Not given lightly
Chris Knox, nationalism, whiteness and punk/indie discourse in Aoteraroa/New Zealand
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.39470Keywords:
New Zealand music, punk, alternative music, nationalism, masculinityAbstract
This article examines punk/indie scenes in 1970s–80s Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ) in terms of dominant punk discourses of youth ‘resistance’, independence from mainstream values and commercial institutions, and questioning musical meaning. In line with Frith, it aims to show how these discourses were complicated if not contradicted in practice, partly due to their reembedding in settler colonies like NZ, where punk/indie became associated with traditional settler values of white masculinity in ‘pure’ natural settings, on the one hand, while also echoing high modernist discourses authenticating local culture as independent of foreign influence, again drawing on gendered discourse. Chris Knox and the Dunedin Sound are the main examples discussed. The rise of creative industries discourses in the early 2000s served to highlight competing definitions of local music in relation to national identity, as tensions arose between punk/indie’s self-identification with Pakeha masculine ‘authenticity’, and emergent constructions of New Zealand music as popular, commercial and also more gender and ethnically diverse.
References
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.
Anderson, Kyle. 2007. Accidental Revolution: The Story of Grunge. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Arnold, Gina. 1995. Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana. London: Pan.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin. 1998. Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London: Routledge.
Azerrad, Michael. 2001. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981–1991. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
Bangs, Lester. 1987. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. New York: Vintage.
Bannister, Matthew. 1999. Positively George Street: Sneaky Feelings and the Dunedin Sound. Auckland: Reed Publishing.
—2005. ‘Kiwi Blokes: Recontextualising P?keh? Masculinities in a Global Setting’. Genders Online 42.
—2006. White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and Indie Guitar Rock. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Belich, James. 1996. Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders. Auckland: Penguin.
—2001. Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000. Auckland: Penguin Press.
Bell, Claudia. 2004. ‘Kiwiana Revisited’. In Cultural Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Identity, Space and Place, ed. Claudia Bell and Steve Matthewman, 175–87. Melbourne: Open University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Trans. Susan Emanuel. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bracewell, Michael. 1998. England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie. London: Flamingo.
‘Breakfast with Spanky’. 2011. RDU FM, Christchurch, 18 February.
Breaking Barriers. 1992. Online at https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/breaking-barriers-1992 (accessed 1 October 2019).
Brown, Russell. 1983. ‘Stone Free’. Rip It Up, June: 12.
Buckley, David. 2002. R.E.M. Fiction: An Alternative Biography. London: Virgin.
Campion, Jane. 1992. ‘Different Complexions’. In Film in Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. Jonathan Dennis and Jan Beiringa, 93–104. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
Carson, Tom. 1996. ‘Rocket to Russia’. In Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, ed. Greil Marcus, 107–117. New York: Da Capo.
Carter, Shayne. 2019. Dead People I Have Known. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
Cavanagh, David. 2000. The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes are Hungry for the Prize. London: Virgin.
Chapman, Ian. 2009. Glory Days: From Gumboots to Platforms. Auckland: HarperCollins.
‘Chris Knox Interview’. n.d. Interview by Ross Cunningham. Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=100&v=xqG1qHHztC8 (accessed 1 October 2018).
Chunn, Mike. 1992. Stranger than Fiction: The Life and Times of Split Enz. Wellington: GP Publications.
Churton, Wade. 2000. ‘Have You Checked the Children?’ Punk and Post-punk Music in New Zealand, 1977–1981. Christchurch: Put Your Foot Down Publishing.
Cohen, Finn. 2001. Review of Our Band Could Be Your Life. IndyWeek, 14 November. Online at https://indyweek.com/news/archives/band-life/ (accessed 18 October 2018).
Curnow, Alan. 1987. Look Back Harder: Critical Writing 1935–1984. Auckland: AUP.
Dafydd, Richard, and Luke Crampton. 1996. Encyclopedia of Rock Stars. New York: D. K. Publishing.
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. San Diego: University of California Press.
Denney, Alex. 2018. ‘Unknown Mortal Orchestra & Taika Waititi on New Zealand Culture’. 5 April. Online at https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/39590/1/unknown-mortal-orchestra-ruban-nielson-taika-waititi-interview (accessed 18 October 2018).
DeRogatis, Jim. 1996. Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Rock from the 60s to the 90s. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel.
Dix, John. 1988. Stranded in Paradise: New Zealand Rock’n’roll 1955–1988. New Zealand: Paradise Press.
Dubber, Andrew. 2007. ‘Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line Up Together, People): Constructing New Zealand Identity through Commercial Radio’. The Radio Journal—International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 5/1: 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1386/rajo.5.1.19_1
Dyer, Richard. 2017. White: Twentieth Anniversary Edition. London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.
Edmonds, Penelope, and Jane Carey. 2016. ‘Australian Settler Colonialism over the Long Nineteenth Century’. In The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, ed. Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini, 371–90. Abingdon and New York: Taylor & Francis.
Frankenberg, Ruth. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. London: Routledge.
Frith, Simon. 1981. Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock’n’roll. New York: Pantheon.
