Punk aesthetics in independent "new folk", 1990-2008
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2009
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Various commentators on punk (e.g. Laing 1985, Frith 1986, Goshert 2000, Reynolds
2005, Webb 2007) have remarked upon an essence or attitude which is much more
central to it than any aspects of musical style. Through the analysis of specific
recordings as texts, this study aims to deliver on this idea by suggesting that there is an
entire generation of musicians working in the independent sphere creating music that
combines resonances of folk music with demonstrable punk aesthetics.
Given that the cultural formations of folk and punk share many rhetorics of authenticity
– inclusivity, community, anti-establishment ideals and, to paraphrase Bannister (2006:
xxvi) ‘technological dystopianism’ – it is perhaps not surprising that some successors of
punk and hardcore, particularly in the U.S., would turn to folk after the
commercialisation of grunge in the early 1990s. But beyond this, a historical survey of
the roots of new folk leads us to the conclusion that the desire for spontaneity rather
than perfection, for recorded artefacts which affirm music as a participatory process
rather than a product to be consumed, is at least as old as recording technology itself.
The ‘new folk’ of the last two decades often mythologises a pre-industrial past, even as
it draws upon comparatively recent oppositional approaches to the recording as artefact
that range from those of Bob Dylan to obscure outsider artists and lo-fi indie rockers.
This study offers a survey of new folk which is overdue – to date, new folk has been
virtually ignored by the academic literature. It considers the tangled lineages that inform
this indie genre, in the process suggesting new aspects of the history of rock music
which stretch all the way back to Depression-era recordings in the shape of Harry
Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. At the same time, it attempts to steer a
middle course between cultural studies approaches to popular music which at times fail
to directly address music at all, and musicological approaches which are at times in
danger of abstracting minutae until the broader frame is completely lost. By
concentrating on three aspects of the recordings in question - vocal approach, a broad
consideration of sound (inclusive of production values and timbre), and structure as it
pertains to both individual pieces and albums – this work hopes to offer a fresh way of
reading popular music texts which deals specifically with the music without losing sight
of its broader function and context.
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