xi congresso español de sociología -...
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XI Congreso Español de Sociología"Crisis y cambio: propuestas desde la sociología"
Grupo 18: Sociología de la Cultura y de las Artes
TÍTULO: PUNK: CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION IN FACE
OF THE PORTUGUESE REALITY
Paula GuerraProfesor Asistent/Ph.D.
Departamento de Sociología/ Instituto de Sociología
Facultad de Letras de la Universidad del Porto, Portugal
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Paula AbreuProfesor Asistente/Ph.D.
Faculdade de Economia/ Centro de Estudos Sociais
Faculdade de Economia da Universidadede Coimbra, Portugal
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
João Campos MatosEstudiante del Máster en Sociología
Departamento de Sociología
Facultad de Letras de la Universidad del Porto, Portugal
E-mail: [email protected]
Tânia MoreiraEstudiante del Máster en Sociología
Departamento de Sociología
Facultad de Letras de la Universidad del Porto, Portugal
E-mail: [email protected]
RESUMEN:
El punk representa en las sociedades occidentales, una ruptura histórica y
reposicionamiento contra la estructura social existente, acompañado de una banda
sonora, una estética y una actitud propia. El punk siempre ha sido algo más que una
camiseta o una canción: una actitud inflexible que se rompió el status quo y dio
visibilidad a un joven descontento e incrédulos (Colegrave & Sullivan, 2002). El punk
contiene dentro de sí el impulso de retorno, resurrección y renovación, sino también el
cambio de la inversión (Reynolds, 2007). Después de 1978, muchos (Clark, 2003)
reiteran la muerte del punk. Pero es una muerte más simbólica que real, porque el
movimiento ha cambiado y reestructurado por su incorporación en el sistema de la
industria cultural actual (Masters, 2007). Sabemos que la historia del pop se repite a sí
mismo con regularidad, reinventando nuevas escenas underground como respuestas a la
hegemonía (Azerrad, 2002). Es esta concepción la que se traza una aproximación
preliminar de emergencia, y la experiencia del punk de hoy en Portugal, lo considerando
tanto quanto un movimiento social, una experiencia y una escena. Esta es una primera
aproximación al punk en la sociedad portuguesa, tras un intento de contextualizar este
fenómeno global en una escala nacional, donde protagonismos, caminos y ajustes son
necesariamente específicos y muy diferentes lo que ocurrió en Inglaterra (Reino Unido)
o los Estados Unidos de América1.
Asumimos que la creación de la música popular no es un asunto individual, no debe
entenderse a través de un enfoque en la música o músico, pero, en cambio, como un
proceso multifacético que sólo puede entenderse en el contexto del entorno social en
que se crea y banda sonora apropiada. Con estos pilares, nosotros, en este trabajo, nos
centramos en los discursos de las personas, en una descripción, evaluación y análisis del
contexto en el que el punk surge y se desarrolla en Portugal, y al mismo tiempo,
haciendo un ejercicio de alcance y una presentación de las trayectorias de perteneciente
al movimiento, dando cuenta de que los individuos construyen significados por su
participación (Haenfler, 2004:428-429).
Palabras clave: Punk, (Post-sub)culturales studies, escena, Portugal, resistencia, forma
de vida.
1 Este enfoque se traduce en el desarrollo de la investigación Keep it simple, make it fast! Prolegómenos y las escenas punk, un camino hacia el contemporáneo portugués (1977-2012) (PTDC/CS-SOC/118830/2010) que se extiende hasta el año 2015 bajo la coordinación científica de Paula Guerra.
PUNK: CONTEXT AND INTERPRETATION IN FACE OF THE
PORTUGUESE REALITY.
1. Focus
Ideally, punk assumes itself as a contesting movement in the scope of the artistic, economic and
social dimensions. Contextualised in a period of severe economic crisis, it reclaims a (contested)
sense of belonging to the sub-proletariat - the group of marginalised individuals by the social
norm. Nevertheless, we can also read the punk movement as a response to the hippie
movement, as this was seen as one that failed to fulfil its promise to revolutionise the traditions
that crushed everyday life. The musical dilettantism, in another way, the vividness and agitation
will become the movement’s banners (Département Musique, 2006). Musically, the punk ideals
will reject the reigning musical scene of the seventies, the musical industry and its procedures,
the traditional modalities of dissemination, the progressive sonorities and the aesthetic norm. As
a movement it was close to the sixties garage rock scene, proposing itself to enhance the
organisation of youth via a prolific emergence of bands, as it claims to itself the DIY strategy.
