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Hearing punk as blues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2014

Evan Rapport
Evan Rapport*
Affiliation:
Eugene Lang College and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, 65 West 11th Street, Third Floor, New York, NY 10011, USA E-mail: rapporte@newschool.edu
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Abstract

Punk is an extreme manifestation of the rock project, meaning that it depends on an association of raw and authentic expression with blackness, musically represented by particular approaches to the blues, combined with processes of white appropriation, transformation and obfuscation of those blues resources. Punk's powerful affect largely derives from the tension between punk's blues foundations and strategies that obscure its roots. Punk treatments and transformations of the blues include: (1) moving from multi-part, three-chord harmonic schemes to riffs and one- and two-chord vamps; (2) taking a new approach to vocal performance styles; and (3) retaining certain melodic approaches, such as the use of pentatonic scales and monophonic textures. Punk's complex relationship to the blues, including the history of negation and erasure, continues to be a central part of the punk aesthetic.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 39 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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