Abstract
Since the 1970s, the concept of DIY (do-it-yourself) culture has evolved from a bluntly resistant statement of independence from dominant forms of capitalist cultural production and dissemination to a more nuanced expression of creative cultural practice. While such practice remains resistant to more mainstream forms of cultural production and consumption it has at the same time evolved a level of professionalism aimed towards ensuring cultural and, where possible, economic sustainability. In a time where the concept of the cultural industries has become commonplace across many regions of the world and where various attempts are being made to co-opt or suppress forms of cultural production based on their perceived value or threat to the status quo, DIY careers become viable ways in which to mark out and maintain DIY cultural spaces as both ethical and aesthetically meaningful. The articles that make up this special issue consider the contemporary significance of DIY careers with specific reference to young people and music-making practices in a global context.
The concept of DIY (do-it-yourself) first acquired currency during the early years of the 20th century when it was primarily used and understood in the context of home improvement (Gelber, 1997). Referring to the practice of creating, repairing and/or modifying things without the use of an expert craftsperson, the term DIY was gradually broadened in subsequent decades to embrace a range of creative cultural practices, including music. In that context, DIY assumed its most critical relevance during the mid-1970s with the emergence of punk (O’Connor, 2008). While earlier musical styles, notably skiffle (Stratton, 2010) and rock and roll (Bielby, 2004), also had a distinctive DIY quality about them (see Bennett’s article in this issue) punk’s entire musical and cultural ethos was heavily invested with a strong and distinctive DIY aesthetic (McKay, 1998). By the time of punk’s arrival, the popular music industry had grown to a point where the production and distribution of popular music was both tightly regulated and heavily routinised, with music created on a mass scale and calculated to appeal to mass audiences. From the perspective of punk the result of such regulation was that music had lost touch with its audience and, in doing so, had also become divested of value, socially, culturally and politically. The key mission of punk, therefore, was to reinvest music with an aesthetic more akin to what it saw as the excitement of the rock-and-roll years while also reinstalling a political message (Laing, 1985).
As the initial punk scene of the 1970s diversified and gave rise to a range of new musical and stylistic scenes including anarcho punk (Gosling, 2004), gothic punk (Hodkinson, 2002) and hardcore (Driver, 2011), the DIY principles that had been at the core of punk continued to be reflected in the way that these newer styles were created, performed and consumed. Indeed, it would also be accurate to say that since the 1970s the DIY aesthetic of the early punk scene has become a key source of influence and inspiration for a successive range of genres, among them rap (Rose, 1994), indie (Bannister, 2006) and dance (Thornton, 1995). During the same period in which these later genres emerged, de-industrialisation in the global north and a heightening of cultural globalisation, as many countries transitioned from production to consumer-based societies, had a pronounced bearing on the evolution of DIY culture in a global context. Indeed, just as it is now legitimate to talk about punk, rap, indie and various other musical and stylistic genres as global forms of culture (see, for example, Nilan and Feixa, 2006) so, too, is it possible to see how the strong heritage of DIY culture interwoven with such genres has accompanied their global mobility and development in a ‘glocal’ (Robertson, 1995) context.
DIY Music Careers
As part of the strong DIY resonance that has accompanied the development of punk and post-punk music and style in a global context, an understanding of the career potential embedded in the DIY aesthetic has emerged, particularly among youth. In the global north this understanding of DIY is largely bound up with the post-industrial shift away from secure career paths to a situation of more short-term and precarious labour (Standing, 2011). Faced with this prospect, and armed with skills and competencies learned as young practitioners in music and associated cultural scenes, young people are increasingly drawing on these resources in an attempt to forge alternative career paths to those mapped out in an era of short-termism and what Goos and Manning (2003) have referred to as MacJobs. In a global context, however, other local circumstances also have a critical bearing on how the merit and relative value of engaging in DIY music and cultural activity are understood by young people. Thus, in certain cases, DIY career activity becomes a potent way of resisting the attempts of the state to capitalise on the power of popular music as a new ‘cultural industry’ by promoting particular styles and artists over others – typically those whose music is deemed politically ‘inoffensive’ while at the same time saleable to foreign markets. In other instances, DIY music careers may form part of palpable ‘underground’ resistance movements to government forces that remain hostile or negative to potentially subversive styles of music. Similarly, DIY music careers can provide a platform for migrant and ethnic minority youth to find a voice in host countries that remain insensitive or indifferent to the cultural identities and needs of such youth as they attempt to assert their presence and find a cultural niche for themselves.
