New Primitivism

New Primitivism (Serbo-Croatian: Novi primitivizam) was a subcultural movement established in Sarajevo, SR Bosnia-Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia in March 1983. It primarily used music, along with comedy on radio and television, as its form of expression. Its protagonists and followers called themselves the new primitives.

Functioning as a banner that summarizes and encompasses the work of two rock bands Zabranjeno Pušenje and Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors as well as Top lista nadrealista radio segment that eventually grew into a television sketch show, the discourse of New Primitivism was seen as primarily irreverent and humorous.

The movement officially disbanded sometime in 1987, though the bands as well as the television show continued long afterwards.

Characteristics

Basing itself on the spirit of Bosnian ordinary populace outside of the cultural mainstream, the movement was credited for introducing the jargon of Sarajevo mahalas (brimming with slang and Turkish loanwords) into the official Yugoslav public scene. Many of the New Primitivism songs and sketches involve stories of small people — coalmine workers, petty criminals, provincial girls, etc. — being placed in unusual and absurd situations. There are comparisons between Monty Python's Flying Circus show and New Primitives methods, as they share the short sketch form and utilize absurdity as means of eliciting laughs from an audience. The embodiment of New Primitivism is a youth who both reads challenging works such as Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit, but also does not mind getting into fistfights.

The movement's protagonists had a specific view of New Primitivism. Perhaps the most prominent of them, Nele Karajlić, explicated it as being "created within clearly defined historical coordinates, both spatially and temporally, at the precise midpoint between the spot where Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 and the spot where the Olympic flame was lit in February 1984 while temporally, it took place sometime during the period between Tito's death in May 1980 and the beginning of the Agrokomerc Affair in 1987" and seeing it as "resistance to any form of establishment - cultural, social, and political - not just the rock'n'roll one that dominated Sarajevo at the time with 'dinosaur' bands like Bijelo Dugme and Indexi, which the new primitives held in contempt to a certain extent".^[1]

The movement's "chief ideologue" Malkolm Muharem referred to New Primitivism simply as "the first Sarajevan bullet to hit its target since Princip assassinated Ferdinand in 1914".

Origin of the term

The movement's name — New Primitivism — got introduced as a mock reaction to two then-current movements: New Romanticism in global pop music and Neue Slowenische Kunst in the Yugoslav constituent republic of SR Slovenia. On one hand, the term New Primitivism was a clear anti-reference to New Romantic, as the Sarajevo lads sought to be anything but romantic and sugarsweet while on the other hand, they also wanted to emphasize the stereotypes encountered in many popular Yugoslav jokes about Bosnians and Slovenians – the former portrayed as raw, unsophisticated, dim-witted, and open-hearted, and the latter presented as stiff, cold, serious, distant, and calculated.

History

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a generation of kids from the Sarajevo neighbourhood of Koševo, all born in early to mid-1960s, was coming up. Raised within upper-middle-class families inhabiting post-World War II apartment buildings typical of communist Yugoslavia, their interests included music, football, and movies. They soon converged on music as their main activity and simultaneous with entering high school started forming bands despite possessing very limited musical skills. Most of their musical influences were found in the Western popular culture - from early ones such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Lou Reed, the Rolling Stones, The Who, etc. to those found later on the emerging punk scene.

By early 1980, the kids were able to adapt a cellar in the 19 Fuada Midžića Street low-rise apartment building into makeshift rehearsal space where they held band practices, chamber plays, even an odd fashion show. Initially very informal with irregular rehearsals and frequently changing lineups (often through swapping band members), by 1981 the bands — named Zabranjeno Pušenje and Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors — took on a more serious note. Adopting garage/punk rock sensibility, they started devoting more attention to songwriting and began playing small clubs around town. In parallel, from May 1981, some of the people from both bands got a chance to collaborate on Top lista nadrealista, a comedy segment on Primus radio show that aired weekly, Saturday mornings, on Radio Sarajevo's channel two.

Forming a movement

The idea to create a movement as an umbrella entity encompassing their entire activity had been tossed about for months during the second part of 1982 and early 1983 between the people in and around Elvis J. Kurtović & His Meteors — the band's manager Malkolm Muharem, its main lyricist and mascot Elvis J. Kurtović, and its singer Rizo Kurtović.