The dialectic relationship that enhanced the cultural life, as in the relationship between
the infinite essence of life and the ways of expression (or exteriorisation) that it is obliged to
find, propel culture towards a situation of contradiction and even opposition (Simmel,
2001:204). Close to this simmelian approach, punk represented, on the scope of western
societies, a turning point that forced a repositioning of the individuals towards the existing
social structure, accompanied by a soundtrack. Punk was always more than a simple t-shirt or a
song: it was an unsubmissive attitude that shattered the status quo and made an unsatisfied and
betrayed (in its future) youth visible (Colegrave & Sullivan, 2002). Punk contains in itself the
impetus of a comeback, of resurrection and renovation, but also of change and inversion
(Reynolds, 2007).
In the words of its protagonists, we can say that, and according to Joe Strummer:
“Everything looked like a desert, there was nothing. We had energy. We wanted to go
somewhere. There was nothing to do. Nowhere to go. A kind of hopelessness. But we had hope
in a sea of hopelessness” (Colegrave & Sullivan, 2002). Also, Johnny Rotten reiterates this
feeling: “It was a really miserable period. High unemployment. Absolutely no hope. Furious
class war. Literally, no future. I wrote my own future. I had to do it. It was the only way out”
(Idem). This leads to what we can call a “formal agnosticism”. A situation in which, in the
absence of qualified solutions from the point of view of the existing forms of manifestation of
life, the cultural dynamic is pushed to exercise the absence of norms in itself, the negation of
forms as Simmel would say, as a way of convert itself in the world (Simmel, 2011:204). The
inadequacy of the forms demands that we commit to discover new forms, that tertium datum,
that enables us to solve the present cynicism towards them.
In 1976, the date of its emergence and nomination, punk as a word and concept was
associated to negative meanings, and therefore shaped in relation to a strong social opposition.
This lack of a positive evaluation and social recognition is in itself an indicator of its inferiority
and its difficulty to affirm itself as a social movement (Colegrave & Sullivan: 2002). Simon
Reynolds (2006) stated that punk may be understood through four key modalities. The first one
leads us to the idea that punk may be understood as a kind of “hyper-word”, as it has lead to
endless discussions, being worth of reference that the unity of this referred moment is confined
to the musical press, as there is no apparent consensus regarding its motivations and objectives.
The debate in this regard is intense and if there is a consensus it stands upon the recognition that
punk is shaped by the idea of being opposite to something and by its will of being aggressive.
Hence, the characteristic that enables the conceptual unity is, maybe, the opposing nature
towards dominant society (McNeil & Gillian, 2006; Reynolds, 2006; Kogan, 2006). Punk has
never assumed itself as a counterculture, as it has always had a fatalist posture regarding social
change interweaved with a pamphletary matrix willing to rethink the ways by which the
contemporary social structure worked. In this regard, the post-punk period from 1978 to 1984
may be understood as a consequence drawn from all the questions raised and from all the
answers and provisory conclusions presented by some. Secondly, punk is a word that is
replenishing with energy and emotions, being its distinctiveness assured by the intensity and
simultaneity of feelings: “It was during 1975 that life was filled with punk as a visible entity. In
the beginning, punk was a way of being that was essentially expressed through fashion and
music. It was anarchic, nihilistic and deliberately aggressive. It threatened the establishment,
defying the social order, in a general way, by placing the question «why?»” (Colegrave &
Sullivan, 2002:18).
Another look to punk enables us to see it within a metaphoric astrophysical structure, as
an explosion of fragments of a crystallised rock’n’roll structure, one that is amorphous and
accommodated to the system and to the most oppressive of the cultural industries. In this sense,
punk would be the emergence of a new universe - the post-punk cosmos, of which the different
variations may be compared to the galaxies and systems that compose the universe. In another
way, punk may be also analysed as a Reform: after the first conflict (old wave versus new wave,
as an equivalent to the opposition Catholicism-Protestantism) the path to future disintegration
was opened. The main controversy that shook punk culture, in the period comprised between
78-84, stands on the idea of what to do with the remnants of punk, all its force and chimera
accumulated in 76/77.