The articles in this special issue focus on particular issues relating to youth, music and DIY careers in specific local contexts. Andy Bennett’s opening article sets the scene for this investigation by examining the history of DIY culture in popular music from the early 1950s to the present. As Bennett observes, the seeds of DIY engagement in musical practice were sown by the distinctly hands-on quality of rock and roll and skiffle music which, in comparison to earlier forms of popular music, were musically less complex and thus more accessible to young people aspiring to become involved in these scenes. Tracing the aforementioned evolution of DIY through the punk and post-punk scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, Bennett notes how the shifting labour market landscape of the later 20th century was accompanied by an increasing emphasis, both officially and unofficially, on the importance of music-making for youth as a potential new career pathway. Here, Bennett considers the complex relationship between government schemes, such as the UK’s ‘New Deal for Musicians’, the creative industries’ rhetoric of new ‘cultural entrepreneurs’ and various other manifestations of DIY music and cultural practice that remain at the fringes of such cultural policy and planning. Thus, argues Bennett, while official funding and provision for the ramping up of local music as a form of grass-roots and bottom-up cultural production can only ever hope to service a fraction of what many urban (and indeed non-urban) settings have to offer, the flip-side of this is that such initiatives are leading to a broad understanding of the need for greater levels of professionalisation, even in DIY music and cultural scenes that are destined, or indeed prefer, to remain fringe (and in many cases subversive) concerns.
Precarious Living and Alternative Skill-Sets
In the first article of this special issue, Steven Threadgold examines the DIY cultural scene in the city of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. Like other developed countries in the ‘global north’, Australia faces internal pressures caused by a slowing in the global economy and its impact on employment opportunities, especially among the young. As Threadgold’s study illustrates, as part of a collective strategy for dealing with the prospect of precarious labour and its impact on quality of life, many young people are reflexively choosing a lifestyle characterised by relatively modest means but greater scope for freedom in terms of career path. As a provincial harbour city, located some 162 kilometres (101 miles) from Sydney, the state capital of New South Wales, Newcastle’s principle industry is coal, with the city being the world’s largest exporter of coal. Newcastle’s primarily industrial and working-class character also means that the cost of living is lower than in the larger metropolitan cities with cheap rents available both for living accommodation and small businesses. In this environment, a vibrant alternative DIY culture has evolved spanning a range of interconnected activities that include music-making and performance, fashion and design, as well as record shops, street cafes and the like. As Threadgold explains, for the young people in his study the existence of DIY cultural production and consumption within a socio-economic eco-system suited to this purpose supplies them with an ethical lifestyle that they feel is more important than the pursuit of material wealth and status.
Ross Haenfler’s article considers another significant aspect of the DIY career phenomenon, specifically its reliance on practical skills learned not during the process of formal education and/or in the workplace, but rather through a deep immersion in various forms of youth cultural practice. As Haenfler observes, whereas for many years, youth cultures were considered to be age-specific and leisure-based forms of lifestyle, since the closing years of the 20th century it has become increasingly obvious that there are palpable connections between youth cultural identities and subsequent lifestyle trajectories. Drawing on data from a trans-local study of DIY careerists in the USA, Australia, the UK, and Continental Europe, Haenfler explores the diverse career paths now being pursued by people who spent their youth as members of straightedge scenes in these different parts of the world. As Haenfler discovers, although many of these people have left behind some of the more visually stylised markers of their hardcore affiliation, they continue to adhere to associated sensibilities including a rejection of drugs, alcohol and aggressive behaviour. At the same time, many have drawn on and refined skills learned as members of hardcore scenes and applied these in current careers as musicians, producers, writers, promoters and so on. Although often now applying highly professionalised standards and approaches in such careers, Haenfler’s participants continue to acknowledge the importance of hardcore as a basis upon which their current lives and careers have been shaped.
Urban Identities and Cultural Economy
As noted earlier, if one way of understanding the emergence and increasing prevalence of DIY music careers is in response to the precarious nature of everyday life in post-industrial societies, other factors may also inform the meaning of such careers for those who engage in them. Rap music and the broader hip hop culture of which it forms a part have long been acknowledged and understood as mediums that give a voice to socio-economically excluded youth. As rap and hip hop became more globally established their significance was also seen in relation to ethnic minority youth in many of the world’s cities. Reitsamer and Prokop’s article examines this aspect of rap and hip hop in the context of the Austrian capital of Vienna. Reitsamer and Prokop illustrate how ethnic rappers in the local Viennese scene experienced significant challenges in being accepted by the music industry as they sought to re-articulate African-American rap influences into a brand of rap geared towards addressing local examples of racism, aggression and exclusion as they experienced this in their daily lives. In charting the relevance of rap and hip hop as viable means towards the creation of DIY music careers for ethnic youth in Vienna, Reitsamer and Prokop provide an interesting contrast between the scenario that prevailed in the 1990s, when access to the internet was largely limited, and the situation of the 2010s where those engaging in DIY rap and hip hop careers take the opportunities for connectivity and music dissemination afforded by the internet largely for granted.