Additional notable members of the movement included dr. Nele Karajlić, mr. Sejo Sexon, Dražen Ričl, Boris Šiber, Zenit Đozić, and others from the Sarajevo neighbourhood of Koševo. Along the way, individuals outside of the Koševo milieu, such as Branko "Đuro" Đurić, joined in and also became prominent. Despite being a bit older and not from the same neighbourhood, film director Emir Kusturica (who was already well-established with his award-winning movie Sjećaš li se Doli Bel?) was an associate and friend of the crew; although his movies can not be directly associated with the movement, their spirit certainly shares some sentiment with New Primitivism.

The movement's unofficial unveiling was said have taken place at an Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors gig in Sarajevo's CEDUS club venue during early March 1983. Also playing the gig was Zabranjeno Pušenje. Influenced by movies like 1979's Quadrophenia that portray the youth scene of London with subcultures like mods, rockers, and teddy boys, the guys from Koševo tried to create their own local version of that.^[2] The formal introduction of the new entity changed nothing in the internal group dynamic as they all continued functioning like a neighbourhood gang of friends, but it gave the press something to latch onto and made it easier to market the bands outside of the city. By his own admission, Muharem used the movement "to create an impression to those in Belgrade and Zagreb that there's something more going on in Sarajevo than there actually is".^[3]

In addition to music and comedy on radio, the lads decided to expand their modes of expression now that they functioned as a movement — attempting to come up with a clothing style to associate with New Primitivism. The movement's unofficial look was thus born with a démodé style consisting of waist tight bell-bottom pants, plaid suit jackets, thin golden necklace worn above the shirt, and pointy shoes (the so-called špicoke) — similar to the 1970s leisure suit look — which the lads adopted from petty hoodlums and small-time smugglers seen around Baščaršija selling, though not wearing, clothing items such as Levi's 501 jeans that were either smuggled in from Italy or counterfeit locally in Yugoslavia. Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors especially embraced this throwback look, with young crowds soon showing up to their club gigs dressed this way. Meanwhile, Karajlić came up with the movement's unofficial creed: "Tuđe hoćemo, svoje nemamo" ("What's not ours, we want; because ours, we haven't got."), a parody on one of the often used political slogans of the communist period: "Tuđe nećemo, svoje ne damo." ("What's not ours, we don't want; ours, we won't give up on.").

One of the very first activities on movement's behalf was writing an open letter to Sarajevo's own Goran Bregović, the best known and the most established rock musician in Yugoslavia, who was at the moment going through a well-documented creative and commercial crisis with his band Bijelo Dugme's latest studio effort getting poor reviews and selling underwhelmingly, not to mention constant reports of infighting and vocalist Željko Bebek's imminent departure. Dripping with jovial sarcasm and backhanded compliments, the new primitives' letter invited Bregović to join them, offering him a fresh start along with a creative reset.

Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors get the ball rolling

Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors were the first to establish a bit of a buzz on the scene. Promoted by Muharem, who in addition to the band's business side also handled many of its creative aspects, EJK&HM were not only gigging in clubs around Sarajevo, but in 1983 also started playing clubs nationwide, in Belgrade (SKC), Zagreb (Kulušić and Lapidarij), Rijeka (Palah), Pula, etc., getting enthusiastic reactions from young club crowds everywhere. Though their sound was hardly original with straight covers of the Rolling Stones, The Who, etc. dominating the repertoire, EJK&HM live shows were a unique mixture of rock'n'roll with elements of performance art and stand-up comedy, full of youthful exuberance with Elvis J. Kurtović, the band's lyrics writer and mascot, constantly interacting with the crowd between songs. They mostly played student clubs with their promotional activities strictly limited to printed press.^[5] Muharem would get them publicity by talking up New Primitivism and ensuring journalists from youth-oriented papers — Džuboks and Reporter from Belgrade, Polet from Zagreb, and Mladina from Ljubljana — have the 'right angle' for the story while the band members would contribute by providing colourful interviews and quotable sound bytes often delivered in form of a manifesto.

