Music and more than music: difference and identity in Portuguese punk

• Type: Summary of Presentation in an International Conference
• Date: 2013

Authors

Paula Guerra (Author) FLUP; Augusto Santos Silva (Author) FLUP

Conference proceedings International

Title: Intersectional and postcolonial perspectives on musical fields

Initial page: 44

Music, Gender & Difference

University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (Austria), 10 a 12 de outubro de 2013

Scientific classification

FOS: Social sciences > Sociology

CORDIS: Social sciences > Sociology

Other information

Resumo (PT): In ideological terms, punk is a contestation movement in its artistic, economic and social dimensions. It resembled the 1960s’ garage rock since it favoured the public mobilization of youths through the proliferation of bands that campaigned for the do it yourself strategy. In Western societies, punk represented a departure from and a repositioning towards the existing social structure for which it also provided a soundtrack. It is in this context that we ap-proach the Portuguese punk, considering its importance in a society under recent processes of democratization and modernization. In fact, sociological theory must contribute to understand the set of social practices related to music in light of both the structural principles and properties of social life and the new emergent subjectivities, particularly among youths. Thus, in this article, we propose to look at punk from its protagonists’ discourses. We will consider the words used by punk bands in two ways: their names and the words they use in their lyrics. In both cases, we deal with self-representation issues: who are we, how do we position and distinguish ourselves from others, what do we have to say about ourselves, our time and our world? What are our values and what do we have to say regarding dominant social values? What are the causes that move us, how do we want to act, how do we want the world to be like? As with any other self-representations, content is not independent from form. Therefore, mat-ters such as identification and actors (who speaks? who is he/she speaking to?) or language (how does the speaker express him/herself? Which codes does he/she resort to? Using which forms?) are also examined. Our analysis suggests that the punk discourse about identity tends to be structured around three main axes: (a) cosmopolitanism; (b) the radical assumption of an irreducible difference towards social order; and (c) an ambivalent attitude towards politics and political action.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific