Creating a scene: Balinese punk's beginnings

The promotion of alternative music by deregulated television and recording industries, together with the increasingly felt presence of the metropolis, converged on Balinese cultural and physical landscapes in the 1990s. Mirroring developments in broader society, a regionalist discourse, which polarized notions of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, emerged among Balinese youth in the context of the local band scene. For certain musicians, musical authenticity was firmly rooted in a cultural and geographical locale, and was articulated by their abhorrence for socializing at shopping malls. In contrast, these Balinese alternative (including punk) musicians sought authenticity in a metropolitan elsewhere. This article is a case study of the indigenization of a ‘global’ code in a non-western periphery. It contests arguments for the ‘post-imperial’ nature of globalization, and demonstrates the continued salience of centre–periphery dialectics in local discourses. At the same time, the study attests to the progressive role a metropolitan superculture can play in cultural renewal in the periphery.

Making scenes : Reggae, punk, and death metal in 1990s Bali

In 1996, Emma Baulch went to live in Bali to do research on youth culture. Her chats with young people led her to an enormously popular regular outdoor show dominated by local reggae, punk, and death metal bands. In this rich ethnography, she takes readers inside each scene: hanging out in the death metal scene among unemployed university graduates clad in black T-shirts and ragged jeans; in the punk scene among young men sporting mohawks, leather jackets, and hefty jackboots; and among the remnants of the local reggae scene in Kuta Beach, the island’s most renowned tourist area. Baulch tracks how each music scene arrived and grew in Bali, looking at such influences as the global extreme metal underground, MTV Asia, and the internationalization of Indonesia’s music industry. Making Scenes is an exploration of the subtle politics of identity that took place within and among these scenes throughout the course of the 1990s. Participants in the different scenes often explained their interest in death metal, punk, or reggae in relation to broader ideas about what it meant to be Balinese, which reflected views about Bali’s tourism industry and the cultural dominance of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and largest city. Through dance, dress, claims to public spaces, and onstage performances, participants and enthusiasts reworked “Balinese-ness” by synthesizing global media, ideas of national belonging, and local identity politics. Making Scenes chronicles the creation of subcultures at a historical moment when media globalization and the gradual demise of the authoritarian Suharto regime coincided with revitalized, essentialist formulations of the Balinese self.

Crisis civilizatoria y marginalidad : un estudio del movimiento punk.

Conocer mejor los punks canarios, verificando: a)Los punks representan un estilo subcultural que se caracteriza por unas actitudes radicalmente disconformes con el estado actual de las cosas. b) Ese radicalismo y disconformidad es bastante más intenso que el de los otros sectores de la sociedad. c) Los punks son un auténtico grupo, dada la cohesión e integración de sus miembros en torno a dichas actitudes además de otros aspectos: música, apariencia, etc. 403 sujetos: 204 de Bachillerato y Formación Profesional; 157 universitarios; 42 punks. Se distribuyó también por sexo, edad, estado civil, tipo de residencia, dependencia económica, profesión del padre e ingresos aproximados de la familia al mes. Se utilizó un diseño correlacional para determinar las relaciones existentes entre las actitudes que se pretenden medir y las diferentes categorías de sujetos. Las variables que se estudian son: radicalismo, antiautoritarismo, desconfianza en el futuro y tolerancia sexual. Las variables controladas: categoría social de los sujetos (universitarios, no universitarios y punks), orden de presentación de las escalas y el cuestionario, la tendencia a la aquiescencia, etc. 1. Cuestionario de datos personales. 2. Escala de antiautoritarismo de M. de Bethencourt. 3. Escala de radicalismo, de elaboración propia. 4. Escala de desconfianza en el futuro. 5. Escala de tolerancia sexual, elaborada por J. Barroso Ribal. 1. Pruebas de fiabilidad, por el método de Crombach. 2. Análisis factorial. 3. Correlación interfactorial. 4. Distribución de frecuencias. 5. Prueba T. 6. Análisis discriminante. 1. En el interior del colectivo punk, aquellos que más contribuyen con sus respuestas a que disminuyeran las puntuaciones medias, fueron los punks de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, contrariamente con los de La Laguna. 2. Respecto al factor sexualidad libre, aparece una distancia significativa entre las mujeres punks, que puntúan más alto y las mujeres universitarias. 3. Con respecto al grado de desconfianza en el futuro aparece una actitud combinada de escepticismo, inmediatismo y combatividad. 1. Según los resultados obtenidos en las cuatro escalas de actitudes, las hipótesis que se planteaban al principio han quedado demostradas. 2. Se ratifica que los punks, más que una simple categoría o sector social, poseen una identidad simbólica, ritual que les proporciona una cohesión o conciencia de grupo, que está ausente o está menos acentuado en otros conjuntos humanos que carecen de señas identificatorias específicas.