In late July 1983, the fledgling band received a huge boost after Start, a Yugoslavia-wide high-circulation weekly newsmagazine in the vein of Playboy and Lui, deployed its journalist Goran Gajić to Sarajevo for a story on the unconventional group.^[4] Published as a two-page spread headlined "Meteorski uspon Elvisa J. Kurtovića" (Elvis J. Kurtović's Meteoric Rise) in a magazine that's circulated in 200,000 copies, the story was by far the biggest media exposure the band had gotten up to that point. Building upon talking points already well established and developed by Muharem and Kurtović through the country's youth print media, the Start piece was extremely affirmative and flattering for the EJK&HM youngsters — proclaiming them to be "the next important thing in Yugoslav rock".^[4] Along with a new batch of the band members' trademark off-the-wall soundbytes sprinkled throughout, the article also re-published — on Muharem's insistence despite Kurtović's apparent opposition^[4] — their sarcastic open letter to Goran Bregović that thus got a much bigger audience.^[6]

Riding the wave of publicity generated by the Start piece, Muharem acted quickly in fall 1983 by ambitiously booking Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors for a double bill concert with D' Boys at Sarajevo's Đuro Đaković Hall, an all-seater venue holding almost thousand people.^[4] The show sold out quickly and was a smashing success, a remarkable triumph for a band that at the time hadn't been on television yet and still had no studio recordings.^[5]

Muharem soon arranged for the band to get some time in Akvarijus studio in Belgrade during December 1983 in order to record material for their debut album whose production was originally supposed to be handled by Peđa Vranešević of Laboratorija Zvuka, but was eventually done by Goran Vejvoda as well as Elvis J. Kurtović and Muharem themselves. Margita Stefanović from Katarina II made a guest appearance on synthesizer during the album recording sessions as her band was recording its own debut album in the same studio at the same time.

EJK&HM and Muharem soon agreed a record contract with ZKP RTLj and their debut album Mitovi i legende o Kralju Elvisu came out in February 1984 right in the middle of Winter Olympics being held in the city. Figuring that promoting the album during the Olympics would get them extra attention due to all the press and other visitors gathered in the city, EJK&HM held a press junket that largely turned shambolic^[7] as well as a series of club gigs at Trasa.^[8] They also made one of their first proper TV appearances, lip-synching "Baščaršy Hanumen" on Hit meseca (Yugoslav counterpart to Top of the Pops) while hamming it up for the cameras. The album release was followed by a promotional club tour of bigger Yugoslav cities, but since the record was selling poorly with less than 15,000 copies sold, the tour ended quickly and the deflated band members returned to Sarajevo.

Malkolm Muharem soon quit working with the band.

Das ist Walter released and Top lista nadrealista starts on television

A few months later, in April 1984, Zabranjeno Pušenje's debut album Das ist Walter came out for Jugoton in limited issue of 3,000 copies, clearly indicative of the label's extremely low commercial expectations. Recorded in immensely modest circumstances and over an unreasonably long period of 7 months due to reasons beyond their control, the album features punk and garage rock sensibility with songs referencing local toponyms and social strata such as an obscure Sarajevo movie theater, Bosnian coal miners, local thugs from various city neighbourhoods, etc. Its initial sales were nothing to speak of.

Simultaneous with the album release, Top lista nadrealista moved to television as a weekly sketch comedy programme. The shows started airing on 2 June 1984 on TV Sarajevo's channel two as well as on JRT exchange for the rest of the country. Despite being placed in milieu well removed from their natural setting — their comedy sketches were essentially fillers in-between folk music numbers — the show eventually proved a good vehicle for reaching a wider audience. After the opening few episodes that were largely met with indifference, the show started gaining a bit of an audience outside of its Sarajevo youth core.

This gradually increased viewership of Top lista nadrealista had a positive effect on Das ist Walter sales. Riding the buzz created by the TV show as well as the growing popularity of the "Zenica Blues" track (cover of Johnny Cash's "San Quentin"), Karajlić's and Sexon's blend of punk and local storytelling began finding an increasingly receptive audience months after its initial release.^[9] No one was more surprised at this turn of events than the label itself as it was forced to order multiple new batches of the album copies on records and cassettes.

New Primitivism as a term also started catching on as Yugoslav media began using it when referencing the band's style or when talking about the television show. Also, another of the more popular songs on the album, "Anarhija All Over Baščaršija" (Anarchy All Over Baščaršija), explicitly mentions New Primitives, bringing them up in the context of "violent locals from Vratnik who listen to Yugoslav folk music, attack hippies, and are repulsed by the West".

