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.

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".

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