Moshed Potato

Moshed Potato A Critical Punk Zine by Jaidan Inniss

Table of Contents Foreword..............................................................................................5 Erasure of Black People in Punk.......................................................7 Do Not Fear Death..............................................................................8 Isn’t It Ironic?.......................................................................................9 Girls to the Front...

Well, Not All Of Them......................................................................12 Where are the Sistas??.......................................................................15 Smash the Cis-tem.............................................................................16 Ethoracial Zines.................................................................................17 I Brought the Afro...

Where’s the Punk?.............................................................................19 Reflection............................................................................................21 References...........................................................................................24 Special Thanks....................................................................................25

Foreward

I created Moshed Potato as a cohesive way to draw attention to whether punk/ subcultures are alienating or uniting. I’ll be focusing on the whitewashing of punk subcultures and the impact capitalism has on minority spaces.

The name Moshed Potato stems from the song of the same name by Black and Brown queer band, The Muslims. A group that sings about the hard, heavy, and violent ways that they experience the world-- and making it funny! My idea here is to emphasize the absence of color from punk subcultures, and its failures to create an inclusive space.

I chose to use the zine as a platform for my content as it allows me to bring my fragmented and often chaotic way of viewing things to a physical space. I was a kid that handmade everything and made collages from magazines all throughout highschool. For this zine, I draw inspiration from the Riot Grrrl movement and the way they used zines as their main form of underground communication and rebellion. Though, I will be combining the unique format of DIY magazines with a more contemporary or digital influence.

Moshed Potato will contain digital art, small opinion writings, collaging, and more. I hope to bring attention to the erasure of Black people from the cultural spaces that they created.

Jaidan x

Erasure of Black punk rockers

Punk was mainly developed from the white working-class in the United Kingdom, but quickly became a movement that bonded oppressed groups. Punk was meant to be the angry voice of disgust against capitalism and police brutality, to be a declaration of rage and frustration with their alienation from society, but soon became a movement that ignored Black, Brown, and other minority bands.

When we think of punk, bands like The Sex Pistols, The Stooges, and MC5, but when asked to name one Black punk band, it’ll most likely be Bad Brains (who are amazing, no hate). Punk and hardcore scenes have always been overridden by whiteness (like every facet of popular culture). The presence and impact of Black bands have swallowed by punk’s very white history. We don’t hear anything about bands like Pure Hell, who perfected the punk song model of fast, raging, one-minute songs in the 70s. Or Black Pantera, a present-day Brazilian band making music about the horrors of police brutality today.

Why the omission?

Well, to be alienated from society is much cooler when you’re white! It’s much easier to become a trendsetter when the people that control the music industry look like you (i.e. white).

While punk began as a voice against oppression, it birthed groups that spread the hate they wanted to kill. It’s not surprising that so many Black punk bands have fallen into obscurity. White nationalism and racists skinheads have infiltrated huge areas of the punk scene since its conception. “Oi!”, one of the subgenres that branched from punk rock, emerged in the 70s from the UK. Initially meant for people who feel alienated by society, it was quickly overrun by white nationalists and other racist organizations.

Do Not Fear Death In the late 1960s and early 1970s, “proto-punk” bands were groups that were credited as playing some of the earliest forms of punks music. Some bands include MC5, the New York Dolls, and The Clash. However, amidst all this pale skin, there was Death.

Noooo, not that tall dude in the black robe who comes to ruin the vibe, but a proto-punk band, (that was probably the first band to create a real moshpit), made up of three Black brothers from Detroit who began as a soul band but quickly ventured into the head-banging scene of punk. Death could be (and should be) considered the blueprint for later punk bands, yet they never received commercial success.

Why?

In the 70s, punk was only just taking its first steps and three Black brothers were not drawing fame with their loud and brash music. Taking notes from The Stooges and Alice Cooper, Death was faster, harder, and louder than anyone else in their time. Their style now makes them look like visionaries. They were overlooked, until recently when a documentary by the name of “A Band Called Death,” came out in 2012, bring them their late, but well-deserved recognition.

Isn’t It Ironic

Punk was created on the idea of the alienated intentionally violating social norms in order to be thrown out of mainstream society. So, in order to receive condemnation, punks turned to a group of people that are continuously unaccepted. Black people. Punk started to be influenced by reggae, as messages of protests and oppression were shared between the two genres. With this came the adoption of dreadlocks by punks (yes, white punks) to marginalize themselves from society.

(This is truly disgusting to me, being from The Bahamas...That’s me!)

