Keep it simple, make it fast! Cultures, Music scenes and punk manifestations in Portugal

Abstract

In the last decade, in a so-called post-subcultural reaction, the several studies on the subject of youth’s musical cultures have focused on the analysis and interpretation of their social configuration as scenes. This configurational analysis implies in itself the mapping of such dynamics, but also the analysis of interactions and meanings shared by the actors who intervene in those scenes. In this communication we aim to deepen this analytical axis of the contemporaneous sociological theory, renewing the vision and understanding of punk, an artistic, musical, political, and social expression traditionally interpreted in subcultural theory frame. We thus propose to map the Portuguese punk scenes on the basis of the analysis of 700 bands in what concerns their categorization by punk subgenres, their geographic root and their members through the procedures of social network analysis, trying to explain and understand how the scenes are made. As our interpretative matrix we will identify places, events, symbols, bands and social agents involved in a space of relevant and significant everyday life crystallizations in an unprecedented approach to the Portuguese punk scene. We will also try to rehabilitate the notions of art world and social field in an heuristic way. To sum it up, we propose an approach of the Portuguese punk scenes in a relational space of networks, resources, conventions, actors and powers. This approach has in its’ core the development of an investigative project founded on the elaboration of over 200 interviews to key-social-actors of Portuguese punk, the gathering of documental information through media and personal archives of the last 40 years, the construction of a band database from 1977 to present day, and even the use of information contained in fanzines and other underground documents. It is about creating a diachrony of Portuguese punk, in terms of scenes and manifestations, making use of a temporal and spatial matrix of bands.