Punk & Post-Punk - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2014

Rock music in its broadest definition, though still potentially problematic, has grown exponentially in contemporary Cuba, particularly since the economic and social crises of the 1990s. However, the subgenre distinctions that make sense of rock music in an Anglo-American context are not quite so apposite in defining a rock culture in Cuba that is happy to meld subgenres together with elements of Cuban traditional music, in a continuation of the process of ‘transculturaltion’, which many interpret as a founding element of Cuban cultural identity. This article, then, begins with a comment on the ways in which Cuba has made sense of a culturally loaded term such as punk. For the small but significant punk population on the island, many of the aesthetic elements of punk they utilize may serve to ostracize them from both the state and other subcultural groups. However, because of this process of ‘transculturation’, many of these punk traits are used to reflect a sense of contemporary Cuban cultural identity. This article examines the use of ‘classical’ punk cultural motifs of appropriation of cultural symbols, DIY aesthetic, destruction and bricolage in the work of Cuban punk band Porno Para Ricardo, to address the ways in which punk might be used to make sense of Cuba.

Alongside Crass, Poison Girls were the central catalysts for the emergent anarcho-punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although the work of Crass has been subject to an increasing degree of retrospective scrutiny in recent years, the singular contribution of Poison Girls to the anarcho-punk rubric has remained largely unexplored. Poison Girls shared the anarchist impulses of Crass, but refracted their anti-capitalist perspectives through a distinctive anarcha-feminist prism. Reflected throughout the canon of the band’s work was a twin focus on the politics of gender and of generation which was arguably unique amongst their punk contemporaries. After a short and intensive period of close collaboration with Crass, Poison Girls opted for renewed independence and (as the wider anarchist punk movement expanded and diversified) began to explore a very different approach to the practice of being an anarchist band from the model established by Crass. Willing to break with the ‘shibboleths’ of anarchist punk, Poison Girls nevertheless retained a strong fidelity to its underlying principles even as they moved away from its more stringent, ‘outsider’ DIY assumptions. Poison Girls’ own punk practice provides an illuminating counter-point to the experience of Crass, and puts into sharp relief the tensions raised by the attempt to be anarchist interlopers in the musical mainstream.

Postmodernism as a state of mind, as a state of art: the fall of the grand universal narratives, the conflation of high/academic and low/popular forms of art. The cultural sphere’s commodification explicitly changed the way in which we see, feel, listen or even speak after World War II. Postmodernism, which can be conceived either as a condition or a new theoretical paradigm, lacks all sense of historical continuity and memory. Initially, postmodernism challenges what is actually perceived as Modernism, signifying a process of conflicts between old and new cultural and economic ‘modes’, or the artistic neologisms of the 1950s and the 1960s, which adopted a critical attitude towards the commodities while trying to overcome them. Thus, facing the postmodern reality could be a constantly demanding interplay between the author and the reader, the composer and the listener, and finally, the nature of the production of the artistic texts and the work of art in the realm of late capitalism. Postmodernism appeared in many manifestations in art; particularly in music, it can be located in the rise of composers such as John Cage after World War II. This work underscores not only a reaction to Modernism in music, but also stands as a sign of liberation and progress against established musical forms. This tendency can be traced in the divergence of popular music and styles in the 1960s and the 1970s, as expected by the ‘effacement of some key boundaries or separations’, which instantly dissolves the former distinctions between mass culture and highly academic modes of expression. Notably, the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s marked a very interesting transgressive period: a stage for a constant battle between popular forms of artistic expression and their respective mature academic competitors. The purpose of this article is to examine and analyse in brief Australian composer J. G. Thirlwell’s early musical experiments from 1981 to 1988 within the context of postmodernism in popular music, his diversity in genres, sounds and techniques, and to present his contribution within the realm of experimental music. Furthermore, the article addresses aspects of musical innovation, examining originality in an era associated with experiments in the sonic field and intertextuality as a creative process.

‘Post-punk’ has been defined in a variety of ways. Some commentators view it primarily as a reaction to punk, with distinct musical features. Others debate whether its organizing principle can even be found in a stylistic unity. Ryan Moore has described how punk responded to a ‘condition of postmodernity’. In his view, postmodernism represented an ‘exhaustion of totalizing metanarratives’. Within this context punk used bricolage to ‘turn signs and spectacles against themselves, as a means of waging war on society’. For the purposes of this piece post-punk is broadly considered a response to punk’s response to postmodernism. This article addresses how manifestos came to be used in various examples of post-punk music. It uses, as a starting point, Julia Downes’ description of musical manifestos in riot grrrl as a ‘key way to define … ideological, aesthetic and political goals’. A series of chronological case studies investigate the key components and aesthetics of the post-punk manifesto, which include the use of lists, itemization and direct second-person address. Given Simon Reynolds’ view that post-punk ‘tried to make politics and pop work together, but failed’, this article examines whether the goals of post-punk manifestos were at all achieved. Were manifestos in the main, promotional or self-motivating exercises? Do recent ‘post-punk’ manifestos, such as those by the band Savages, both acknowledge and move beyond the limitations of earlier models, to increasingly alter how people consume music?

Future Days. Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany, David Stubbs (2014) Faber, London, 495 pp., ISBN: 9780571283323, p/bk, £20.00

Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance, The Subcultures Network (2015) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 319 pp., ISBN: 9780719090295, h/bk, £75