Inscribed in this mindset is the idea that punk, more than a movement, was a collective
of individuals that expressed themselves in a specific way, a situation that makes punk
something harder to define (Colegrave & Sullivan, 2002). Individualism was a shared trait
among the British and American actors in this context (Albiez, 2006). If in the USA, the
manifestations had more of a musical incline, the spectre of manifestations in the UK was more
ample and included fashion, design, or, in a word, aesthetics. These multiple revelations are
among the reasons of why it is something so hard to define (Savage, 2001). In terms of the
social structure, punk’s development has, as background, a male context marked by sexism and
alcohol abuse; in historical terms, its situated in the years after the post-war period and in its
consequent absent of expectations. Something that is associated to youth in general but to the
one coming from a working class background lacking the social, economic and cultural capital
in particular (Savage, 2001). Hence, and following up close the structure of social fields based
on Bourdieu’s matrix (1996), punk has to be seen as a conquest of prerogatives from a socially
closed system, which also lead to its assimilation as a consumption item, emptying it as a
movement of opposition (Kent, 2006), an idea that brings us closer to the critical school’s theses
(Benjamin, 1992).
Punk’s emergence is frequently interpreted in light of the context of economic crisis
lived at the time and translated in the increase of the oil prices due to the israeli-arab conflict of
1973 that struck the western countries. By that time, the UK is watching the fall of the last
bastions of its economy: the auto and textile industry experience major difficulties, as well as
the ones related to coal and steel. The prices rise, wages stagnate and unemployment increases:
“to the youth there’s nothing: the dole, a scholarship to get in an «art school», little jobs,
nothing that is enough to raise morale among the adolescents bombed every night by the
television showing statistics of unemployment and lists of factories that closed” (Paraire, 1992:
166). In the music field, rock had assumed a high degree of institutionalisation. Dominated by
the great bands, by an heavy industry, and placed further away from the youth’s everyday life
despairs: “it’s in the cities of concrete, in that urbanism built in rush after the the war, in the
middle of an unoccupied youth, without culture, violent and despaired that contestation will be
born and write: once that rock died, controlled by a handful of worldwide stars that made it its
private hunting ground, it is necessary to destroy rock’s establishment” (Paraire, 1992:166).
Hebdige presented punk as a kind of typically youthful music, an interpretation that can
also be extended to other studies about punk in other national contexts. Bennett tells us that this
focus on youthfulness as a characteristic of punk is relevant as the individuals that keep an
active connection to the subculture after turning 30 years old are ones that keep involved by
performing roles at more organisational or creative levels: musicians, promoters, writers on
fanzines, artists, etc. as “most people on the punk subculture end up leaving their punk identities
behind” (1998:219). In this framework is also important to understand if punk defied the
preceding distribution and production structures, and if it was capable of implementing
independent record organisations. Also, at this time the first generation of independent
companies among the rock field was born. This first generation was mainly made of go-it-alone
business ventures, influenced by some of the developed cultural values but often not interested
in a deep democratisation of the social relations of production (Hesmondhalg, 1997). This idea
can also be found present on the discourses of some key actors. First, Johnny Rotten: “this
liberates people. Punk really has this effect” (Colegrave & Sullivan, 2002:119); then, Paul
Cook: “Et voilá. A simple four letter word started it all” (Colegrave & Sullivan, 2002: 168).
After 1978, many affirmed that punk was dead (Reynolds, 2007). Yet, this is a more
symbolical than actual death, as the movement changed and restructured itself in light of a
relative incorporation by the existing cultural industry system (Masters, 2007). Marco Pirroni
considers that “from an exciting, individual, different and subversive thing, punk started to
change into a mode of presentation, of drinking beer and of having imbecile attitudes”
(Colegrave & Sullivan, 2002:352). We know that the history of pop often walks upon itself,
reinventing new underground scenes as an answer to hegemony (Azerrad, 2002). In 1979,
Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power marked an inversion and reorganisation among the punk
movement, providing new developments and outlines: “this meant that a significant percentage
of the population that bought punk records voted conservative; in another way, punk and its
intentions had extended themselves worldwide, leaving the indigents behind. Kings Road kept
attracting the second zone punks, but the style as a hole became a caricature of itself. Punk
meant 6 inch mohawks, facial tattoos, bondages, army boots, doc martens...” (Colegrave &
Sullivan, 2002:342). Nevertheless, a myriad of musical opportunities, and subsequently of ways
of life, became possible because of punk. Notwithstanding the relationship between social
movements and music rarely being conceptualised, in practice we can always find a connection.