“Dread, in particular, was an enviable commodity...The concept of dread provided a key to a secret language: an exotic semantic interior which was irrevocably closed against white Christian sympathies, while its very existence confirmed the worst white chauvinist fears.”

Dreads are a key aspect of Rastafarianism, something that Bad Brains introduced to the punk scene. This adoption marked the use of dreads as punks appropriating Black culture as a way to seek disdain from traditional white societies.

Isn’t this ironic? (Don’t ya think?)

The exclusivity and unique blackness of reggae made it so appealing to punks. Its essence was the complete opposite of whiteness and this made it exciting. This convergence of Black and white in punk subculture is very interesting. White punks used blackness as a way to become rejected from society, but this one-way street did not allow Black people to be more stylistically white. Black people were not rejected in the way that they were then welcomed into an underground community of others. There is no escape from ostracization when your skin alienates you.

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Girls to the front!...Well not all of them

The Riot Grrrl movement took flight in the 90s in response to the heavily male-dominated punk scene, women at punk shows were known as “Coat Hangers”, as they were often pushed to the back and holding their boyfriend’s jackets. Women faced the threat of sexual assault at punk shows, endured misogynistic lyrics, and faced sexual double standards. Out of this toxicity arose riot grrrl, a feminist punk scene that originated in Washington in 1991. Beginning as a zine of the same title, Riot Grrrl transformed into an anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist music revolution. Riot Grrrls created their own art in the form of aggressive, brash, and confrontational music. Popular bands within this subculture included Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, L7, and The Slits. Though when one thinks of Riot Grrrl, you can’t help but see Bikin Kill’s Kathleen Hannah, who was one of the most prevalent faces of the movement. Beyond music, Riot Grrrl culture included meetings, workshops, and conventions to help empower and connect women.

Zines (kinda /like this one!) were a huge part of Riot Grrrl culture. Zines were a form of expression between women that took the form of homemade, short, DIY magazines. While punk had their zines, Riot Grrrl’s zines often contained personal stories and artwork challenging capitalism and patriarchy. This underground circuit allowed women to intimately discuss their personal experiences with sexism and trauma, empowering women to create and not only consume. However, not all women were included.

What was meant to be a reaction to masculinity and a toxic punk scene, became exclusive in terms of race (and gender; trans women). Riot Grrrl emerged from Washington state and the Pacific Northwest, making the movement dominated by white suburban/middle-class women. The face of punk feminism was white. The token Riot Grrrl musicians limited the representation of Black women, women of color, and transgender women. For women of color and LGBTQ[+] individuals, the front-runners overshadowed their voices, contributing to underrepresentation and detachment from the movement. The X-Ray Spex, an English punk rock band formed in 1976 from London, never reached Bikini Kill fame, even though Poly Styrene paved the way for, not only female punk artists but Black women in punk.

One aspect of Riot Grrrl was reclaiming sexual language (Slut, etc.) but women of color were fetishized in society, which made it more difficult for them to join this facet of the movement. As mentioned before, riot grrrls held conventions and workshops to speak about issues and events, one topic being that of race.

These race workshops were meant to be a safe place for Black women and women of color to speak of their discrimination and what actions the movement should talk against it. However, white women used this space to center conversation their white guilt. Race conversations forced minorities into the position of educator or model minority, a speaker for ALL women of color, and this did not allow them to freely participate in this creative movement. This detachment sparked the conception of another feminist punk subculture, one that highlighted the struggles of minority groups. Sista Grrrl Riots.

Where are the Sistas?

Crawling from under the rug of whiteness, Sista Grrrl Riots emerged. Started by badass musicians Honeychild Coleman, Tamar-Kali Brown, Simi Stone, and Maya Glick in the late 1990s, this movement was “an alternative safe space for black women punks to rock out and revolutionize”. Sista Grrrl Riots were a string of one-not blowout for and by Black women who fronted rock bands or rode solo.

Here’s what Tamar-Kali Brown had to say about the movement, I could never describe it well as her.

“I was aligned philosophically in terms of understanding, but I still felt on the out because it was a white-dominated scene.”

“I was hearing what they were saying, but I was living in an environment where people were getting stabbed. Riot Grrrl felt like a bubblegum expression.”

“I was just like, ‘I have to survive. I have to defend myself.’ Riot Grrrl felt really playful, and I wasn’t playing”

If the first Sista Grrrl Riot poster doesn’t show that these women didn’t come to play, then I don’t know what else will. Armed with machetes and BB guns, these four women were a far cry from Riot Grrrl. Brown, Glick, Stone, and Coleman did not identify themselves as Riot Grrrls. This was different, they were Sista Grrrls and they reclaimed rock for Black women.

