Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Owens Eric - American Renaissance
Title : The new nationalist music Adolescent rebellion or racial commitment ?
Year : 2000

Link download : Owens_Eric_-_The_new_nationalist_music.zip

Popular music has had a heavy, leftist overlay since at least the 1950s. Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan made protest a central part of their message, and performers who are not as explicitly political continue to give popular music an unmistakably lefty slant. Like Hollywood, the recording industry has had a deliberately corrosive effect on every sentiment and tradition healthy nationalism requires. This is still true for most commercially successful performers but there is a growing musical subculture that reflects something entirely different: a resurgence of patriotism, national identity, and even racial consciousness. The mainstream media and the music press have carefully avoided publicizing this trend, but it is growing so quickly below ground that it cannot help occasionally breaking the surface. What kind of music is this? Who are the performers? Is this just adolescent rebellion or do white power bands reflect real racial commitment? Most people have heard about skinheads but very few know about Apocalyptic Folk, NR, or Black Metal music. I have been part of this movement myself–first as a fan, later as an active performer–and believe I can report with some authority on a phenomenon nonparticipants are not likely to understand. The skinhead movement began in England in the late 1960s when young people emerging from the Mod (short for Modern) youth culture followed the lead of rock groups such as The Who, and wore Mod clothing draped in the Union Jack. Skinheads took most of the Mod style–Doctor Marten boots, short hair cuts, patriotism, a penchant for scooters, loud music, and violence–and carried it even further. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s the skinheads were, for the most part, non-ideological toughs, known for football hooliganism (rioting at soccer games) and Paki-bashing (beating up Pakistani or Indian immigrants). Among the first skinhead bands were Slade and Dexy’s Midnight Runners, the latter to become known for their international hit “C’mon Eileen.” By the mid- to late 1970s the skinheads were beginning to become politicized, and were welcomed by the Young National Front, the official youth wing of the National Front, which started enthusiastically promoting skinhead music. By the 1980s the term skinhead was firmly associated with nationalist groups like the National Front and the British National Party. There is still some association between skinheads and the British National Party, but the decline of the once-powerful National Front was due, at least in part, to a falling out with the musicians, who had been some of the party’s best youth recruiters. It was during this period of political activism that a new skinheadspecific music movement took shape. This movement was called Oi! which was the Cockney word for “Hey!” and was a kind of white working-class battle cry for musically- oriented skinheads. It was by means of this music that skinhead politics went international. Thus, through the 1980s and 1990s, the movement was no longer associated specifically with England, but with disaffected white youth worldwide. By the 1990s, Oi! had largely faded in favor of even more racially charged music styles such as RAC (Rock Against Communism/Capitalism) and Hate Core (the latter being mostly an American phenomenon.) The most popular skinhead bands today are Skrewdriver, (England) Brutal Attack, (England) and Bound for Glory (USA). Another less well known but highly influential development of the early 1980s National Front-era of Britishturned- pan-European music is what is called Apocalyptic Folk. This movement draws less aggressive and often more intellectual audiences, and grew up around a little-known London-based punk band called Crisis. Tony Wakeford, who had left Crisis to form a National Front band called Above the Ruins, rejoined Crisis bandmate Douglas Pearce in 1981. ...