Music is a resource used as a base for the construction of a society’s collective conscience
(Eyerman, 2007). It is a key resource in the construction of collective entities, and in the
construction and maintenance of solidarity and conscience groups. With an emphasis on the
mobilisation resources, Bourdieu (1994) also considers music as a part of the social action, as
music and art are resources, forms of attribution of a position in the social field, forms of social
distinction. Through Hebdige’s (1979) contributions, we can understand that subcultures used
music as a key resource in their resistance. Many of the studies focusing on the punk movement
also stress that relationship. Nevertheless, for us, the question that is important to address is not
the one focused on the validity of this relationship but the one that looks for the limits of the
punk movement as a social movement.
2. The beginning
In Portugal, punk emerges almost at the same time as it did in countries such as England or the
U.S.A. This is significant in the portuguese context as it was typical for artistic movements to
experience a ten year gap when compared to other european contexts. The portuguese
revolution of April ’74, worked as a catalyst of will, of change and of freedom, providing a
favourable context for the emergence of the first punk manifestations in Portugal.
Simultaneously, in Lisbon there were small groups of youngsters connected to the top of the
artistic and social hierarchies that maintained a close contact to the international novelties. It
was among these individuals that the will to be punk first emerged.
“...All of that Lisbon movement, that was a restrict group. 100 people. Soon, I got in and found something that I
could relate to” (Adolfo Luxúria Canibal In Guerra, 2010).
“When the idea of a punk movement came to Portugal, we were already packed with punks. This is the truth. The
revolution had just happened and we were yet living all of that euphoria. There was a lot of people that kept their
mouths shut all their lives and suddenly started to express themselves. It was like punk existed here all along, but
without being referenced, without a bar code. Hence, the timing was perfect, Zé Leonel explains, the first lead singer
of Xutos & Pontapés, a position he occupied until 1981. «we were on the top of the wave, for us, more revolution or
less revolution, we felt like we were a part of a turmoil, everything was revolutionary», states Tim, the bass player for
Xutos and, since 1981, the «owner» of the microphone” (Abreu, 2009).
“Zé Pedro was one of the punk pioneers in Lisbon, he had the advantage of an early experience, in a french festival
[Mont de Marsan] where The Clash played in 1977, of the impact of that explosive movement. «At the time», the
guitar player from Xutos & Pontapés tells us, «there was just a few people in sync with the punk phenomenon,
fortunately António Sérgio had begun really soon to play punk on the radio, while he was at Renascença [Portuguese
Radio Station]. We lived those times of the post-25th of Abril with everyone being open to all of the art scenes. There
was a torrent of information to digest” (Abreu, 2009).
“«Visually, the easiest accessory to get was the safety pin, you could find it anywhere», Zé Pedro tells us.
«Afterwards the store Porfírios started to have a few adornments, some bracelets, etc.». Also referring to the
«uniform», Tim explains that “there wasn’t that attitude that started with the new wave of the clothing being
connected to the music, but you could find the idea of creating a character. I chose a kind of a Wilko Johnson look,
slim tie and shirt. Zé Leonel was a much more exuberant person, Zé Pedro had a more punk attitude and Kalu might
have been more bluesy. Already at that time the band lived from that encounter of personalities” (Abreu, 2009).
While not being a proper movement, the first punk bands emerge in the late 1970’s and are, in a
certain way, connected with the emergence of the alternative rock genre in Portugal, assuming,
therefore, a leading role in the history of rock music in our country (Guerra, 2010). In this
regard, we can actually transcribe some excerpts from that time’s press:
“We were in 1978. It was a brief phenomenon, but it had a decisive contribution for the renovation of the portuguese
music and even maybe of the mentalities. They called it portuguese punk. Faíscas, Minas & Armadilhas, Aqui d’el
Rock, UHF, Raios e Coriscos opened the way that created the context where the so called portuguese rock would be
born, a kind of local new wave where we could find bands such as Xutos & Pontapés, Corpo Diplomático (a spin off
from Faíscas, later they became Heróis do Mar and Madredeus, with some changes in the middle) and even Rui
Veloso” (Rock no Liceu, 2007).
