Uma fúria compartilhada em toda parte: sentimento e cultura material nos primórdios do punk rock do interior paulista

O artigo analisa ocorrências do ethos “Faça você mesmo” (em relação ao punk rock) na cidade de Santa Gertrudes no início da década de 1980. Sustenta que traços de um “sentimento” (Raymond Williams) do período podem ser identificados ao relacionar práticas de punk rockers em metrópoles mundiais com aquelas assumidas por moradores da pequena cidade paulista, estabelecendo-se o que é intitulado aqui como fúria compartilhada. Isso contribuiria para a superação de dificuldades de acesso a conteúdos a partir da produção e distribuição de artefatos que constituem formas de “cultura material” (Daniel Miller), e para a formação de banda musical local: esses dois aspectos parecem habilitar a inclusão dos santa-gertrudenses na “comunidade imaginada” (Benedict Anderson) do punk rock.

I’m Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises-And-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion, Nancy Barile (2021)

Review of: I’m Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises-And-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion, Nancy Barile (2021) New York: Bazillion Points, 190 pp., ISBN 978-1-93595-020-2, p/bk, $14.95

We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America, Kevin Mattson (2020)

Review of: We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America, Kevin Mattson (2020) New York: Oxford University Press, 288 pp., ISBN 978-0-19090-823-2, h/bk, £14

Zines and Communication

Revolutionaries and romantics, Dadaists and dissidents—these are some of the self-publishing traditions that zine communities embrace and embody. Zines are printed publications characterized by idiosyncratic themes, noncommercial motives, low budgets, do-it-yourself aesthetics, and an independent spirit. They are produced by individuals or collectives of writers, editors, graphic designers, and other artists sometimes known as zinesters. Zines first emerged among sci-fi enthusiasts and later spread through the countercultural, feminist, and punk-rock movements. Zines are a form of alternative media related to, yet distinct from, similar genres such as the left-wing little magazines of the 1930s as well as the later underground press and alternative press. The term fanzine, a contraction coined in the 1940s, preceded the term zine, adopted in the 1970s, although the two words are often used interchangeably. Some consider the former a subset of the latter, signifying only publications made by fans of a particular cultural form or genre (such as science fiction, punk rock, football/soccer, nostalgic TV sitcoms, horror movies, Asian pop culture, or Super-8 filmmaking). These self-publications proliferated in tandem with cheap, accessible reproduction technologies like photocopiers and desktop computers. The term e-zines, a once-fashionable reference to “electronic magazines,” typically denotes web publications that espouse a more professionalized and commercialized ethos than printed zines do. Zines are important social, cultural, and visual documents of the periods in which they are made. These do-it-yourself (DIY) publishers established a graphic language and “zine aesthetic” that significantly influenced mainstream design. Due to the diversity of zines and their producers, people in a wide range of academic disciplines show interest in how these publications are made and used. Many scholars of communication and media studies view zine-making as an exemplar of democratic expression, inclusion, and participation as well as an important shaper of social identities and communities. Zines are popular objects of study in areas such as American studies, graphic design, linguistics, popular culture, sociology, women’s studies, youth studies, and more. Zine collections are valuable resources for archivists, librarians, and educators, as well as for researchers. While the existing canon of scholarship on zines and communication includes many materials from the United States and the United Kingdom, there are also substantial zine communities in South America (including Argentina and Brazil), continental Europe (including Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, and Switzerland), Australia, Indonesia, and elsewhere. The materials presented in this article emphasize riot grrrl, feminism, fanzines, and technology because these aspects of zine publishing have received comparatively more attention from scholars in the field of communication than have other zine genres and subjects.

Living in the wake of punk

Almost since its inception, punk has been declared dead. What does it mean to live attached to something that is always, at least a little bit, gone? Examining how Justin Pearson merges personal accounts of death and mourning with a sense of punk that is rooted in loss in his memoir of his participation in a North American punk culture since the 1990s, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry, this article considers how a focus on living in the wake of the death of punk might shift scholarly and popular narratives told about punk. Punk outlives its death in the 1970s with a redemptive rebirth in which it became the subject of an anti-capitalist narrative. The article considers how Pearson’s memoir explores a different framework by insisting that punk may not be able to separate itself from the wider world, and that while this might appear to deal a death blow to punk, it also names a persistent set of conditions that define punk. After placing the memoir in the context of this redemptive account of punk as well as among those who see its limits, the article offers an analysis of several scenes addressing personal losses that merge with Pearson’s attachment to punk-as-something-dead-and-gone. The deaths that Pearson associates with punk rock are personal, but they also register the larger significance of loss for a subculture that cannot stop declaring its own demise, including especially the loss of a fantasy that sees punk as a refuge from the world.