On 15 September 1984 as Top lista nadrealista episodes resumed broadcasting following the summer break, the band played Sarajevo's Dom mladih on a bill that also included Bajaga i Instruktori in front of a raucous crowd of 4,500. The band was officially out of the clubs and now playing larger halls. In October, Zabranjeno Pušenje went to Belgrade for a show at SKC where they were surprised to discover their newly found popularity. In addition to having to add an extra show in the same venue the next day due to popular demand, they also started getting recognized by kids on the street. The two SKC shows launched the band on an extensive and successful Yugoslavia-wide tour; on 4 November 1984 they sold out Hala sportova, a sports arena in Belgrade with 6,000 in attendance. They would end up playing over 60 concerts on that tour.

In parallel, the album sales ended up hitting the 100,000 mark while the term New Primitives also became well established in the process. However, the increased profile also meant increased scrutiny as Karajlić and the band were about to find out.

The 'Marshall' affair...

At the Rijeka concert before a crowd of some two and a half thousand people on 27 November 1984, the band inadvertently set off a firestorm of controversy.

During soundcheck before the show, the band's amplifier went bust to which Karajlić jokingly exclaimed: "Crk'o maršal" ("Marshall has croaked!"), followed by a pause before adding: "Mislim na pojačalo" ("The amplifier, that is") (a switcheroo remark about the 1980 death of Marshal Tito), getting a chuckle from a small group of people within the earshot. Liking the reaction he got during soundcheck, he decided to start the actual concert by delivering the same joke as explanation why the show is starting late.

There was hardly any negative reaction during the concert or immediately after it, and the band continued its tour with a triumphant concert at Ledena dvorana in Zagreb in front of 12,000 fans on 10 December 1984. Though a few write-ups mentioning Karajlić's marshal quip appeared in neutral tone in Zagreb-based papers leading up to the concert, it would be the op-ed piece by journalist Veljko Vičević in Rijeka-based daily newspaper Novi list that started the avalanche with far-reaching consequences. Headlined "Opak dim Zabranjenog pušenja" (Zabranjeno Pušenje's Sinister Smoke), Vičević strongly denounces the band for lack of morals and stepping over the line, and additionally reproaches the group members for things they said in the past such as "Tuđe hoćemo/nećemo, svoje nemamo".^[11]

This was the initial stone and the signal for numerous bodies of the communist system to criticize the band (as well as, by proxy, new primitives and Top lista nadrealista) on various grounds. The controversy also served to open another front in the row between two internal factions wrestling for the control of SR Croatia's SSO, the provincial branch of the Yugoslav Socialist Youth League (SSOJ), itself a youth wing of the country's one and only political party — Yugoslav Communist League (SKJ). Since the Rijeka concert was organized by the local SSO in Rijeka, the rival faction within the organization used Karajlić's Marshal quip and the resulting media scandal to smear the organizing group.

By January 1985, news of the Rijeka flap made it back to Sarajevo where more journalists, most notably Pavle Pavlović in As newspaper, were ready to denounce the band further. In his piece headlined "Otrovni dim Zabranjenog pušenja" (Zabranjeno Pušenje's Poisonous Smoke), Pavlović labels Karajlić's statement "an insensitive association and piece of sarcasm that insults right to the heart". The columnist then trails off to even take issue ideologically with the humorous sound bytes in radio jingles promoting the December 1984 release of the Top lista nadrealista radio material on audio cassette by Diskoton. He continues by predicting that "the young band's life span will be little longer than that of a butterfly" before adding that "sadly even such short time is enough to indoctrinate the fun-seeking kids with new thoughts, including continuous ridicule of everything that we've created so far as well as banal, low-brow tampering with the basic tenet of the People's Liberation War - Tuđe nećemo, svoje ne damo". Pavlović concludes by wondering "if it's finally time to extinguish Zabranjeno Pušenje's poisonous smoke for good".^[12][13]

In a communist country where verbal offence was defined as a crime and as such punishable by law, Karajlić and other band members were summoned for dozens of police questionings. Communist Yugoslavia had its sacred cows and public criticism or ridicule, either veiled or open, of Tito, the party, or the People's Liberation War was grounds for severe punishment. Karajlić ended up being taken to court with a criminal charge that was eventually reduced to a misdemeanor one in a legal process that stretched on for years.