“While the capital was still waking up on the undertow of the madness of the foreign rock concerts in the beggining
of 1980’s, punk was at it’s boiling point in massive doses and frenzy moves in a dark, pretty dark, club called
Brown’s. this was the time when badges flourish in the black leather jackets; the collars or leashes with lockers, the
stockings with laces, the spikes, chains, and the “pierced” safety pins were fashionable among the punks” (Rock no
Liceu, 2007)
Nevertheless, it is only after the 1980’s that punk shows signs of a stronger cohesion and more
vitality in Portugal. If on the one side, internationally, bands like The Sex Pistols and The
Ramones were associated with the beginning of the movement, on the other side, and for some
individuals reading the phenomenon a posteriori, punk is something that has always existed, in a
way, as an embodiment of an attitude, and in another way - in a point of view that almost
always relates it, in a certain way, to the rock’n’roll roots worldwide -, as music played in
garages through a mimetic exercise, emulating the sounds of the new records. In other words,
both blues and the first wave of rock’n’roll came to England, where they were recreated by
english youngsters, got back to the U.S.A. with a different vibe and as a new scene that
appealed to a different type of publics that until then wouldn’t listen to that type of music,
publics that rapidly became active agents with bands that were afterwards associated to the
proto-punk movement. In this sense it is important to refer to the opportunity of drawing a
relationship between a life purpose and a musical framework, modelling an experience and a
destiny. Here, we feel how crucial music is as a decisive identity focus.
“Music, punk, was my way of finding a course for my life; a way to affirm my identity in a rural and closeminded
world in the beginning of the 1980’s. It is also a life choice, an option to fight against domination, against the
constraints... against the despotism and authoritarianism of my father and against the prejudice present in the society I
was living in. We lived we a lot of economic difficulties, and I felt all the violence held against us and my mother,
that worked a lot... I used to come to Porto on the weekends and this is how I had my first contacts with punk, and
that was important to free myself from the oppression I felt in Trás-os-Montes” (Frágio In Guerra, 2010).
“When I start to watch punk bands and had my first real contact with the thing, I thought that I could actually become
a musician. I came back and became punk. I met Faíscas, that at the time were also riding the punk wave, completely
in sync, we were a tiny group of maybe twenty or thirty, twenty people. We wore safety pins and all those things.
There were no piercings. We pierced our mouths with the safety pins directly. With the safety pin the only thing you
needed to do was this movement with your hand and it was done, and at the time people still did the earrings with a
needle and line. We used a cork to avoid a mess, and then we pierced with a needle and wore it, you would use the
earring for two or three days” (Zé Pedro In Guerra, 2010).
“There were a punk attitude between the musicians and the crowd surrounding them. It was important to shock, to
agitate... Paulo Pedro Gonçalves was a total punk regarding attitude, Pedro Ayres was all talk, problematisation,
always accompanied by a bottle of absinthe. The important thing was to live every single day as it was the last!” (Zé
Pedro In Guerra, 2010).
“What I found funny [as interesting] in punk was the do it yourself motto. That was a slogan, within quotation marks,
that suited me just fine. And the fact that that phrase and that attitude that, really they put to practice... the punk
movement was a movement that was created with a very exposed image. So, punk influenced everybody, in fashion,
the way people behave, and I think it really was a good movement in Europe. It was a movement without rules. You
didn’t have to play a certain type of sound. I think that the movements that try to put themselves into drawers with a
bunch of rules have their lasting time. This doesn’t mean that punk wasn’t one of these. Nowadays a lot is being said
about punk, but, nowadays, the image of what they try to think upon, back then, thirty years ago, was something
really loose. And that was the attitude I’ve always had, since I had my first contact with that movement” (Zé Pedro In
Guerra, 2010).
3. Emergences
If punk’s emergence in Lisbon can be traced back in time to the end of the seventies, it is only,
almost ten years later, in the mid-1980’s, that punk starts to take its steps in Porto. In the Porto
case, Cães Vadios (a band formed in 1985), assume a role similar to the one of Aqui D’el Rock
in Lisbon: they are seen as the first punk band in the region, enabling other punk manifestations,
or at least working as a cornerstone for their emergence. Also, Renegados de Boliqueime
(formed in the beginning of the nineties) have their relevance via Frágil, their lead singer.
Nevertheless, Frágil’s importance as a character in the Porto punk scene is also due to the
recognition of what has been a long and lasting journey in punk, in other words, of a
retrospective look that takes into account what the present is, what were the experiences in that
period and the prestige he attained because of them.
Generally, the founding importance of Aqui D’el Rock, as a reference band in punk’s
emergence is recognised. Nevertheless, other Lisbon bands are referred for the same timespan -
specially Faíscas, but also Minas & Armadilhas and Corpo Dilomático - in the discourses
concerned with the local punk scene in Lisbon. The recording of two singles in the end of the
seventies materialises the existence of Aqui D’el Rock, which may help us to understand their
historical prominence among the existing bands at the time. Hellas, it is commonly assumed that
the band had the adequate sound and narrative, but not the desired look and attitude.
