New Primitivism
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New Primitivism (
Functioning as a banner that summarizes and encompasses the work of two rock bands Zabranjeno Pušenje and Elvis J. Kurtović & His Meteors as well as the 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 some time in 1987, although the bands and television show continued for a few more years after that — Elvis J. Kurtović & His Meteors until 1988, Zabranjeno Pušenje until 1990 and Top lista nadrealista until 1991.
Characteristics
Basing itself on the spirit of the Bosnian ordinary populace outside of the cultural mainstream, the movement was credited with introducing the jargon of Sarajevo
The movement's protagonists had a specific view of New Primitivism. Perhaps the most prominent of them,
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".[2]
Origin of the term
The movement's name was introduced as a mock reaction to two early 1980s pop-culture movements:
History
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a generation of kids from the Sarajevo neighbourhood of
By early 1980, the kids were able to adapt a cellar at the 19 Fuada Midžića Street
1982–1983: 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 individuals 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 Petranović—who had come up with the New Primitivism Manifesto printed in 1982 in a local fanzine.[3]
Additional notable members of the movement included
The movement's wider unofficial unveiling was said to have taken place at an Elvis J. Kurtović & 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
In addition to music and radio comedy, 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
During summer 1983, after getting back from an out-of-town gig somewhere, we went to our favourite
TV Sarajevo (where of course no one ever heard of us), at Diskoton (where they were also clueless as to who we are), before finally resorting to asking about us from kafana to kafana and eventually ending up at Dedan, leaving a phone number with Đuro. This confirmed to us once more what we had already picked up on during our out-of-town gigs—that people outside of the city are taking our braggadocios and bombastic proclamations in the youth print about being the 'kings of Sarajevo' quite literally and quite seriously. In reality we were complete unknowns. Media outlets in Sarajevo didn't give two shits about us, but we noticed that our embellished stories found a receptive audience in youth print media from other Yugoslav cities. They especially lapped up our tales of this 'great new movement in Sarajevo called New Primitivism'.[6]
-Elvis J. Kurtović on the band's initial promotional strategy.
One of the first activities on movement's behalf was writing an open letter to Sarajevo's own Goran Bregović, the best known and most established Yugoslav rock musician 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, in addition to reports of band members' infighting and vocalist Željko Bebek's imminent departure. Dripping with jovial sarcasm and backhanded compliments, the new primitives' letter invites Bregović to join them, offering him a fresh start along with creative reset.
1983–1984: Elvis J. Kurtović & His Meteors get the ball rolling
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.[6] 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 affirms and flatters the EJK&HM youngsters—proclaiming them to be "the next important thing in Yugoslav rock".[6] 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[6]—their sarcastic open letter to Goran Bregović that thus got a much bigger audience.[8]
Riding the wave of publicity generated by the Start piece, Muharem acted quickly in the fall of 1983 by ambitiously booking Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors for a double bill concert with
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
EJK&HM and Muharem soon agreed a record contract with
Malkolm Muharem soon quit working with the band.
1984: Das ist Walter released, Top lista nadrealista expands to television
A few months later, in April 1984, Zabranjeno Pušenje's debut album
Its initial sales were nothing to speak of.
Simultaneously 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
This gradually increased viewership of Top lista nadrealista had a positive effect on
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 popular songs off the album, "Anarhija All Over Baščaršija" (Anarchy All Over
".On 15 September 1984 as Top lista nadrealista television episodes resumed broadcasting following the summer break, the band played Sarajevo's
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.
1984–1985: The 'Marshall' affair...
At a concert in Rijeka's Dvorana Mladosti before a crowd of some two and a half thousand people on Tuesday, 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" (The "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, the twenty-one-year-old decided to start the actual concert by delivering the same joke as an explanation of why the show is starting late.
