Increased market concentration of multinational record companies, greater integration of major labels with international multi-media and entertainment conglomerates, as well as long economic recession were among the most striking developments of the 1980s to impact upon music-related industries. In the French-speaking province of Quebec (Canada), these developments, combined with local socio-political turmoil, left popular music in the throes of crisis and further jeopardised an indigenous music industry still in the making. The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which a local industry, by coming to terms with the aforementioned international developments, overcame what could well have spelled its doom.

Chicha, a fermented maize beer, traditional in the Andes and brewed by Andean migrants in the shanty towns of Peru's cities, has given its name to a musical movement, which first emerged in the migrant squatter settlements of Lima in the 1960s. By the mid-1980s chicha was the most well-known and wide-spread form of urban popular music in Peru (Romero 1990; Rowe & Schelling 1991, pp. 121–2), widely played, sung and danced in impromptu chichodromos, set up in walled-in vacant lots or back yards.

Since when do Catalans speak Catalan and who are they anyway? Perhaps the 1992 Olympic Games have shed some light on Catalan identity for outsiders, but I believe the idea deserves development with a focus on the recent phenomenon of ‘rock en català’. By focusing on language and Catalan nationalism, by no means driven by a homogeneous ideology, I hope to clarify these questions about Catalan identity and its role in popular culture. In 1985 what would inspire four youths from Spain's north-eastern coastal region to pick up instruments they had never played before, with the exception of the drummer, and start a punk-rock band provocatively named Condons Adulterats (Spoiled Condoms)? What was the impetus behind their first hit ‘Estic penjat’ (I'm Stoned)? Fame? Money? Politics? Sex? I believe with the latter we are getting warmer, but as an original member of the band that sprang from this seedling, I can attest to the fact that we just wanted to have some fun. It was a challenge to have our efforts taken seriously and, while they often were not, our local following grew. If commercial success had been the goal of the band we would have agreed to sing in Spanish with the dream of conquering the Spanish peninsula. But the project began locally in the highly industrialised province of Tarragona where the most natural thing to do was to sing in Catalan.

Our time has come Tio/ I'm Basque and I'm proud/ That's enough Tio, say it loud/I'm Basque and I'm proud! (Negu Gorriak, 1989)

The relationship between popular music and social movements does not in itself constitute an exceptional phenomenon. However, Basque Radical Rock (as Basque punk has come to be called) has emerged as a peculiar phenomenon of the history of political mobilisation in Euskadi (the Basque name for Basque country). This peculiarity is due to the fusion of an eminently anti-establishment music of anglo-saxon origin with a nationalist patriotic movement. The ‘alliance’ between these two such diverse spheres is the theme of this article. Such an alliance is of interest because it reveals how the discursive and organisational linkages which formed Basque radical rock defined a common struggle shared by punks and nationalist activists.

Most instruction in electric guitar, bass guitar, drums and electronic keyboards is conducted on a one-to-one basis by uncertified, independent teachers. The lessons are face-to-face, and based on the student's imitation of the teacher's example. Popular music education is a ‘little tradition’ (in comparison to school music departments) and largely an oral one, thus meeting the usual criteria of folk cultures.

After a decade of relative stability a flurry of closures and launches has changed the face of the British popular music press (see Table 1). This article examines the new structure and its development in three interlocking areas: in music industry organisation, rock and pop genres, and the process of discursive formation in the press itself. On the first of these, I argue that the function of the music press as an ‘institutional regulator’ (Hirsch 1990, p. 132) of music industry output has been subverted, during the 1980s, by a fluctuating record market and the growth of music programming on television and radio. A uni-directional model of cultural production is now problematic. Media, including the press, may be sponsors or initiators of music texts rather than mere filters. Secondly the New Pop, and more recently rave, has threatened the straightforward alignment of taste and cultural capital which underpinned rock hegemony. In the patchwork world of contemporary youth music the para-pedagogic work of the rock press in both guiding and excluding communities of taste has an extra urgency. My third point concerns critical method. Just because the rock/pop field has become decentred, the drive to fix meaning tends to generate crisis as successive critical solutions break down, revealed as monstrously excessive, as ‘more than’ the music. Journalists usually anticipate failure. But this only serves to speed up change and the movement towards the next untenable position.