Therefore, the logic of (mimetic) appropriation creates not only new sonorities but also
fills them with the specific meanings of their context of production. This exercise of
contextualisation reflects itself on the success that some bands had (Gelder, 2007; Hebdige,
1979, 1992). Some became a worldwide success, other became it at a national level, and yet
others were more successful outside their country of origin. The local reappropriations of the
punk sonority have been confirming the accuracy of Dunn’s assertions as punk rock is a sound
example of “cultural hybridism among contemporary world politics”, as it is not the same
everywhere - it is re-shaped and redefined locally, according to the available resources and
social and political needs of those places, in a process that intertwines characteristics of the
global punk with local elements. For Dunn, punk is able to have all this geographical reach
because it is a cultural field among which youth can find several resources of resistance, action
and empowerment (Dunn, 2008: 205-206).
“Punk, the new tentacle of rock, it is not only what bands — their speakers — make of it. The punk explosion was the
motive for several parallel activities, that have been coated with great importance in the development of the
phenomenon — the massive creation of small magazines called fanzines, created the first important alternative to the
musical information in the society of the truts and the coups were created since the beginning of 1975 more than 30
new labels, some just with one or two records, but that came to strike the big lords domain” (Sérgio, 1979:14).
“Afterwards, the first punk bands came to life, but they didn’t play, it was only for the sake of shock. The message
was important, in terms of lyrics, but no one played a thing” (Pedro Ayres Magalhães In Guerra, 2010).
“Returning to politics. We at the beginning thought, by we I mean the small group of punks, that life was too short to
be an hypocrite; and that we really had to get our hands dirty, that instead of preaching, what mattered was to make
things happen that weren’t happening at the time” (Pedro Ayres Magalhães In Guerra, 2010).
“What made me believe and say “I’m going to be a musician” was my contact with punk rock and hardcore. Thinking
that you can control the process... everything is less complicated, there are a lot less intermediaries and the attitude of
“anyone can do it” and if I do this and you like and I am so mediocre at it, you’re gonna make it as good or even
better than me. The fact of simplifying the access to music made me feel good about myself or confident enough to
decide to experiment. One time in front of the drum kit was all it took” (Joaguim Albergaria In Guerra, 2010).
“We came from the punk rock, we say concerts that were true parties, celebrations of youth culture quite irreverent
and even subversive, of resistance to the apathy which the system draws us into in a daily basis, from birth until
death” (Joaquim Albergaria In Guerra, 2010).
If in the duality between the U.S.A and the United Kingdom that happened, in Portugal this can
also be seen. The emergence of punk in Portugal is therefore shaped by the environment of
openness and transformation in which the country was immersed in the post-25 of April of 1974
and characterised by a mimetism/reappropriation of the north-american and british realities, a
mimetism which isn’t, nonetheless, specific to the founding moments of punk in Portugal as it
can be found through the generations of individuals and their paths/connections through/to
punk. April Errickson (1999) provides us an account of the socio-historical specificities that
were present in the origin of the punk movement in the U.S.A. and in the U.K., showing us the
plasticity and consequent adaptability of this movement to the contexts of living, in synch with
the theses of Andy Bennett about the consolidation of the music scenes (Bennett & Peterson,
2004). Hence, Errickson, writing about the context in which punk emerged in the U.K., tells us
that “in the mid-seventies, England suffered a recession. (...) From that recession came the
transformation of the relatively stable lives of the english”. Unemployment rose; the thefts,
strikes and bomb-letters rose and the panic was installed among the population; and “the
conspiracies were abundant and were focused on what was happening with the government to
permit the recession to go on”. Alongside with this political problems, the heat wave that the
country felt in the summer of 1976 forced a lot of families to stay at home, as they had no
money to have vacations away from this situation. The fear that was acute, became even worse.
People felt trapped and without hope. The youth was “furious with the government and with
society for trusting a government that was unable to help their own citizens and to protect them
from all this suffering” (Errickson, 1999:7-8).
“In just a couple of years, punk made more headlines than other socio-musical phenomenon since The Beatles (...)
and Jimi Hendrix or the colossal reunions of Woodstock. As a movement it has true tendencies to dilute itself due to
the velocity of the phenomenons in the communication age - but its offsprings are here for those able to take
advantage and understand them. And know that rock will always react with replenished strength to the recuperation
of the system and to the attempts to control it. Punk is dead, long live rock” (Sérgio, 1979:14).