Gee, Sarah, and Steve Jackson. 2012. ‘Leisure Corporations, Beer Brand Culture, and the Crisis of Masculinity: The Speight’s “Southern Man” Advertising Campaign’. Leisure Studies 31/1: 83–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2011.566625
Gendron, Bernard. 2002. Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant Garde. Chicago and London: University of Chicago.
Gibbons, Peter. 2002. ‘Cultural Colonization and National Identity’. New Zealand Journal of History 36/1: 5–17.
Gilbert, Jeremy. 1999. ‘White Light/White Heat: Jouissance Beyond Gender in the Velvet Underground’. In Living through Pop, ed. Andrew Blake, 31–48. London: Routledge.
Gilbert, Jarrod, and Ben Elley. 2020. ‘Shaved Heads and Sonnenrads: Comparing White Supremacist Skinheads and the Alt-right in New Zealand’. K?tuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online 15/2: 280–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/1177083X.2020.1730415
Give It a Whirl. 2003. TVNZ.
Grigg, Simon. 2014. ‘AK79—Short Haired Rock’n’Roll in the Queen City’. 8 April. Online at https://www.audioculture.co.nz/scenes/ak79-short-haired-rock-n-roll-in-the-queen-city (accessed 18 October 2018).
Grossberg, Lawrence. 1990. ‘Is there Rock after Punk?’ In On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, ed. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, 111–24. New York: Pantheon.
Haenfler, Ross. 2006. Straight Edge: Hardcore Punk, Clean Living Youth, and Social Change. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds. 1976. Resistance through Rituals. London: Hutchinson.
Heavenly Pop Hits: The Flying Nun Story. 2002. dir. Mitchell Hawkes. NZ: Satellite Media.
Henderson, John. 2010. ‘Rowling, Wallace Edward—Opposition and after’. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Online at https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6r1/rowling-wallace-edward/page-5 (accessed 25 June 2020)
Hesmondhalgh, David. 1999. ‘Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music Genre’. Cultural Studies 13/1: 34–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/095023899335365
Hill, Richard. 2016. ‘Settler Colonialism in New Zealand, 1840–1907’. In The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, ed. Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini, 391–408. Abingdon and New York: Taylor & Francis.
Hjort, Mette, and Duncan Petrie. 2007. The Cinema of Small Nations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hogan, Terence. 2019. ‘A Toy Love Story’. Online at http://www.terencehogan.com/a-toy-love-story.html (accessed 18 October 2018).
Huyssen, Andreas. 1986. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
James, Bev, and Kay Saville-Smith. 1989. Gender, Culture and Power: Challenging New Zealand’s Gendered Culture. Auckland: Oxford University Press.
Jensen, Kai. 1996. Whole Men: The Masculine Tradition in New Zealand Literature. Auckland: Auckland University Press.
Klein, Joshua. 2010. ‘Various Artists—Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox’. Pitchfork, 29 January. Online at https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13859-stroke-songs-for-chris-knox/ (accessed 10 October 2018).
Knox, Chris. 1985a. ‘Marooned in the Mainstream’. New Zealand Listener, 13 July: 61.
—1985b. ‘Rasta Nah Leggo’. New Zealand Listener, 16 November: 75.
—1989. ‘Digitised to Death’. New Zealand Listener, 11 March: 57.
—1990. ‘Excellent, So What!’ New Zealand Listener, 4 June: 98–99.
—1991. ‘Uneffected Music’. New Zealand Listener, 4 February: 72–73.
Kruse, Holly. 2003. Site and Sound: Understanding Independent Music Scenes. New York: Peter Lang.
Lealand, Geoff. 1988. A Foreign Egg in Our Nest? American Popular Culture in New Zealand. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
Leblanc, Lauraine. 1999. Pretty in Punk: Girls’ Gender Resistance in a Boy’s Subculture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
‘List of Best-selling Albums’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums (accessed 11 June 2020).
Lucas, John. 2019. ‘Five Songs about the Music Industry’. The Georgia Straight. Online at https://www.straight.com/music/1183246/five-songs-about-music-industry (accessed 6 May 2020).
Marcus, Greil. 1990. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock’n’roll Music. New York: Dutton.
Mills, Amanda. 2016. ‘Dunedin Sound—the Sound of Honesty?’ Audioculture, 15 November. Online at https://www.audioculture.co.nz/scenes/dunedin-sound-the-sound-of-honesty (accessed 17 October 2018).
Mita, Merata. 1992. ‘The Soul and the Image’. In Film in Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. Jonathan Dennis and Jan Beiringa, 36–54. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
Mitchell, Tony. 1996. Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania. London: Leicester University Press.
Murray, Stuart. 1998. Never a Soul at Home: New Zealand Literary Nationalism and the 30s. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
NZ Music Services Directory. 2018. Online at https://www.musicnz.co.nz/nz-on-air-funding/ (accessed 21 October 2018).
Olaffson, Bjorn. 1998. Small States in the Global System: Analysis and Illustrations from the Case of Iceland. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Perry, Adele. 2001. On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849– 1871. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Phillips, Jock. 1987. A Man’s Country? The Image of the P?keh? Male—A History. Auckland: Penguin.