...and its consequences

However, an even bigger problem was that Zabranjeno Pušenje became blacklisted as a result of the Marshal episode. While not banned outright, their songs were taken off radio playlists, their access to television was restricted, and more than 30 of their concerts in early 1985 ended up getting cancelled due to pressure from above that manifested itself through sudden introduction of administrative obstacles such as denying permits for the venues on the day of the show and so on.

In January 1985, new primitives experienced multiple bizarre manifestations of this sudden anti-Zabranjeno Pušenje hysteria in Sarajevo.

Throughout every January, during winter school break, TV Sarajevo's daytime schedule consisted of various kids' shows reruns, and one such show happened to feature the band's hit song "Zenica Blues". Not being aware of that, the technician running the control room that day let the show air by mistake. Since Zabranjeno Pušenje were essentially banned from the station, TV Sarajevo executives found it sufficiently necessary to apologize for the oversight later that day in the station's central daily newscast Dnevnik 2 and also to issue temporary suspensions both to the technician as well as to the executive in charge.^[14]

By association, the hysteria also spread to Top lista nadrealista activities. While promoting the freshly released audio cassette in Sarajevo containing the best of compilation of 'Top lista nadrealista' radio segment, there was such a stigma attached to the group's activity in the city that not a single journalists was brave enough to show up at the promotional press event at Muzikalije record store in Štrosmajerova Street, fearing that being seen there would be interpreted as public show of support to beleaguered Karajlić and the rest of his mates.^[15]

Due to all the problems and hassle suddenly associated with organizing a Zabranjeno Pušenje gig, local promoters began avoiding the band despite clear demand for their concerts. Finding itself increasingly isolated in addition to seeing its commercial momentum slip away, the band decided to invest all its energy into organizing a single high-profile gig that would hopefully as much as anything serve as statement of encouragement for all potential promoters not to shy away from the band. Still, despite selling out Hala Pionir in Belgrade on Saturday, 16 February 1985 with more than 7,000 people in attendance, the concert didn't have the desired media effect and the band's downward slide continued with gigs now completely dried up.

Facing insurmountable obstacles, the group gave in temporarily, deciding to lay low for some time while some of the members went back to making Top lista nadrealista on Radio Sarajevo. However, in March 1985, the authorities put an end to that too, removing the segment for good from the radio schedule.

Just as the career of one New Primitivism band, Zabranjeno Pušenje, was suddenly spiraling downhill, another band from the same milieu, Plavi Orkestar, was getting big.

Other bands that at one time or another identified with New Primitives include: Bombaj Štampa, Plavi Orkestar, Dinar and Crvena Jabuka, although they quickly moved on to more commercial and communicative forms of expression.

Soldatski bal hits it big

Though the torch of New Primitivsm had primarily been carried by Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors and Zabranjeno Pušenje, other bands were also associated with the movement.

After splitting with Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors following the lacklustre reception of their debut album, crafty manager Malkolm Muharem switched over to another local Sarajevo outfit — Plavi Orkestar — a band that had also been gigging on the city's student club scene for some time already and was now looking to take the next step by recording and releasing a studio album. Though also starting out as a garage/punk rock group that often crossed paths with Pušenje and EJK (Orkestar's bassist Ćera I even played on Pušenje's demo recordings before joining Orkestar while the bands also often held club gigs together), over time, especially after achieving stable lineup of Loša, Pava, Ćera I, and Ćera II in early summer 1983, Plavi Orkestar moved to more conventional forms of expression within Yugoslav general cultural context. In practice, that meant pretty much abandoning punk in favour of pop and openly flirting with Yugoslav commercial folk in their sound. Though opening doors for them commercially, this practice somewhat placed them on the fringes of New Primitivism. Compared to the two main new primitive outfits, their stage appearance was far more orderly and their lyrics were less cerebral.

Nevertheless, Muharem saw a new opportunity with the four fresh-faced lads each of whom just turned 20 having recently returned to the city from their respective year-long mandatory army services.^[16] In fall 1984 when Muharem took the youngsters under his wing, the band barely existed as its main creative duo — frontman Saša Lošić and guitarist Mladen "Pava" Pavičić — were not on speaking terms and Pava left the band. Not deterred, Muharem took the remaining three members to Zagreb and through personal connections got Parni Valjak's Husein "Hus" Hasanefendić to record a few more demos with them, while also managing to secure a pre-contract with Jugoton.