Rebeliões urbanas em Londres através das músicas do The Clash

O final dos anos 1970 e o início dos anos 1980 marcaram a Inglaterra com as medidas neoliberais instituídas por Margaret Thatcher. Nesse contexto, as desigualdades sociais e a pobreza avançaram, principalmente nos bairros periféricos das grandes metrópoles. Em Londres a realidade não foi diferente; bairros formados por maioria de imigrantes sofriam com o desemprego e com a violência policial, além do aumento constante da população carcerária. O caos urbano teve como resultado o surgimento de revoltas populares, as quais buscarei retratar por meio de duas músicas da banda de punk rock chamada The Clash. Utilizarei as músicas Guns of Brixton e London Calling para refletir a respeito do momento histórico pelo qual passava Londres. As músicas são do ano de 1979, e a revolta popular de Brixton ocorreu no ano de 1981, porém, desde quando foi escrita a música, as tensões no bairro existiam, vindo a surgir uma grande revolta entre os dias 10 e 12 de abril de 1981. Procurarei entender como o clima urbano permitiu que as músicas retratassem de forma tão real os eventos que vieram a acontecer dois anos depois. Para isso, utilizarei como referencial teórico autores que problematizam a pós-modernidade e fazem crítica ao neoliberalismo, sobretudo em virtude das ações do governo Thatcher.

Escenas musicales transfronterizas y transculturales: El Napar-Mex o los corridos y rancheras navarros

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo aportar una reflexión en relación con la escena musical del Napar-Mex, en la que corridos y rancheras mexicanas se fusionan con influencias, tradiciones y folklore navarro. Las rancheras y corridos mexicanos forman parte del repertorio musical de cualquier celebración popular en la Comunidad Foral de Navarra. La afición de los navarros por lo mexicano es tal, que hace más de dos décadas dio lugar a la creación de una escena musical propia, conocida como Napar-Mex, estilo musical no comercial y estéticamente heterogéneo que surge de la mezcla entre las rancheras, los corridos y el punk-rock vasco. Tras revisar brevemente la relación histórica entre el pueblo vasconavarro y el mexicano, se muestra el viaje de ida y vuelta que efectúa el corrido, cuyo origen reside en el romance español, y que en las últimas décadas ha efectuado un camino inverso, encontrando su lugar en la escena musical vasconavarra.

From ‘commercial sell out’ to community-based event: The paradoxes of Polish punk rock music festivals

This article is based on both ethnographic field research and the author’s many years of experience as a punk fan. The researcher-participant analyses the 40-year history of two Polish music festivals in order to trace the complex trajectory and changing meaning of the punk subculture in Poland. The analysis is centred on two significant events: the Jarocin Rock Festival and the Rock on the Swamp Festival. The author suggests that the countercultural past of punk, rooted in the 1980s, is now being sentimentalized and commercialized. It is treated by conservative local authorities as an insignificant monument of the past. On the other hand, punk has become an agent of important and surprising social changes. A small festival in a provincial town is inclusive for its inhabitants, integrating two very different communities. Thanks to this, the notion of ‘selling out’ is contrasted in the form of a punk-inspired, community-based event.

‘Recycling the past to meet immediate needs’: Bad Religion’s approach to history1

With the release of their seventeenth album of original music (Age of Unreason, May 2019), Bad Religion has reminded the public that their brand of punk rock is not, and has never been, simplistic, reductive or dismissible. While the language of variegated scientific fields provides co-lyricists Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz a consistent trove of terms, concepts and imagery, Bad Religion also scrutinizes the past and draws out historical implications for their socio-political-religious commentary. Through an analysis of Bad Religion’s lyrics, especially focusing on Age of Unreason, this article will argue that Bad Religion uses historical references as dire warnings, rhetorical devices and examples to instantiate their larger moral and philosophical principles. They seek to entangle the present and the past and reveal how narratives of ‘progress’ and American ‘exceptionalism’ are misleading. Bad Religion condenses revolutionary and reactionary historical events into sweeping generalizations of human (usually western) civilization, invoking idealized versions of historical periods (‘Dark Ages’ and ‘The Enlightenment’). While their use of the past is often overgeneralized, Bad Religion examines human history as a record of choices and behaviours that matter to the only existence we have: material and mundane, not transcendental or supernatural.