Protest and Survive: a Brief History and Analysis of the Politics of Punk
PROTEST AND SURVIVE: A BRIEF HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICS OF PUNK A THESIS IN Musicology Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF MUSIC by DILLON PATRICK HENRY B.F.A., Carnegie Mellon University, 2010 M.M., University of Michigan, 2014 Kansas City, Missouri 2018 © 2018 DILLON PATRICK HENRY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PROTEST AND SURVIVE: A BRIEF HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICS OF PUNK Dillon Patrick Henry, Candidate for the Master of Music Degree University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2018 ABSTRACT Politics are an important aspect of most punk music, and many authors, avoiding concrete description, paint the genre with a nebulous left-ish brush. This, however, is insufficient at explaining how and why the genre has adapted to (as well as helped shape) geographically and culturally disparate communities across the globe over the last half- century. Moreover, most academic treatment of punk rock comes from a cultural and sociological perspective, lacking a theoretical and analytical discussion of the music itself. This document will synthesize the evolving genre’s musical and cultural entanglements with politics. To this end, the document will focus on landmark bands, albums, and locations around the world in a mostly chronological order with occasional overlap, documenting cultural development of the genre with supplemental musical analysis. With rigorous primary-source analysis of punk rock zines, this document will also recognize punk rock communities and transmission of ideas outside of the bands themselves. The elusive intertwining and occasionally paradoxical stances of the punk subculture are precisely why creating a single definition of punk rock is a difficult endeavor.
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