The news of the pre-contract signing brought Pavičić back into the fold and by January 1985 all four were off to Zagreb to record in SIM studio. The album named Soldatski bal came out in February 1985 and instantly created a sensation all over Yugoslavia, placing the young band among the most successful Yugoslav rock acts like Bijelo Dugme and Riblja Čorba. Muharem essentially stayed true to the promotional techniques he previously implemented with Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors — print media and soundbytes — though the sarcastic bravado of EJK&HM was now replaced with Plavi Orkestar's dreamy boyish charm. However, this time it had a tremendous commercial effect as the band embarked on a Yugoslavia-wide tour in late summer 1985 with scenes of thousands of screaming and fainting teenage girls repeated in town after town.^[17] Named 'Bolje biti pijan nego star' (Better Drunk than Old) after the band's hit track, the tour included 140 concerts in sports arenas and other large venues throughout the country. Muharem additionally hired journalist-turned-filmmaker Goran Gajić to shoot a tour documentary thus reuniting with him two years after Gajić wrote a glowing summer 1983 piece on Elvis J. Kurtović in Start. Furthermore, Gajić directed a video for Plavi Orkestar's hit track "Kad mi kažeš, paša" featuring actresses Tanja Bošković, Sonja Savić, journalist Mirjana Bobić-Mojsilović, and TV personality Suzana Mančić. The album ended up selling 550,000 copies. Though with unexpected and sudden success the band's sensibility quickly transformed even more into folkish pop as they almost morphed into a sugary boy band, many media outlets still presented them as a new primitive group, giving the movement unprecedented promotion in Yugoslavia during the first half of 1985.

Reaction and reception

Initial wider media reaction to the movement wasn't positive. During New Primitivism's nascent stage, following the summer 1983 double-bill concert by Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors and Plavi Orkestar at Belgrade's SKC, a blurb appeared in the high-circulation Politika daily reviewing the show, but also discussing the movement in general. In his negative review, journalist Ljuba Trifunović placed New Primitivsm in the same context with commercial folk singer Lepa Brena's then current flirtation with rock sound ("naïve rock"), expressing disappointment that "both appeared precisely at a time when we thought Yugoslav rock finally became immune to such diseases due to new wave effectively washing away the so-called 'shepherd's rock' and all of its derivatives". Seeing New Primitivsm in continuity with several past offerings from the Sarajevo musical scene such as composer Nikola Borota Radovan's opus, Jutro, early Bijelo Dugme, and Milić Vukašinović's collaboration with Hanka Paldum, Trifunović felt that adjective "new" was entirely superfluous in the movement's name: "Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors and Plavi Orkestar are representatives of this renewed and stripped-down primitivsm, and even if some inconsequential differences do exist when comparing the two bands' interpretative dilettantism (with EJK&HM coming out on top), what's really depressing is their absolute creative pathos embodied in the creed 'let's be ourselves' - primitive Balkanoids".^[18]

As the movement got more profiled in late 1983 and especially throughout 1984 with the emergence of Zabranjeno Pušenje's debut album and the start of Top lista nadrealista on television, it began getting better media notices.

In July 1984, rock critic Darko Glavan wrote a detailed opinion piece on New Primitivism in general as well as EJK&HM and Zabranjeno Pušenje specifically. Expressing mild approval, he summarized his personal acceptance of the movement: "If someone likes them, I'm not going to dissuade them, however, if someone doesn't like them, I'm not going to attempt convincing them otherwise". Furthermore, while noting new primitives are deserving of media attention, he wondered whether they're getting too much publicity because "they are terrific as an added flavourful spice to a developed and varied rock scene, but can hardly function as the dominant trend".^[19] Focusing on EJK&HM, he labelled them "Bosnia's answer to Sha Na Na", before proclaiming them an acceptable form of entertainment for the general masses and a welcome break from incoherent art rock pretentiousness. Though adding it's hard to believe this constitutes strong enough basis for a classic rock career, citing their unwillingness to freshen up their repetitive jokes and yucks as a concern for their long term career prospects.^[19] Glavan was more upbeat about Pušenje, finding them to be "more musical, more talented, and in the context of an LP, simply stronger than EJK&HM". Comparing Pušenje to The Clash in addition to extolling their artistic ambition that "saves them from becoming one-dimensional caricatures and additionally invokes locally flavoured stylized neorealism of Emir Kusturica's Sjećaš li se Doli Bel?", Glavan felt that, despite occasionally failing to properly articulate their inventiveness, the band has a fresh voice and a couple of great tracks off their debut album.^[19]

Goran Bregović referred to New Primitivism as "the only authentic Yugoslav answer to punk".