Another factor that has played an important part in shaping the opportunities for young people to engage in DIY music careers is the increasing importance of live music in the cultural policy agendas of many cities around the world. Although ostensibly offering extended scope for the production, performance and consumption of live music, the process of gentrification that has accompanied the transformation of urban spaces into cultural zones with live music precincts has encroached on formerly unregulated DIY music scenes, necessitating those engaged in more independent and alternative music to evolve new strategies for creative survival. In her article on the live music scene in the Italian city of Milan, Silvia Tarassi examines one such example of this enforced professionalisation as the local independent music scene adopts new strategies to ensure its economic and cultural sustainability in a shifting urban landscape where alternative and fringe musics are continually under threat of expulsion from the gentrified spaces of the inner city. One aspect of this, argues Tarassi, is that to operate successfully as DIY cultural entrepreneurs individuals must draw on a broad range of skills and abilities, as musicians, producers, promoters, critics, artists, sound engineers and so on, in a cultural sphere that is now actively orientated towards career portfolios whereby multi-tasking and multi-jobbing are considered essential criteria.
State intervention in the production, performance and consumption of popular music can, however, also result in a broadly opposite effect on independent and alternative music scenes. In such cases those involved in these scenes may often strive to perfect and consolidate a more classical DIY ethic as a form of resistance to what they see as an invasion of a cultural space that is by definition resistant to state intervention. Such is the case in Taiwan and China where the relatively recent evolution of independent and alternative music scenes has coincided with attempts by the governments in each of these countries to co-opt and cultivate popular music as a vibrant cultural industry capable of generating significant revenue from national and international markets across Asia. In her article on the DIY music careers of independent music artists in Beijing and Taipei, Miaoju Jian considers how, in each location, such musicians have embraced a strong DIY aesthetic as a means of working against a scenario in which government support is selectively directed towards particular artists whose music is deemed ‘suitable’ for the international pop market. As Jian’s study illustrates, despite being aware that working against state intervention in the creative affairs of pop and rock artists in China and Taiwan may ultimately mean that they can never make a living from their music, in general indie musicians are happy with this situation and the relative freedom it affords them to make the kind of music they wish to make and under conditions that they deem more conducive to the ethos and spirit of indie.
Social Change, Resistance and Belonging
In other contexts, a DIY music-making ethos and resultant career trajectories has signified a moment of release for young people, becoming part of their transition to a more urban and cosmopolitan lifestyle. As Paula Guerra’s article illustrates, such is the case in Portugal where the legacy of the country’s 40-year-old punk scene is firmly bound up with the decline of Portugal’s former dictatorship. Against this backdrop, even as Portuguese punks struggled to establish the cultural resources with which to build local scenes, their oral histories as related in Guerra’s article reflect a collective sense of achievement and independence as a new generation of youth strove to move out of the shadows of Portugal’s previous political history and the country’s previous status as a largely agrarian society. Unlike elsewhere in Europe and in North America, in the case of the first generation of Portuguese punks, DIY careers were not in most cases a reaction to the commodification of popular music and culture as such a situation did not exist in the same way in Portugal at this time. Rather, such careers were a necessary step in achieving the cultural basis through which the new urban and cosmopolitan sensibilities of a post-revolution Portuguese youth could begin to establish themselves.
The presence of a strong DIY sphere of cultural production and embedded careers can also serve as a form of insulation against the oppressive nature of ongoing dictatorial regimes as illustrated by the final article in this special issue where Elham Golpushnezhad presents a study of the DIY hip hop scene in Iran. Although present in Iran since the early 2000s, the local hip hop scene is still a largely underground movement with its survival and the creative practices of its more staunchly political members being reliant on a close-knit network of producers who are willing to work with rap artists under the constant threat of state surveillance. Moreover, as Golpushnezhad illustrates, while some Iranian rappers have elected to move away from the more radical roots of Iranian rap, and into the realm of what is locally referred to as ‘party rap’ (that is rap specifically produced for performance at night clubs and other large and legal public gatherings including house parties), other Iranian rappers have chosen to continue along the path of making music that is more questioning of the country’s political regime and cultural values.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.