I am more than happy to present our first KISMIF edited book: DIY CULTURES AND UNDERGROUND MUSIC SCENES, published in the series Routledge Advances in Sociology.

This book is primarily an outcome of the KISMIF Conference, an international event dedicated to the study and discussion of DIY cultural scenes in a global context.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all of those people who have attended KISMIF since it began in 2014 and shared with us their insights, both academic and practitioner-based, on DIY cultural practice around the world. Thank you very much to all the authors: Anda Georgiana Becut, Asya Draganova, Benjamin Düster, Carles Feixa, Daniel S. Traber, Emília Barna, Ion Andoni del Amo Castro, J. Mark Percival, Jeder Silveira Janotti Jr, John Willsteed, Juho Kaitajärvi-Tiekso, Katie Rochow, Maximilian Spiegel, Pierig Humeau, Raphaël Nowak, Sarah Benhaïm, Sean Martin-Iverson, Shane Blackman, Victor de Almeida Nobre Pires, Will Straw, Yvonne Niekrenz and Zoe Armour.

Description:

This volume examines the global influence and impact of DIY cultural practice as this informs the production, performance and consumption of underground music in different parts of the world. The book brings together a series of original studies of DIY musical activities in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Oceania. The chapters combine insights from established academic writers with the work of younger scholars, some of whom are directly engaged in contemporary underground music scenes.

The book begins by revisiting and re-evaluating key themes and issues that have been used in studying the cultural meaning of alternative and underground music scenes, notably aspects of space, place and identity and the political economy of DIY cultural practice. The book then explores how the DIY cultural practices that characterize alternative and underground music scenes have been impacted and influenced by technological change, notably the emergence of digital media. Finally, in acknowledging the over 40-year history of DIY cultural practice in punk and post-punk contexts, the book considers how DIY cultures have become embedded in cultural memory and the emotional geographies of place.

Through combining high-quality data and fresh conceptual insights in the context of an international body of work spanning the disciplines of popular-music studies, cultural and media studies, and sociology the book offers a series of innovative new directions in the study of DIY cultures and underground/alternative music scenes. This volume will be of particular interest to undergraduate students in the above-mentioned fields of study, as well as an invaluable resource for established academics and researchers working in these and related fields.

Contents

Introduction
Andy Bennett and Paul Guerra

Part I: Underground Music Scenes between the Local and the Translocal

1. Rethinking DIY Culture in a Post-Industrial and Global Context
Andy Bennett and Paula Guerra

2. Visibility and Conviviality in Music Scenes
Will Straw

3. Punk Stories
Carles Feixa

4. Between Popular and Underground Culture: An Analysis of Bucharest Urban Culture
Anda Georgiana Becuț

5. The DIY as a Constitutive Resource of the Specific Punk Capital in France
Pierig Humeau

6. Boys in Black, Girls in Punk: Gender Performances in the Goth and Hardcore Punk Scenes in Northern Germany
Yvonne Niekrenz

Part II: Music and DIY Cultures: DIY or Die!

7. Music, Protest Politics, DIY and Identity in the Basque Country
Ion Andoni de Amo Castro

8. Home Economics: Fusing Imaginaries in the Musical Underground of Wellington, New Zealand
Katie Rochow

9. Proud Amateurs: Deterritorialized Expertise in Contemporary Finnish DIY Micro-Labels
Juho T. Kaitajärvi-Tiekso

10. Noise Records as Noise Culture: DIY Practices, Aesthetics and Trades
Sarah Benhaïm

11. Punk Positif: The DIY Ethic and the Politics of Value in the Indonesian Hardcore Punk Scene
Sean Martin-Iveson

Part III: Art, Music and Technological Change

12. So Far, Yet So Near: The Brazilian DIY Politics of Sofar Sounds – A Collaborative Network for Live Music Audiences
Jeder Silveira Janotti Jr and Victor de Almeida Nobre Pires

13. Cassette Cultures in Berlin: Resurgence, DIY Freedom or Sellout?
Benjamin Düster and Raphaël Nowak

14. Here Today: The Role of Ephemera in Clarifying Underground Culture
John Willsteed

15. Birth of an Underground Music Scene? Creative Networks and (Digital) DIY Technologies in a Hungarian Context
Emília Barna

Part IV: Music Scenes, Memory and Emotional Geographies

16. The Inoperative Subculture: History, Identity and Avant-Gardism in Garage Rock
Daniel S. Traber

17. Collectivity and Individuality in US Free Folk Musics
Maximilan Spiegel

18. The Independent Record Label, Ideology and Longevity: Twenty Years of Chemikal Underground Records in Glasgow
J. Mark Percival

19. Verbal Sound System (1997–98): Recalling a Raver’s DIY Practices in the British Free Party Counterculture
Zoe Armour

20. A Howl of the Estranged: Post-Punk and Contemporary Underground Scenes in Bulgarian Popular Music
Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman

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