Functioning as a banner that summarizes and encompasses the work of two Sarajevo-based 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.
Additionally, two other prominent bands, Plavi Orkestar and Crvena Jabuka, that reached great commercial success in Yugoslavia during the mid 1980s were also tangentially associated with the movement though each abandoned its sensibility early on in favour of a more mainstream conventional musical and stylistic expression.
Perhaps the most prominent of them, Nele Karajlić, explained 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 some time 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 so-called 'dinosaur' bands like Bijelo Dugme and Indexi, which the new primitives held in contempt to a certain extent".
dominating the repertoire, EJK&HM live shows attracted attention with a unique mixture of rock'n'roll with elements of performance art and stand-up comedy, anchored by Elvis J. Kurtović—the band's lyricist and mascot—exuberantly interacting with the crowd between songs.
[7] Muharem would get them publicity by talking up New Primitivism and ensuring journalists from youth-oriented papers—Džuboks and Reporter from Belgrade, Polet [hr] 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 men's entertainment magazine in the vein of Playboy and Lui, deployed its journalist Goran Gajić to Sarajevo for a story on the unconventional group.
[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 D' Boys at Sarajevo's Đuro Đaković Hall, an all-seater venue holding almost a thousand patrons.
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.
On 15 September 1984 as Top lista nadrealista television 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.
Simultaneously, by November 1984, Karajlić began to get noticed by high-circulation lifestyle magazines in Yugoslavia such as TV novosti and Studio as the connection between his Top lista nadrealista television sketch comedy characters and his colourful rock star stage persona with Zabranjeno Pušenje got clearly established.
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 [hr] 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".
[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]".
[17] 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".
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".
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.
[23] In addition to crossing paths with them at various club gigs over the preceding few years while he managed Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors, Muharem had already shared a few instances of brief business collaboration with the Plavi Orkestar youngsters such as helping them, in September 1983, arrange demo recording sessions at Enco Lesić [sr]'s Druga Maca studio in Belgrade right before they reported for their respective mandatory army stints.
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 [sr], and TV personality Suzana Mančić.
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 blurb appeared in the high-circulation Politika daily reviewing the show, but also discussing the movement in general.
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 feels the adjective "new" to be 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".
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.
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?
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".
Observing the movement being snuffed out on political grounds and removed from sight immediately after it had been afforded enormous media attention, Tirnanić offers personal support to the beleaguered new primitives by stating he "believes young Karajlić's version of events that what they actually meant was really just the damn amplifier".
Before expounding on this claim, Tirnanić steps back to offer his views on the creative merits of New Primitivism, proclaiming it "without a doubt one of the biggest media and cultural attractions of 1984 that appeared as a local subcultural philosophy in reaction to the early 1980s Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana respective rock'n'roll milieus once those cities' punk and new wave scenes began to diminish" and summing it up as a "unique and simple program that outright eliminates the danger of ever becoming, even unconsciously or by chance, an epigone of a global trend due to affirming the distinctive cultural content originating from an authentic natural resource—homo balcanicus—with its wide range of socio-folkloric characteristics: from pulling a čakija to optional personal hygiene".
Tirnanić continues by remarking that "it's not always easy to tell whether dr. Nele Karajlić and Elvis J. Kurtović are skewering the characters they narrate about, lampooning them with an ironic campy distance or they genuinely hoist them up to be admired as unique individuals thoroughly cleansed of any traces of civilization outside of the Balkan experience".
Jergović furthermore exclaimed in the same piece that "the language in the early Top lista nadrealista and initial Zabranjeno Pušenje's and EJK&HM's albums had no bearing in reality as no one in the city of Sarajevo actually spoke that way", explaining it all as "a persiflage of sorts, a knowing self-mockery that assumed all kinds of embellishment".
He concluded by saying that "what began as a persiflage soon ended up as a widely-accepted standard [in Yugoslavia] so much so that because of these few uniquely talented and humorous individuals, the gift of humour became a collective one in the sense that if the stereotype that Gypsies are good at singing and playing instruments is true, and if all Black people know how to dance and hold rhythm then everyone in Bosnia must be able to tell a joke and entertain a crowd".
[37] In his March 2000 Vreme piece about the disdain certain vociferous sections among the rock 'n' roll consumers and musicians in Serbia (particularly Belgrade-based ones with "blasé, elitist tastes") had been continually exhibiting towards popular and/or populist 1970s and 1980s Yugoslav rock'n'roll acts coming out of Bosnia, journalist Uroš Komlenović mostly focused on Goran Bregović and Bijelo Dugme being targets of such derision, but also, in passing, talked about New Primitivism receiving the same kind of criticism from same circles.