For April Errickson (1999) the context that “helped to form the punk in England, was
mirrored in the United States during the seventies”. In that decade, the opportunities were scarce
and the energy crisis of 1973/74 lead to the depression of the industrial production and,
consequently, to the decrease of the worker’s wages. Another recession was near. But, contrary
to the british punk movement, in the United States, the youth were more interested in the music
than in the questions regarding (social) class. Here, in the U.S.A., even in the beginning of the
1970’s we could hear “the first signs of a fast, loud and stylistically simple music that started
with bands like The New York Dolls, The Ramones and Blondie”. Nevertheless, only between
the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties we can see the rise in popularity of the
punk looks in this country (Errickson, 1999:9). Also, we can state that there were, in fact,
differences between the british and north-american punk. The latter was much more interested
in the symbols than in its ideals. According to Errickson, that may be due to the fact that north-
american punk emerged among the middle class and not the working class as the british
movement did. This may, in fact, explain why the north-american punk soon revealed its
interest in selling music (without political or social causes) to the mainstream (Errickson,
1999:10).
In an exercise of comparison of the punk movement in Portugal and other realities, we
have, at the same time, a reiteration of the mimetic character present, mainly, on the musical
influences, an evaluation that points to the lack of infrastructures and support activities (like
punk houses or squats) to the movement that enable an increment of its radius of action, of its
capacity to intervene, in organisation and dynamism, and the recognition that the punk
movement evolves and constitutes itself in a close relation to each local and national context on
a mentality level. Albiez considers that “punk is always diverse and fluid in its identity. Any
theoretical or interpretative study that focus itself only on the class or the oppositional politics
as a framework to understand this genre, at least since the beginning of the eighties in the
United Kingdom, misses the essential question which is that punk had vast effects on those who
adopted it, who adapted it and answered it” (Albiez, 2004: 12).
4. Sedimentations
After the first punk wave of the end of the 1970’s, in the mid-1980’s we could watch
the emergence of a second wave, ten years past the punk’s eclosion in the U.K.: here we can
find bands like Peste & Sida, Mata Ratos, Censurados, Crise Total and Bastardos do Cardeal.
They play shows in Lisbon in places like A Teia, Rock Rendez Vous, António Arroio Artistic
School or the Fine Arts Faculty and they wanted to be heard. At this time we still lived in the
after-revolutionary period, a period of euphoria, expectations and dreams wherein the
portuguese youth felt that there was room for bands do grow and every single day you could
find new acts and potential musicians.
The existence of a place like Rock Rendez Vous was a determinant factor for the
actualisation and sedimentation of the punk sensibility and of punk bands. Also relevant at this
time seems to be the importance of Alvalade as the epicentre of the Lisbon’s punk scene,
feeding from a musical tradition and converting it to the punk’s DIY. The significance of
Alvalade is also due to the fact that since the beginning of the 1980’s, in Lisbon, each of its
neighbourhoods has its own sensibility and associated musical movement. Also, it is possible to
identify at this time several ways of living and experiencing punk according to its territorial
context, namely, a more well known and intense Lisbon scene, and a less intense but more
underground Porto scene. It is, nevertheless, important to stress that the attendance to
international festivals, the foreign literature and the possibility of listening to imported records
were determinant for the emergence of the portuguese punk scene.
The portuguese punk scene is, nowadays and resembling what happens with other punks
scenes all over the world, constituted by several subgroups, united around the sonority of the
bands and, in some cases, of a set of, mainly political, ideals. Through the history of the punk
movement, this genre was subdivided in an infinitude of other genres, more or less close to their
roots, more or less open to contaminations by other genres (namely pop, ska or metal).
In Portugal, we can subdivide the contemporary punk scene in seven groups, noting that
this division is influenced by some degree of arbitrariness, as there are links connecting some of
the subgroups and bands that can be transversal to more than one subgroup. In this way, there is
a first group that we can call political punk/anarcho-punk. Politicised, with an anarchist or anti-
system incline, this group is connected to places like Casa Viva in Porto and the centres for
libertarian culture of Cacilhas, Almada and Aljustrel. Having as aesthetic and political
references other bands of political punk, their sound varies between one influenced by crust (a
punk verge influenced by metal) and one of a more classic incline, in line with bands like
Exploited or GBH. In Portugal, bands within this spectre are Coluna de Ferro (Lisbon),
Eskizofrénicos (Porto), Albert Fish (Porto, a band more street punk but, in a way, in line with
this verge), Dissidentes do Projecto Estatal (Aljustrel) and Artigo 19 (Porto).