Rock IS Black music.

Today, we have punk bands/ artists like Big Joanie, the Black feminist punk trio from London. Singing about Black women in white patriarchy, Black liberation politics, Big Joanie began to refute the lack of intersectionality in the UK’s punk scene (sound familiar…), they work extensively to create spaces for punks of color.

Incorporating marginalized and racialized people into spaces where they can be creative and expressive also creates or inspires more progressive branches of subculture.

What’s more punk than being a Black woman?

Smash the Cis-tem!

The Riot Grrrl movement, though one with good intention, became its own center of racialization and exclusion. Riot Grrrl is filtered through white privilege; their objectives, operations of activism, the demographic, etc. all add to the movement’s (and its participants) to see past their privilege and marginalization. The guilt that members of the movement felt implies their lack of understanding of intersecting forms of oppression and further subordinating the voices of those sidelined. Due to its social structure that enhanced white dominance, many Riot Grrrls who headed the movement had no incentive to actively combat racism within the scene because they were benefiting from it.

Hey!

I didn’t forget about you, LGBTQIA+ punks!

Not only was Riot Grrrl exclusive in terms of race, but there is a very limited history of queer and trans women in punk music. Queer bands like The Bags and Nervous Gender brought their own queer anthems to the punk scene in the 70s, but it took a Black intersex woman by the name of Vaginal Davis to pioneer the presence of queerness in punk.

Jayne County, a Warhol superstar, was the most visible, and audible transgender performers in New York punk.

Hardcore band Limp Wrist brought both Latinx and queer issues into the punk scene.

And one of my personal favorites; G.L.O.S.S., which stands for “Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit” (active from 2014-2016), is a reaction towards cisgender people in pop culture, society, and the hardcore scene. Their intention is to carve out a new space for themselves and the groups they advocate for. Oh, and they’re from Olympia, Washington, the birthplace of Riot Grrrl, quite the middle finger, isn’t it?

Remember how zines are an important aspect of the Riot Grrrl movement? Yea, that space was claimed by white riot grrrls too. Even so, ethoracial girls weren’t deterred and used zines to critique the whiteness and usually unconscious racism of the movement.

These girls identified as riot grrrls, but thought that the “white” girl riot constructed in early zines reinforced a binary systems of race and gender.

Gunk (1990) was created by Ramdasha Bikceem when she was 15, writing about race, feminism, and teen angst. She was one of the first critics of the lack of diversity within the Riot Grrrl movement.

Slant started as an anarchist feminist magazine created by Mimi Thy Nguyen (and amazing scholar on the subject of race in Riot Grrrl) and another woman. Mimi wanted the zine to “focus on transnational and women of color feminisms, on analytics of race, gender, and sexuality.” Inspired by an arguement had when she was 19 with a man who joked about Asian women’s “stange and inhuman genitals”, along with a letter coming from him later about wanting to rape her, Mimi aimed to “document and dialogue with other punks and girls of color about our presence in these scenes, and about race and racism in our lives.”

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I Brought the Afro… Where’s the Punk?

The Afropunk festival was originally based on James Spooner’s documentary Afro-Punk, released in 2003. The film was a DIY and self-motivated examination of the African-American presence and experience in the white-dominated punk scene. Spooner was able to capture the “othering” of an already alienated group of people. In 2005, Spooner and Matthew Morgan, who served as the film’s co-producer, organized the first Afropunk festival in Brooklyn. Stretched over four days, the festival featured performances by Black punk bands like Living Colour, Tamar-Kail Brown, and Honeychild Coleman (remember them!). Soon enough, Afropunk went global, holding festivals across the world. This was a huge success for cultural and musical engagement when it came to Black youth.

However, every rose has its thorn, and the blood from this prick was one filled with disappointment and frustration. Afropunk’s creators intended to address racism and sexism in the hardcore/ punk scene, but after running for a few years, Afro-Punk morphed into a corporate organization/ festival that procured big-name sponsors like Mountain Dew and Toyota and hosted mainstream hip hop and R&B artists instead of uplifting lesser-known and underground Black artists/ punk musicians. Soon enough, even the name “Afropunk” was copyrighted.

In an interview with Spooner, he stated that “things happened kind of gradually.

Matthew (Morgan) (co-founder of Afro-Punk and manager of Stiffed) had a burning desire to make money and grow it, but I was comfortable coming away with my portion and catering to the scene.” With Morgan unconcerned with the original intentions of Afropunk, Spooner walked away from the festival in 2009.