Pickering, Michael, and Roy Shuker. 1994. ‘Struggling to Make Ourselves Heard: Music, Radio and the Quota Debate’. In North Meets South: Popular Music in Aotearoa/New Zealand, ed. Philip Hayward, Tony Mitchell and Roy Shuker, 73–97. Sydney: Perfect Beat Publications.
Pilkington, Hilary. 2015. ‘“If you want to live, you better know how to fight”: Fighting Masculinity on the Russian Punk Scene’. In Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance, ed. the Subcultures Network, 13–33. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Prato, Greg. 2009. Grunge is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music. Toronto: ECW Press.
Reynolds, Simon. 1989. ‘Against Health and Efficiency’. In Zoot Suits and Second Hand Dresses, ed. Angela McRobbie, 244–55. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
—1990. Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock. London: Serpent’s Tail.
—2005. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. New York: Penguin.
Robertson, Craig. 1991. ‘It’s OK, It’s All Right, Oh Yeah: The “Dunedin Sound”? An Aspect of Alternative Music in New Zealand 1979–85’. Hons. diss, University of Otago.
Rolling Stone. 2012. ‘500 Greatest Albums of All Time’. Rolling Stone, 31 May. Online at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-156826/the-beatles-sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-54555/ (accessed 11 June 2020).
Schmidt, Andrew. 2013. ‘The Enemy—Profile’, 16 April. Online at https://www.audioculture.co.nz/people/the-enemy (accessed 21 October 2018).
Scott, Michael. 2013. Making New Zealand’s Pop Renaissance: State, Markets, Musicians. Burlington, VT: Taylor & Francis Group.
Sedgwick, Eve. 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University.
Shepherd, Roger. 2016. In Love with These Times: My Life with Flying Nun Records. Auckland: HarperCollins.
Shilliam, Robbie. 2015. The Black Pacific: Anti-colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connection. London: Bloomsbury.
Shuker, Roy. 1998. Key Concepts in Popular Music. London: Routledge.
Silverman, Kaja. 1992. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York: Routledge.
Simpson, Tony. 1997. The Immigrants: The Great Migration from Britain to New Zealand, 1830–1890. Auckland: Godwit.
Sinclair, Keith. 1985. A Destiny Apart: New Zealand’s Search for National Identity. Wellington: Allen & Unwin.
Smith, Gabriel. 2011. ‘White Mutants of Straight Edge: The Avant-Garde of Abstinence’. Journal of Popular Culture 44/3: 633–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00852.x
Stahl, Geoff. 1997. ‘Citing the Sound—New Zealand Indie Rock in North America’. Perfect Beat 3/2: 60–76. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v3i2.28759
Steel, Gary. 2013. ‘Chris Knox Profile/Stories’. Audioculture, 13 May. Online at https://www.audioculture.co.nz/people/chris-knox (accessed 21 October 2018).
Sutton, Teri. 1997. ‘The Soft Boys: The New Man in Rock’. In Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, ed. Barbara O’Dair, 527–35. New York: Random House.
Tobias, Robert. 2012. ‘Images of Men and Learning: The Impact of Imperialism on Settler Masculinities and Lifelong Learning’. In Gender, Masculinities and Lifelong Learning, ed. Marion Bowl et al., 70–83. New York and Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.
Tosches, Nick. 1977. Country: The Biggest Music in America. New York: Stein and Day.
Veracini, Lorenzo. 2016. ‘Introduction: Settler Colonialism as a Distinct Mode of Domination’. In The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, ed. Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini, 1–8. Abingdon and New York: Taylor & Francis.
Von Krafft-Ebing, Richard. 1939. Psychopathia Sexualis: A Medico-Forensic Study. London: William Heinemann.
Wadkins, Kay. 2012. ‘“Freakin’ Out”: Remaking Masculinity through Punk Rock in Detroit’. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 22/2-3: 239–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2012.721083
Wald, Elijah. 2009. How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Walker, Clinton. 1994. ‘Modern Rockers Getting Older’. Real Groove (October): 8.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System. New York: Academic Press.
Wilson, Oli, and Michael Holland. 2018. ‘The “Dunedin Sound” Now: Contemporary Perspectives on Dunedin’s Musical Legacy’. In Made in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand: Studies in Popular Music, ed. Shelley Brunt and Geoff Stahl, 69–80. London and New York: Routledge.
Wright, Will. 1998. ‘The Structure of Myth and the Structure of the Western Film’. In Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, ed. John Storey, 123–35. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall.
Yoo, Chan Yul. 1990. ‘The International Relations of Korea as a Small State’. PhD dissertation. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University.
Young, Rob. 2010. Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music. New York: Faber and Faber.
Zizek, Slavoj. 2006. How To Read Lacan. New York and London: W. W. Norton.
Zuberi, Nabeel. 2001. Sounds English: Transnational Popular Music. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
—2007. ‘Sounds Like Us: Popular Music and Cultural Nationalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand’. Perfect Beat 8/3: 3–18. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v8i3.28697
