DIY Cultures and Underground Music Scenes (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

The concept of DIY `do-it-yourself' cultural production gained critical momentum during the late 1970s with the emergence of punk. This proved to be a catalyst for the creation of a broader DIY aesthetic that has underpinned a succession of punk and post-punk music styles since the late 1970s. Indeed, to talk about DIY music scenes and cultures in a contemporary context is to talk about a phenomenon that is truly global; an alternative realm of cultural and artistic production, mediation and consumption which has a creative and inventive vitality that has endeavoured to assert itself in response to the economic and social crisis of the western world. The purpose of this book is to critically consider how the concept of DIY can be used as a means of studying contemporary underground music scenes with reference to themes such as local and trans-local connections, technological change, cultural policy, memory and heritage.