Reaction in SR Croatia
There were hardly any negative reactions during the concert or immediately after it as the band continued its tour with a triumphant concert at Dom sportova's 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 Dom sportova concert, it would be the op-ed piece by journalist Veljko Vičević in the Rijeka-based daily newspaper Novi list that started an avalanche of criticism with far-reaching consequences. Headlined "Opak dim Zabranjenog pušenja" (Zabranjeno Pušenje's Sinister Smoke), Vičević's piece strongly denounces the band for "lack of morals" and "stepping over the line", additionally reproaching individual group members for past statements such as "Tuđe hoćemo/nećemo, svoje nemamo".[13]
Vičević's piece cast the first stone that would soon turn into avalanche, and eventually end up in a legal process against Karajlić, as well as, by extension, complete public marginalization of the band, new primitives, and Top lista nadrealista.
Initially, the Novi list criticism of the band only served to open another front in the ongoing row between two internal factions wresting for the control of the Croatian Socialist Youth League (SSOH), the provincial branch of the Yugoslav Socialist Youth League (SSOJ), itself the youth wing of the country's one and only political party—Yugoslav Communist League (SKJ). Ever since the death of Vladimir Bakarić a year and a half earlier, the fight for the control of SR Croatia's SKJ branch (SKH) had been on between two factions: the so-called bakarićevci who ostensibly pressed on with the old guard Bakarić policies and the so-called šuvarovci, supposed reformers who gathered around the up-and-coming young thirty-seven-year-old communist Stipe Šuvar. Since the Rijeka concert had been organized by the local pro-Šuvar SSO in Rijeka, the rival pro-Bakarić camp jumped on Karajlić's Marshal quip in order to smear the concert organizers and other pro-Šuvar elements in the organization. The pro-Šuvar faction, which held control of the Croatian SSO's Zagreb-based weekly newspaper Polet, used its pages as a platform for responses and counter-accusations. By extension, Polet vehemently defended Karajlić and Zabranjeno Pušenje. For his part, while generally appreciative of Polet's support, Karajlić would also acknowledge in later interviews that it was no more principled than the attacks from the other side: "Neither side gave a damn about me, really, I was just a rhetorical device, a prop used by both sides in their little internal fight".
Reaction in Sarajevo
Some ten days later, in late December 1984, the news of the Rijeka flap made it back to Sarajevo where more journalists—most notably Pavle Pavlović in the As weekly newspaper—were ready to condemn the band further. In his piece headlined "Otrovni dim Zabranjenog pušenja" (Zabranjeno Pušenje's Poisonous Smoke), Pavlović labels Karajlić's words "an insensitive association and piece of sarcasm that insults right to the heart". The columnist then trails off to even take ideological issue with the humorous sound bytes in radio jingles promoting the December 1984 release of the Top lista nadrealista
In addition to the high-circulation As tabloid, other Sarajevo-based newspapers such as Ven and Oslobođenje quickly joined in the condemnation of the band via strongly worded op-eds of their own.
Ironically, weekly tabloid Ven's relatively short broadside against the band headlined "Smrdljiv dim Zabranjenog pušenja" (Zabranjeno Pušenje's Stinking Smoke) came out in the very next issue after the same newspaper had named Zabranjeno Pušenje the "1984 band of the year" based on its own poll of Yugoslav pop-rock and folk composers.[16] Only one week after awarding the group, Ven distances itself from Zabranjeno Pušenje by expressing "regret we named these young boys the best rock band of 1984" and assures the public that "had the news of their behaviour been available one week prior, they would have never been included in the poll".[16] The unsigned op-ed concludes by telling Ven's readers that "these youngsters are using the platform afforded to them to launch puns that cause unequivocal associations of ridicule of the holiest of all Yugoslavs as well as scornful derision of one of the fundamental maxims of our society [Tuđe nećemo, svoje ne damo]".[16]
The Oslobođenje piece, which reprinted Vičević's Novi list op-ed in full followed by Oslobođenje's own severe criticism of Zabranjeno Pušenje, was especially damning for the band considering the daily newspaper presumed a more serious reputation and tone than As and Ven and as such usually steered clear of pop culture and show business topics. Headlined "Opušci novih primitivaca" (The New Primitives'
