For our compatriot Tanya Marković AKA “Cookbeat” can be said freely and without reservation that she is a multifaceted and multitalented person. Her ten-year career is full of various projects and collaborations, especially in the foreign music scene. The start of her production career can be tied to her membership of Ryan Leslie’s “Black Phoenix Beat Club” (BPBC), but she has also been a fitness fan in parallel. Promoting a healthy life, she played basketball for ten years and played for her hometown team in Jagodina. She also works as a fitness trainer and her main hobby is photography. She has her own music studio under the label “Cookbeat Studio CCBMG”, where she provides audio-services in instrumental production, vocal recording and mixing, as well as recording and mastering of the entire project, within the framework of professional cooperation where each project is protected by contract. She releases her musical works (mix-sets lasting from 2 to 4 hrs, as well as a bunch of singles) on all major online streaming platforms (SoundCloud, MixCloud, YouTube, etc.). She also collaborates with many foreign radio stations such as “Boom Bap Radio” and “Dash Radio”, and there are various collaborations with foreign artists (from USA, UK, Europe, Africa …). Her remix “Dessert,” which she was granted license by the original artist and her colleague Dawin to do the remix, has reached over 2.5 million views on YouTube. Such a large number of views on YT for the artist from an inner city only further confirmed her artistic qualities and formalized her status, not only on the domestic but also the international music scene.
alxspirit: To begin with, tell me what are you actually doing?
Cookbeat: Where should I start? Well, let’s just say it’s fitness first, but both fitness and music have started simultaneously. I am a “Certified Fitness Trainer” (degree at “DIF” / Belgrade University of Sport and Physical Culture), and I have been training all my life. On the one hand – I’m into fitness … On the other – music, which has always been my greatest passion. Concerning fitness, I do natural bodybuilding, and as far as music is concerned it’s mostly hip-hop, as I’ve been in it all my life. It started as a passion, and then afterwards – as something more. And since 2009 I have been taking music more seriously. The rest of the time, between those two parallel careers, I do songwriting, whether for singles, whether it’s poetry and prose, inspirational quotes and blogs related to fitness and music, then music reviews, to blogs related to technical stuff, music production, description of instruments, etc. I write about fitness in things related to exercise – from strength to hypertrophy, even group personal training, nutrition and planning that whole lifestyle.
alxspirit: What are your hobbies?
Cookbeat: I am involved in photography, which is more related to “smart-phone” photography, as well as photography with “retro-cameras”, creation of promo-materials for social networks and editing images for various projects and events.
alxspirit: You mentioned social networks. How active are you on social networks?
Cookbeat: I use Instagram the most, and this is where I am most active because it is the most comfortable to me. Through photography and video, much can be conveyed – from shorter tutorials to textual images. I follow general interests and I can see that Instagram is one of the most popular and visited social networks. In addition, of course, I also use Facebook, as well as music services like SoundCloud, and even YouTube.
alxspirit: How did the collaboration with Dawin come about?
Cookbeat: It’s a remix. Dawin came to the big scene with that single as well. It happened that at that moment he did not reach the popularity he has today, so he was open to collaboration, and in that sense he gave me the copyright to remix his tracks. This was followed by various choreographies related to the remix, both here and abroad.
alxspirit: Your remix of Dawin’s song “Dessert” has over 2.5 million views on YouTube, but I’m also interested in what’s happening at your homeland, here in Serbia? Did you have any performances, or any releases, or something like that? What can you tell me about that?
Cookbeat: Shortly after that remix, which came out sometime in 2015, in collaboration with my colleague Željko Ilić, I started working on projects that were more about DJ-ing. I worked as a DJ at dance performances related to his dance school “DC Team”, then promotion at the opening of “C&A” (clothes shop at the VIVO center), as well as many performances and parties in Serbia. This was followed by many other productions, my own, as well as the instrumental “Concealed Essentiality” which ended up on the CD compilation “Femixeta 5.0”, a Belgrade project that supports women’s creative work in music. There have been appearances in Niš as well as on some radio stations that support me. I also collaborated with Branimir Đuričić from the “Dream Team UDC” dance school, with whom I still cooperate today whenever time and obligations permit us.
alxspirit: What can you tell me about your earlier releases?
Cookbeat: I had my first “Fresh From The Kitchen” mixtape sometime in 2010, with basic instrumental arrangements. There were also longer mixtapes of two to four hours that I worked for “Non-Stop” youth television, as well as some foreign clients, which are still available on my MixCloud page. At the moment, the market is always more interested in singles because it’s more accessible to people. People pay more attention to singles than to longer mixes.
alxspirit: Your brief review of the electronic and hip-hop underground scene in Serbia, from your perspective?
Cookbeat: I can’t say much about it because I have always been less in the domestic scene. In a month or so, I’m planning a television project that will open the door to the domestic urban scene, and only then will I get to know the domestic scene a little better. I had a collaboration with a couple of local performers. It’s a lot different from the rest of the world, but again not so much musically. I certainly believe there are people worth mentioning. The scene has changed dramatically since the ’90s, and there are many external factors that influence the development of our scene – from our (dis)engagement, to the lack of accessibility to the public scene, and the lack of support from record companies and organizations that were supposed to promote certain genres.
alxspirit: Who are some of your foreign associates?
Cookbeat: I owe a lot of gratitude to DJ Dash (Dortmund) and his radio station “Eldoradio”, where he runs shows featuring both new and accomplished artists, and in that sense he has already opened his doors to me twice. I collaborated with the American “Smash Haus Music Group”. I was one of the producers for their online catalog. In terms of writing and blogging, I worked for “Kurrent Music” and “HipHopSavvy”.
alxspirit: What’s new in your kitchen? What else are you preparing?
Cookbeat: A lot, in a word. What will come first, I never know. Deadlines are there, but again they are not so fixed. I save a couple of my personal projects and I always have some people waiting for my collaboration. That’s always the case with us artists. We want everything, but there’s not always enough time for everything. I also work for other clients in the field of mixing and mastering. There is also a plan for a larger project in cooperation with my colleague from Belgrade, I hope that to be soon, but I can’t say anything official yet. I’m always active, and anything I can officially post – I post on Instagram, so this will be there as well when the project is official.
alxspirit: How do you respond to your unofficial nickname – “Miss Cookbeat”?
Cookbeat: That’s the first time I hear that. Hahaha. Well, it’s sweet. I have no awareness at all of whether people know anything about me and my work at all, except from the environment of people who do things similar to me and who belong the same culture, but it’s sweet, and I’m glad to see that it’s noticed.
Cookbeat on: Instagram, Facebook, SoundCloud, MixCloud, YouTube.
Photography: Tanya Marković | Video: YouTube/Cookbeat
Note: Interviewed on August 23, 2019. Parts of the interview were used for the article that was first published in the press on September 4, 2019.
alxspirit 