Draft:Roko Kostadinović

"Sounds"

Roko Kostadinović - Belgrade's youngest & most popular urban style - commercial and house music DJ

Beginning & influences

In nightlife spectrum from being born in June 2001., many things have lead to his life being committed to hospitality and nightclubs. As of 2024, with only 23 years of age, and over 10 years of DJ-ing experience, Roko has lead younger colleagues all over Serbia's capital and international land, including summer seasons in Croatia, Greece, Spain and many more to come. Having extreme amounts of hours put into Belgrade's parties, (~3500 hours of playtime currently) his hands to ear coordination has shined all over Belgrade's centre, including playing on four decks on players, using two controllers at the same time, mixing blindfolded or with his back turned away from music devices, faced to the crowd. His proficiency has drawn younger, more talented names to follow his work (names like Viktor Birach, DJ Daweed being the closest ones, DJ Vuchina, etc..) just like he followed two of very big names in Belgrade's electronic music, DJ & producer Vellkovski (Strahinja Veljović) and ZonB (Miljan Stojanović) Great mentorship that helped pave the way to the fame was with his closest friend & musical colleague Vukan "Nuevo" Škorić, the combination of one's sophisticated electronic sounds and the other's furious rapping and singing has produced over 50 projects sharing the duo's name.

Career

With a humble begining like every big city disc jockey had to go through, Roko wasn't the one to shine for over 5 years Being invited to small venues, helping others organise events and manage the logistics, with his co-founder and close friend Luka Obradović the first project to see the light of club visuals, "TO TI DOĐE 200" was the first event enabling Roko to have residency at the party for over 4 years (still ongoing). The first big name that hosted Roko was club Tag on New year's eve 2018, being only 17 years old he felt the need to continue this career path, committing fully to mixing, having barely finished highschool and later dropping out of college education to chase the perfect balance between his love of electronic music and Serbia's must-have commercial sounds. This combination has been crucial in forming his sound, earlier focusing on house music to now, (2022 & ongoing) having replaced everything in repertoire with symbolic Afro house music, being the only afro genred DJ besides Divolly & Markward. The biggest step in his success was helping the small 4- walled club in Nidri, Lefkada for over 3 years having the summer residency both as a manager and a DJ, traveling around the island and playing music in places where he never dreamt of reaching.

Sound

Being drawn to electronic music production without ever committing to it to this day, his control over the DJ decks that come below his hands are unmatched. Having great experience in playing for different crowds, in different towns has produced his iconic way of mixing old Serbian songs with fresh electronic sounds that made all the clubs remember the name Roko.

Character and social life

All over the 5 year period of professional stage entertainment, none of his beliefs have changed, still no big venues, rejecting all the biggest clubs from Belgrade because of his history of being replaced by lower standard and cheaper per night DJs. Accepting venues only outside of Serbia's borders has lead to this year's summer residency first in Baško polje, Croatia in June, then back to his throne on Lefkada's shores in July. Many have been copying his style of mixing all over social media, taking fame over quality of mixing, his bitterness has changed the way he respects or looks at Belgrade's club management, loving only domestic organizations like Illusions, Footworks, or Exit festival where we hope he can share the stage with bigger names. Along with above mentioned names, no collaborations up to date have been released under Roko's name.