The second group is the hardcore one (classic, in line with the 1980’s Washington
scene). This group shaped the Lisbon punk scene (in a broad sense) of the 1990’s, with bands
like X-Acto and Sannyasin and places like the Ritz headlining this moment where the
portuguese punk was more intense. This scene is now, at some extent, defaced (some of its
leading characters are now in bands like Linda Martini, PAUS and If Lucy Fell), but there are
some bands that have this kind of sound like My Rules (Lisbon), No Good Reason (Almada),
Mr. Miyagi (Viana do Castelo), and, in a way, Adorno (influenced in some extent by the
original emo movement). The third group can be identified as metallic hardcore/metalcore/post-
metal. Between hardcore, metal, and genres like post-rock and instrumental music, it is a
relatively undefined, but active, group that leaves aside the more militant components of the
classic punk and hardcore. Also, it is more open in what concerns music and we can include in
this group bands like If Lucy Fell and Men Eater (both from Lisbon).
The fourth group can be found among the crust/d-beat sonorities - a more metallic, and
highly politicised tendency, in line with bands like Discharge and Doom. The extremely fast
drumming leads the music, to which screaming vocals and distorted guitars are added. The more
significant bands among this group are Simbiose (Lisbon), Freedoom (Porto), Deskarga Etílica
(Figueira da Foz), Alien Squad (Leiria), and Dokuga (Porto). The fifth group is the punk rock
one. With melodic songs in line with Censurados and the early Xutos & Pontapés. Here we can
actually speak of a specific portuguese sonority, played by bands like Fitacola (Coimbra), Tara
Perdida (Lisboa), and K2o3 (Setúbal). The sixth group may be identified with skapunk, as it
opts to perform a cross between the jamaican ska music and the simplicity and energy of punk.
The most popular band within this sub-genre is Humble.
Finally, the pop-punk/melodic hardcore. In the 1990’s, bands like Lagwagon,
Pennywise, Bad Religion and NOFX became popular. They practice hardcore with a very
melodic incline, almost pop, more accessible in terms of listening to broader audiences. This
tendency is in line with the popularity of bands like Green Day and Offspring, a movement that
was conventionally called pop-punk. One of the most popular bands in Portugal, Fonzie, follow
this aesthetic. Other groups like Easyway (which have obtained some airplay on the radio),
Aside (currently on an undetermined hiatus) and Triplet (with a more radiophonic emo incline).
Concluding, with all the national specificities and the underground inclination that the
movement has, we can actually find not only punks, but also concerts and other signs of vitality
among the movement in Portugal. Even though it isn’t on the covers of newspapers, even
though it has not the media attention it used to have at the peak of its emergence, namely in the
U.S.A an the U.K., punk still has, nowadays, the ability to move small crowds and sell out
concerts. Nevertheless, and in spite of being pronounced dead, it is something that lives, it is
still around (in?) us, it is something replenishing with meanings, something that still has a role
in the individuals life and among society. Several authors claimed the death of punk, and, with
it, the death of the classic view of subcultures (Cogan, 2010; Sabin, 1999; Clark, 2003), in the
exact measure in which those subcultures were “groups of young people that practiced a vast set
of social contestation through shared behavioural and aesthetic orientations” (Clark, 2003:223).
These groups were important to the change of the social order in several parts of the world,
operating this change through their capacity to shock and disobey the established norms
referring to class, gender or ethnicity. However, everything changed, as, with the course of time,
these transgressions to the norm, became, so to speak, normal. In other words, they became
expectable, they were included among the capitalist repertoire which converted the “rebellious”
image into a potential consumer, into a consumer item. Dylan Clark, actually states that punk
was captured and placed among the “subcultural zoo, exposed for everyone to see” (Clark,
2003:223). This lead punk to the end of the line, to the point of no return. Having fought a full
front battle against the establishment, having reached a point where some bands valorised
everything rejected by the mainstream, from raping to death fields and to fascism (some actually
adhered to it) (Clark, 2003:225), punk had to reflect upon itself.
In other words, with Savage, we can say that “punk was beaten but it also won. If the
destruction of the music industry was the Sex Pistols’s project, they failed; but they also gave it
a new life, a myriad of new forms. Since punk’s inscription in music and the media industries,
its conception of freedom is finally submersed by the New Right’s political power and by the
value system that comes with it, but its initial negation remains a beacon. History is made by
those who say ‘NO’ and the utopian heresies of punk remain a gift in the world” (Savage, 2002:
613-614).