Novelist Miljenko Jergović considered it "a general cultural emancipatory movement that was supposed to rid the Bosnians of their eternal inferiority complex towards Zagreb and Belgrade".^[20]

In his scathing 1993 rebuke of the movement, Muhidin Džanko, a professor at the University of Sarajevo's Faculty of Philosophy, labeled New Primitivism an "exceptionally anti-Islamic movement" that "thanks to the charisma of its protagonists, managed to directly obstruct and even eliminate the national feelings of the Bosnian Muslim youth, majority of whom are proud members of the 'new primitive nation'". He furthermore saw the poetics of New Primitivism to be rooted in its specific language containing "supposed speech patterns and parlance of the Sarajevo čaršija and mahalas", before rejecting it as a "cheap trick meant to lampoon the traditional verbal expression of Sarajevo Muslims and degrade their Oriental lexicology".^[21]

Zoran "Cane" Kostić, the Partibrejkers frontman, wasn't a fan of the movement; in 1997 he mentioned it in passing during an interview: "Bosnians (Plavi Orkestar and Crvena Jabuka) took over Belgrade sometime around 1986 and it was because of these raucous new primitive guys that they were able to pull that off. They were their Trojan Horses. I never got into that new primitive thing precisely because I saw something else in it. I mean, in the end, their schtick enabled all these dumb bands such as Valentino".^[22]

Legacy

New Primitivism as a sub-cultural movement retained prominence well after its demise.

To many it also gained added relevance in the context of breakup of Yugoslavia. Books like 2013's Shake, Rattle and Roll: Yugoslav Rock Music and the Poetics of Social Critique written by Dalibor Mišina, assistant professor of sociology at Lakehead University, devote a significant portion to the study of New Primitivism's overall significance in the last decade of SFR Yugoslavia's existence, arguing that the country could've survived had it adopted values propagated by New Primitivism and similar genres as its new cultural model.^[23]

Asked in 2012 whether New Primitivism was a political or a cultural movement, Nele Karajlić said:

“

It was a fuckabout that got taken a little too seriously in the end. It was created as our answer to global musical trends that the Western music industry was manufacturing and launching in regular intervals in order to sell more records. Whenever there's a lull in sales, the industry comes up with something called, say, New Romanticism, for example. And then, a band appears and it's called Ultravox, for example, so we all cut our hair like Ultravox and we buy that thing for a year or year and a half. And then it's time for New Something Else, and the same cycle is repeated over again..... As sensitive and receptive consumers of pop-culture we quickly realized the whole thing is a sham so we decided to "join" the musical industry by coming up with our own movement. New Primitivism would've been genius had it been taken over and fostered by a serious conceptual artist willing to invest at least as much energy in it as those Slovenian dudes did in their Neue Slowenische Kunst. However, speaking objectively, that was impossible because the guys in NSK took their thing seriously while we never got past the fucking around stage..... I should also add that the biggest difference between New Primitivism and NSK was the fact that "old primitivism" tangibly existed while the "Altslowenische Kunst", strictly speaking, never did.[24][25]

”

Discussing the interest New Primitivism has been getting from social scientific circles, Elvis J. Kurtović wrote in his online column in 2013:

“

Once in a blue moon, I'll get a call from someone who says they're a researcher working at some university and they want to ask me questions about New Primitivism. My immediate reaction is to fuck with them. However when they later send me a nicely bound hardcover book I must say I'm filled with pride. Nothing gives me more satisfaction then seeing 30-year-old crap I wrote purely out of spite, indolence, or malevolence, now translated into English and dissected by serious people for deeper meaning.[26]

”

See also

• Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors
• Zabranjeno Pušenje
• Top lista nadrealista
• SFR Yugoslav pop and rock scene
• Punk rock in Yugoslavia
• New wave music in Yugoslavia

References