Stung by the Oslobođenje piece, the very next day the members of Zabranjeno Pušenje reacted by issuing a letter to all socio-political organizations within the city of Sarajevo and the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, including the print media outlets that had been criticizing the band. Referencing the Oslobođenje write-up, the band members claim it "contains grave untruths and unbelievable accusations about our on-stage behaviour based on unverified and false rumours that have been maliciously spread in order to discredit us morally and politically". Expressing deep disappointment that as born-and-bred Sarajevans they're experiencing media attacks in their own city, the Zabranjeno Pušenje members also remind the public of their socialist credentials by bringing up their three performances at various Relay of Youth runnings including their live performance before 100,000 youths at the Marx and Engels Square in Belgrade some six months earlier at the Youth Day celebrations. The letter continues by conveying "bitterness over the attacks originating from sections of the press in our own city without even seeking our side of the story" before making a veiled reference to As journalist Pavle Pavlović by complaining that "more credence seems to be given to a malicious manufacturer of false rumours and spitefully presented untruths than to us who were actually there". The gist of the letter is their claim that they never insulted the image and legacy of Comrade Tito thus denying media reports claiming otherwise and labeling them "monstrous lies". However, the letter was generally ignored within Sarajevo and SR Bosnia-Herzegovina as the only press outlets to publish it some twenty days later were Zagreb's Polet[18] and Belgrade's Politika.[19]
Since none of the press outlets in Sarajevo and the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina published their letter, the members decided to go to the institutions of the system directly, arranging two days later to be received by the Bosnia-Herzegovina Communist League Central Committee member Hrvoje Ištuk and managing to get some assurances from him that the situation would soon settle down. However, quite the opposite began happening as the band's already scheduled concerts started being canceled. The first in what would turn out to be a log series of canceled concerts over the coming months were the two shows scheduled in Split on the 11th and 12 January 1985.
In a communist country where "verbal offence" was criminalized (i.e. listed in the criminal code as grounds for legal prosecution), Karajlić, and the rest of the band, were summoned for dozens of police questionings as public criticism or ridicule, either veiled or open, of communist Yugoslavia's sacred cows—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
Taking my lawyer's advice, the defense I presented at the 'Marshal has croaked' court hearings was continuous denials I ever said the remark they accused me of saying. My lawyer, being an intelligent man fully aware of the particular point in time, politically, in Yugoslavia, knew the extent to which this mad witch-hunt could've gone to had I admitted to actually uttering the remark. He also knew 'Marshal has croaked', which still sounded like blasphemy in 1984, would soon take on a whole different contextual meaning. And really, within a short few years, figuratively speaking, 'Marshal has croaked' became an official political programme for many of the newly founded political parties that were in the process of gaining strength and eventually winning power all over Yugoslavia.[20]
-Nele Karajlić on the 1985–86 verbal offence court case against him.
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 already booked concerts in early 1985 ended up getting canceled 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.[19]
Throughout January 1985, the new primitives experienced multiple bizarre manifestations of this sudden anti-Zabranjeno Pušenje hysteria in Sarajevo.
Each 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.[21]
By association, the hysteria also spread to Top lista nadrealista activities. While promoting their freshly released comedy album (released by Diskoton on audio cassette, containing the best-of compilation of 'Top lista nadrealista' radio segment) in Sarajevo, 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 a public show of support for beleaguered Karajlić and the rest of his mates.[22]
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 a statement of encouragement for all potential promoters not to shy away from the band. Still, despite selling out
Facing insurmountable obstacles, the group gave in temporarily, deciding to lie 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,
Other bands that at one time or another identified with New Primitives include:
1984–1985: Muharem takes over Plavi Orkestar, Soldatski bal hits it big
To be completely honest, I eked out that contract [for the upstart Plavi Orkestar in late 1984 and early 1985] purely on the back of Zabranjeno Pušenje’s commercial success with Das ist Walter. The main thrust of my pitch to [Jugoton CEO] Škarica was that this material is another New Primitive project, only this time from an angle of camp. And it was still a very tough sell though he eventually budged, even signing off on tracks like “Suada” and “Šta će nama šoferima kuća”. Still, his acceptance was only preliminary as he wanted at least 5-6 new tracks to be recorded, deferring his final decision until then. So, basically, the band had to make demos all over again. And since the members were in complete disarray with only Loša available, I managed, through Jajo Houra, to get a hold of Hus to produce these new demo recordings. Hus, in turn, brought over his Parni Valjak mates to play, like a hired emergency cleanup crew of sorts... And it was only then that Škarica gave his final go ahead. So, yes, the recordings that made Jugoton finally sign Plavi Orkestar were de facto Parni Valjak recordings.[2]
-Plavi Orkestar manager Malkolm Muharem on the backroom dealings that led to the release of Soldatski bal.
