time, as the right-wing parties like the Republicans won success by whipping up Fear of refugees, today, the AfD Profit from the fate of the largely Syrian people. “It’s always about the Migration on this planet,” says Soko. “We all migrate constantly, so humanity is defined on this planet. This is a never-ending story.” Changes are quite normal. “The only question is how to deal with it. We dance.”
The next Arab Beats Party on the 15th. March 2019 in Lidolino, the party in the basement of the Lido in Berlin-Kreuzberg.