After first the ethnic cleansing waves of WW2 and post WW2 and a wave of immigration durning and after the wars in the 90s, Croatia has definitely become more Balkan, especially southern and eastern parts of it.

Select people from B&H being given more cultural influence through war profiteering and nepotistic politics has definitely helped in pushing Balkan cultural elements to the front. It can be argued that Balkan culture is dominant in Croatia these days.

However, even as late as post WW2, Croatia had little to do with the Balkans. The coastal region was very much Italian (my families ancestors, Croatians with a Croatian surname, spoke Italian as their first language up until the Croatian national revival). Goes double for Istria, that was part of both Italy and Austria at one point. Central Croatia's (Croatia proper's) culture was closely connected to Hungarian culture (the customs of Podravina and Baranja region are in a lot of cases a reskin of Hungarian customs). In comparison, everything south of the Sava river was under the Ottoman empire for generations. Those customs stuck and we're later brought to Croatia by among others Bosnian Catholics that started identifying strongly as Croatians at one point under the influence of Franciscan monks' efforts in the region, the aforementioned Janjevci ethnic group etc.

What's important to understand is that the ethnic map of Croatia completely shifted in the past 70 years. You had the expulsion of Italian and Hungarian-speaking population from Rijeka. You had Volksdeutcher being being ethnically cleansed from Slavonia and Srijem by the communists. Purges of Croatian nazi intelligentsia in Central Croatia. You had state-organized migrations of population from Zagora and Hercegovina into the depopulated areas. In the 80s you had important bureaucratic positions in Croatia stacked by Serbs.

And during and after the war you had the romantization of southern and southeastern regions of Croatia and Hercegovina as "Truer". These areas were heavily hit by the wars in the 90s and saw heavy fighting and civilian casualties. You'll hear mythmaking about King Tomislav, Croatian tattoos and the Illium being located up the Neretva river among others that served politically as ways to strengthen the "3rd entity", the Croat people in B&H. The economic migrations of the early 21st century were just the cherry on top of this whole mess.

So what does this mean? Croatia was never a singular entity up until after WW1. A mish-mash of Italian, German, Austrian, Hungarian and Balkan influences made Croatia culturally heterogeneous and during the last 70 or so years you saw all these cultural influences mashed together as politics pushed Southern Slav Pan-Slavism.

Is Croatia Balkan? Depends on who you ask. Ethnically I'm all over the place, except from the areas where customs like what you see in the video are the norm. My parents' wedding was ABSOLUTELY folk-ish (they got married in national costumes even) but had 0 to do with what you're seeing here. So did the customs on other sides of my family, none of which had much to do with the Balkans as imagined by the memes.

I'll also add that part of my family is from Kranj, Slovenia and the yokel customs there have more in common with customs in parts of Zagorje than Customs in parts of Zagorje have with the video. BUT...what you're seeing is Balkan cultural domination. As cultural expressions like these became normalized and the "Genes of Stone" became a de facto shorthand for "what's truly Croatian"...yes Croatia has become Balkan through ethnic cleansing, population drift, migration, national mythogenesis and good ol Capitalist cronyism. Colonized by the Balkans...man, what a scene.