Though the torch of New Primitivism 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 lackluster reception of their debut album, crafty manager Malkolm Muharem switched over to another local Sarajevo outfit—
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
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 had previously implemented with Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors—print media and soundbites—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.[24] 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 the writer two years after his 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.
1985–1986: Ričl leaves Elvis J. Kurtović & His Meteors to form Crvena Jabuka, gets big immediately
After parting ways with their manager Malkolm Muharem in mid-1984 following the disappointing commercial performance of their debut album Mitovi i legende o Kralju Elvisu, Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors kept soldiering on with the same lineup, releasing another record—1985's Da Bog da crk'o rok'n'rol—that similarly failed to connect with the general audience.
Their June 1985 appearance at
Though Ričl and Arslanagić had been in touch throughout the years since their 1982 Ozbiljno Pitanje split, the two reconvened in summer 1985 to form a new band they would eventually name
In late March 1986, Crvena Jabuka's eponymous debut album got released and immediately went on to great commercial success. Though employing some of the localized aesthetics of New Primitivism, the album is a broad Yugoslav commercial record designed to reach as many youths as possible with a sound ranging between melodic power pop and pop rock.[27] Still, many critics and observers kept connecting Crvena Jabuka with New Primitivism despite even Ričl and Arslanagić distancing their new band from the movement while doing promotional press for the album.[27]
1987: Official demise
New Primitivism got disbanded in 1987 in a mock ceremony attended by most of its founders and prominent figures. Shot at Sarajevo's
Reaction and reception
1983
The initial wider Yugoslav media reaction to the movement wasn't positive. During New Primitivism's nascent stage, following a summer 1983 double-bill concert by Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors and Plavi Orkestar at Belgrade's SKC, a
Though initially mostly negatively reviewed by the Yugoslav rock critics, the movement did receive an unexpected compliment from Yugoslavia's most successful and famous rock musician Goran Bregović, himself often mercilessly lampooned by the new primitives.[27] During fall 1983, in a televised interview for TV Sarajevo's rock music show Rock oko, he referred to New Primitivism as "the only authentic Yugoslav answer to punk".[27]
1984
As the movement became more profiled in late 1983 and especially throughout 1984—with the emergence of Zabranjeno Pušenje's debut album and start of Top lista nadrealista on television—it began getting better notices in Yugoslav media.
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 outlines 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 the media attention they had been receiving, he wonders whether the amount of publicity has become excessive because "they are terrific as an added flavourful spice to a developed and varied rock scene, but can hardly function as the dominant trend".[30] Focusing on EJK&HM, he labels 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 further expressing skepticism whether this is still enough for a conventional rock career, citing EJK&HM's "unwillingness to freshen up their repetitive jokes and yucks" as a concern for their long term career prospects.[30] Glavan is 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 feels 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.[30]
1985
New Primitivism received a lot more press attention throughout early 1985 as the so-called "Marshal affair" raged in the country's media following Zabranjeno Pušenje frontman Nele Karajlić's supposed insulting pun about the death of Marshal Tito at the band's late November 1984 concert in Rijeka.