Shot by both sides: Punk, politics and the end of “Consensus”

This article examines the ways in which political organisations of the far left and far right responded to punk-informed youth culture in Britain during the late 1970s. It examines how both tried to understand punk within their own ideological framework, particularly in relation to the perceived socio-economic and political crises of the late 1970s, before then endeavouring to appropriate—or use—punk for their own ends. Ultimately, however, the article suggests that while punk may indeed be seen as a cultural response to the breakdown of what some have described as the post-war ‘consensus’ in the 1970s, the far left and far right's focus on cultural expression cut across the basic foundations on which they had been built. Consequently, neither left nor right proved able to provide an effective political conduit through which the disaffections expressed by punk could be channelled.

Oi! Oi! Oi! : class locality and British punk

This article looks at the controversial music genre Oi! in relation to youth cultural identity in late 1970s’ and early 1980s’ Britain. As a form of British punk associated with skinheads, Oi! has oft-been dismissed as racist and bound up in the politics of the far right. It is argued here, however, that such a reading is too simplistic and ignores the more complex politics contained both within Oi! and the various youth cultural currents that revolved around the term ‘punk’ at this time. Taking as its starting point the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ conception of youth culture as a site of potential ‘resistance’, the article explores the substance and motifs of Oi!’s protest to locate its actual and perceived meaning within a far wider political and socio-economic context. More broadly, it seeks to demonstrate the value of historians examining youth culture as a formative and contested socio-cultural space within which young people discover, comprehend, and express their desires, opinions, and disaffections.

'Hey little rich boy, take a good look at me': punk, class and British oi!

This article looks at the controversial music genre Oi! in relation to youth cultural identity in late 1970s and early 1980s Britain. By examining the six compilation albums released to promote Oi! as a distinct strand of punk, it seeks to challenge prevailing dismissals of the genre as inherently racist or bound to the politics of the far right. Rather, Oi! – like punk more generally – was a contested cultural form. It was, moreover, centred primarily on questions of class and locality. To this end, Oi! sought to realize the working-class rebellion of punk’s early aesthetic; to give substance to its street-level pretentions and offer a genuine ‘song from the streets’.

80,000,000 hooligans. Discourses of resistance to racism and xenophobia in German punk lyrics 1991-1994

The late eighties and early nineties in Germany were not only marked by the fall of the Wall and German unification, but also by the dramatization of the political issue of asylum, resulting in outbreaks of xenophobic violence. In the context of the asylum debate of the early nineties, a number of punk bands produced songs between 1991 and 1994 which criticise the xenophobic climate created by the asylum debate and undermine an exculpatory official discourse about the violent attacks. The lyrics of these songs will be analysed as instances of counter-discourse emerging from a subcultural sphere that nurtures a critical distance towards hegemonic public and political discourse, arguing that Critical Discourse Analysis should pay more attention to defiance of hegemonic discourse.

Punk, Politics and British (fan)zines, 1974-84:'While the world was dying, did you wonder why?

This article recovers and contextualizes the politics of British punk fanzines produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It argues that fanzines – and youth cultures more generally – provide a contested cultural space for young people to express their ideas, opinions and anxieties. Simultaneously, it maintains that punk fanzines offer the historian a portal into a period of significant socio-economic, political and cultural change. As well as presenting alternative cultural narratives to the formulaic accounts of punk and popular music now common in the mainstream media, fanzines allow us a glimpse of the often radical ideas held by a youthful milieu rarely given expression in the political arena.