How the 90s Rave Scene Brought War-Torn Bosnia Together

Enemy fire by Bosnian Serb forces has been relentless ever since they besieged the capital the previous year in April, with more than 300 shells striking the city on average every day – and residential buildings are often the target. 

Their goal: to create a new Serb state after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence during the breakup of Yugoslavia (a former federation made up of six republics including Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia); independence that Bosnian Serb leaders rejected. 

Thirty years on, and Boris – AKA Sarajevo-based electronic and techno DJ, Borgie – remembers the long days during the war, which lasted nearly four years. “Believe me on my word, at one point in my house, we didn’t have electricity, we didn’t have gas, we didn’t have water and we didn’t have food,” he recalls. 

Still, that didn’t stop him from tapping into the rave scene that was exploding across the UK and Europe. The Prodigy’s debut game-changing album, Experience, had just been released the previous year, its relentless onslaught of beats providing the backdrop to all-night benders, raves and clubs. It also became the soundtrack for a number of young would-be ravers in Bosnia, like Borgie.

“At that time [in 1993], we were surrounded by the army and they had their own source of electricity, which they would bring to the headquarters,” says Borgie. 

“Me and my friend would use their electricity and they never found out. I had this little beatbox and would listen to the radio and record songs. I wanted to get in touch with music that represented [me],” he says. “It was very, very crazy for me to hear Prodigy during the middle of the war. I couldn’t believe what kind of music it was.”

The fighting was bloody and brutal and stretched largely south and east beyond the capital to cities like medieval Mostar, which was severely destroyed during the conflict. Like Sarajevo, bullet holes still pepper the walls of many of its buildings today. 

Bosnia’s multi-ethnic population is mainly made up of Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats, with the Bosniak population falling victim to what is widely considered today as ethnic cleansing by Serb forces. Sarajevo was – and remains – a majority Bosnian Muslim population, with many residents identifying as Bosniak.

By the war’s conclusion, over 2.2 million people had been displaced and an estimated 100,000 had been killed, which included more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in and around the easterly town of Srebrencia, known today as the Srebrencia massacre. 

Music had, unsurprisingly, become a luxury. Cut off from the outside world, a growing number of the country’s youth were itching to hear more from the new sounds coming out of the UK and European rave scene.

In the country’s Serb-controlled northern city of Banja Luka – which still has a predominantly Serb population today – an equally impatient youth were on the hunt for a new sound, and electronic music offered something beyond rock or the traditional pop-style Serbian turbo-folk that dominated the region.

Still, the city was under curfew, which had all but killed the music scene and made the streets an unwelcoming place. “We were totally scared because there were no lights in the street,” says Sinisa Tamamovic, a Banja Luka-born techno DJ. “It was completely dark when you would be rushing home at night and you’d find drunk people on the floor, or drunken soldiers would approach you with guns. It was intimidating and unsafe.”

His friend and fellow Banja Luka DJ, Mladen Tomic, remembers collecting music at the time: “Because of the war there were times we’d be without electricity, or we’d have it for just two or three hours during the day so if you missed your radio show, you missed the music,” Tomic recalls. “I would just pray that they didn’t talk during the songs.”

It wasn’t until after the conflict ended that Bosnia’s electronic music scene really started to grow, with rave and techno culture fast emerging as a way for many of the country’s Bosniak, Serb and Croat youth to reconnect and party.

“We were one of the first promoters in Banja Luka to bring together all DJs from regions we’d had a conflict with, so Muslims, Croatians and Serbs,” says Sinisa. “That was our movement, in a way – we didn’t really care about anything politically, we just wanted to bring everyone together so they can realise it’s safe and fine to come to Banja Luka. But also for us, we were getting gigs in areas of the conflict where it was supposed to be dangerous for us to go as the majority religion was different to us.”

Mladen adds: “There were a lot of young people who left Bosnia during the war who also started to come back, and electronic music was a way of connecting them. Young people also started to travel to different cities in Bosnia to visit electronic music events.”

It was a chance for Mladen to hone his craft as a DJ. “It was a huge passion. A record shop owner once told me he had just two records from a list of 20, which I had ordered to the shop in Novi Sad in Serbia but I still drove four hours to pick them up and came back straight after so I could play them in a set that night. It was really crazy.”

As part of peacekeeping efforts in the country after the war ended, NATO launched a radio station called Oksigen FM to unite Bosnia’s youth through music. It even ran a few club nights, including one held for English NATO soldiers in the nearby army barracks, which both Mladen and Sinisa played at.

“It was crazy when I arrived, you had these guys setting up the warehouse for a proper rave in an army base,” says Sinisa. “Later, they all had rave sticks and everyone was so wasted. That was my first time experiencing how English people can drink.” 

Back in the country’s war-ravaged capital, illegal raves were the route in for aspiring DJs like Borgie. By the age of 17 he’d already gigged at a few parties. 

“There were lots of abandoned places that promoters would use for raves. People would [find] a bridge in town and play electronic music, house, techno and from that movement came very, very good parties.” 

From raving in abandoned buildings to partying under Mostar’s famous Ottoman bridge, which was completely destroyed during the war and rebuilt in 2001, the party scene was extensive once the conflict had come to an end.

In 1998, one of Bosnia’s first major electronic festivals, Futura, launched in the capital with Detroit’s DJ Vice playing alongside the likes of Meltdown Mickey, an original member of the UK’s Spiral Tribe free party movement. The first night was held in an abandoned and burnt-out youth house, where rock and pop acts used to play before the war. It was one of a number of raves that would happen in the following years, attracting people from all over the country and the world.

“They were really some hectic years,” says Borgie. “Every weekend there was party after party. People were just enjoying the release from the war and all those bad scenes. They were enjoying the music and the subculture that came from clubbing,” referring to the drug culture attached to the scene, which, he says, for some became too much.

An article by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting from 2001 highlights some of the drug-related issues that started to occur at the time, describing it as Bosnia’s “drug misery”. It referenced a growing amount of young people taking pills and heroin after the war.

“A lot of people just vanished from the clubbing scene,” says Borgie. “For them it was too personal or too much, so they didn’t appear at parties anymore.” For Borgie and many of his peers, though, the music scene offered a positive space to enjoy their newfound freedom. 

Today, all three still DJ and produce music, with Mladen and Sinisa gaining recognition on an international stage from techno giants like Richie Hawtin. In Bosnia, it’s fair to say the techno scene is pretty niche when compared to the likes of Berlin or London, with Futura closing its doors in 2000, says Mladen. 

Still, Banja Luka-based electronic festival, Freshwave, which set up 10 years ago, draws a big crowd. Along with regular club nights across the country, they’re helping to keep Bosnia’s underground rave scene alive. After all, techno was strong enough then to bring together a generation of young people and bridge a divide after years of brutal war – a sentiment that  probably still resonates with clubbers today.  

As Mladen puts it: “People who love the scene then and now are a similar group of people. They think differently, they don’t hate anyone, they just want to enjoy the music and dance.” 

Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified Borgie is Bosniak. This has now been amended and we regret the error.