As part of his January 1985 article on the various aspects of Zabranjeno Pušenje's "Marshal affair" while the scandal was still unfolding and its outcome was very much in flux, rock critic Zlatko Gall included his observations about the band specifically and New Primitivism in general. Writing through the lens of the ongoing political scandal being litigated in the Yugoslav media and the court of public opinion, he summarizes the philosophy of New Primitivism's public activity as "possessing clear anti-intellectual traits, including glorification of the streetwise local noble savage via humour that plays to the cheap seats and as such straddles the thin line between allusion on one side and vulgarity and repugnance on the other". Gall continues by opining that Zabranjeno Pušenje's debut album Das ist Walter "mostly lands on the right side of that line despite the band's crudeness and various deficiencies that they managed to turn into an advantage" before lauding it further, just like Glavan did six months earlier, for "successfully evoking and re-creating the atmosphere of Kusturica's Sjećaš li se Doli Bel?", which Gall sees as a "film that in addition to stirring up nostalgia also awakened the consciousness of young Sarajevans about their own (new primitive) identity". The journalist concludes that Zabranjeno Pušenje thus set the stage for a career such as Buldožer's, but that its enormous success "facilitated by the euphoria around the new primitive Top lista nadrealista" over the past year "often pushed the band to the wrong side of the vulgarity line during their live shows at which point it's only a small step to the distasteful remark and the unsuccessful joke about an American amplifier".[31]
Against the backdrop of the "Marshall affair" shifting into a higher gear that saw Zabranjeno Pušenje and New Primitivism essentially proscribed from public activity in various parts of Yugoslavia—with a plethora of canceled Zabranjeno Pušenje gigs, radio playlist bans for their songs, removal of Top lista nadrealista from the Sarajevo radio and television, a legal case being opened against Karajlić, etc.—film critic and columnist
Legacy
New Primitivism was primarily 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 had been 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,
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 always going to be an impossibility because the NSK guys 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.[33]
-Nele Karajlić in 2012 on whether New Primitivism was a political or cultural movement.
New Primitivism as a sub-cultural movement retained prominence well after its official 1987 demise.
Sarajevo-born-and-raised novelist
In his scathing 1993 rebuke of the movement, Muhidin Džanko, a professor at the
In his March 2000
Once in a blue moon, I'll get a call from someone saying they're a researcher working at some university somewhere 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 than 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.[39]
-Elvis J. Kurtović in his 2013 online column on the interest New Primitivism has been getting from social scientific circles.
Appearing as a
To many, New Primitivism gained added relevance in the context of the 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.[41]
While mentioning New Primitivism in passing in a 2018 column about the folk rock band Nervozni Poštar, novelist Muharem Bazdulj likened the movement to a "mischievous kid who loves to test the patience of his parents, his teachers, and his school principal, but is not quite willing to go as far as doing something that would actually risk getting expelled from the school" before concluding that "just like the Baroque ended up in Rococo so did New Primitivism end up in Nervozni Poštar" because "Nervozni Poštar appeared at a time when the esthetic of New Primitivism practically became the ruling one in the Yugoslav public sphere and when fear of the cultural elite's disapproval was no longer present even in that form where it turns you on that the cultural elite finds you abhorrent".[42]
See also
- Elvis J. Kurtović & His Meteors
- Zabranjeno Pušenje
- Top lista nadrealista
- SFR Yugoslav pop and rock scene
- Punk rock in Yugoslavia
- New wave music in Yugoslavia
References
- ^ Glavni tok;RTV Pink, 1990s via YouTube
- ^ a b c d e f Rosić, Branko (11 May 2018). ""New Primitives je najprecizniji metak ispaljen u Sarajevu posle atentata Gavrila Principa na Franca Ferdinanda": Ispovest oca novog primitivizma, Malkoma Muharema" ["New Primitives is the most accurate bullet fired in Sarajevo after Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Franz Ferdinand": Confession of the father of New Primitivism, Malkom Muharem]. Nedeljnik (in Serbian). Archived from the original on 4 March 2020. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
- ^ Kurtović, Elvis J. (12 February 2020). "Manifest novog primitivizma". radiosarajevo.ba. Retrieved 14 March 2020.
- ^ Šehanović, Damir (2009). "Elvis J. Kurtović". Pink BH. Damar Show. Archived from the original on 11 November 2022. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
- ^ Rančić, Sandra; Vesić, Dušan (2004). "Anarhija All Over Baščaršija (24. epizoda)". RTS. Rockovnik. Archived from the original on 11 November 2022. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Kurtović, Elvis J. (7 June 2016). "Meteorski uspon Elvisa J. Kurtovića". radiosarajevo.ba. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
- ^ a b Elvis J. Kurtovic @ Damar
- ^ a b Jergović, Miljenko (27 February 2017). "Iz vremena kada očevi nisu znali protiv koga to pjevaju njihova djeca". radiosarajevo.ba. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
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