Afropunk swallowed the scene and the people it was supposed to help, while itself was consumed by the greedy jaws of capitalism. Spooner’s vision of a community for Black headbangers and the marginalized to be safe and accepted and free was compromised.

Though he’s hopeful. In an interview with The Culture Crush, Spooner notes, “the thing that has been really inspiring to me, is the collective conscious of free thinkers and punks of all colors.” Spooner was right to be optimistic. From the ash of corporate decimation, new and inclusive punk festivals rose that strive to uplift Black punk and underground artists. There’s the Black and Brown Punk Show Collective, started in 2010 that’s “a place for POC/Queer/Trans punx to network and keep the Chicago punk scene diverse and safe.” Along with Deep Cuts in New Orleans, the Break Free Fest in Pennsylvania, and the Decolonize Fest in the UK. The surge of festivals and collectives of color has also led to a rise of POC punk bands. Mayo Supreme writes songs about white supremacy and the anxieties of oppressed people in the Trump era. The Muslims, a Black and Brown queer band, formed shortly after the last presidential election wage war against white supremacy using humor and rage. Since becoming decentralized, the Black and Brown punk community is predominantly led by queer Black women. It’s almost like punk is in our blood...

Let

Minorities

BE

Reflection

I chose this topic because I’m a big fan of punk and Riot Grrrl music (my terrible emo phase in middle school can tell you). As someone who has had my fair share of struggles and moments of invisibility, nothing makes me feel more seen than listening to the other-worldly howl of female punk. Though, my distance from the scene was not lost on me. I’ve always been aware of the space I take up as a Black woman. The censorship and full-on erasure of African Americans and people of color from popular culture is something that is both frustrating and rage-inducing. I wanted to focus on punk and Riot Grrrl because this is a space that I am still searching for my place in, as are many other Black, Brown, and queer kids. The notion that punk, Riot Grrrl, and Afro-punk were meant to be voices for the marginalized and lonely, but instead bred ostracization exposes the faulty foundations of cultural society.

My guiding question was whether punk/ subcultures are alienating rather than uniting, and I found the answer to be both. Punk formed as a space for the alienated and oppressed to express their rage against a traditional society that rejected them. While it did just so for many people, it was not inclusive of Black people, people of color, and women. Out of this subculture came another, Riot Grrl a feminist response to the male dominanted punk scene. However, this movement also fell short. Black women, trans women, and other women of color were alienated from this movement meant to uplift all women. Riot Grrrl did empower women, just white suburban and middle class ones.

So, from the tree of the unseen branched another two subgenres, Sista Grrrl Riots and Afropunk. Sista Grrrl Riots, a movement led by and for Black women in response to their exclusion from the very white Riot Grrrl movement. And, as a reaction to the white male dominated punk scene, Afropunk emerged to create an expressive, safe, and accepting environment that uplifted Black punks and punk bands/ artists. Even this endeavor fell short. I won’t call Afropunk a failure, because it was a model of Black excellence and entrepreneurship, but soon sold out the people and ideals it was meant to elevate. This spawned the creation of multiple collectives and grassroot communities that embodied the original ideals of Afropunk.

While some people are uplifting, others are “othered” from another space. This makes me think that there is no real way to create an entire culture/ subculture without alienating a group. There is often a lack of concern for intersectionality, so it might be better to have these branches where people can freely take part in a movement where their identities are fully recognized.

References

Childres, Elena. “A Brief History of Punk Rock’s Contribution to Civil Rights & Its Whitewashed Past.” BTRtoday // Emerging Culture. Curated Daily., 9 Jan. 2020, www.btrtoday.com/read/featured/a-brief-history-of-punk-rocks-contribution-tocivil-rights-its-whitewashed-past/.

Hebdige, Dick. Subculture the Meaning of Style. Routledge, 1998

Myers, Owen. “Women of Color Have Always Had a Place in Punk. Big Joanie Is Here to Remind You of That.” The FADER, The FADER, 19 June 2018, www.thefader.com/2017/10/30/big-joanie-punk-trio-gen-f-interview.

Nguyen, Mimi Thi. 2012. “Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival.” Women & Performance 22 (2/3): 173-196

Ross, Gabby. “Alternatives to Alternatives: the Black Grrrls Riot Ignored.”

VICE, 3 Aug. 2015, www.vice.com/en/article/9k99a7/alternatives-to-alternatives-the-black-grrrls-riot-ignored.

Scherer, Debra. “James Spooner And The True History Of AfroPunk.” The Culture Crush, The Culture Crush, 20 Feb. 2020, www.theculturecrush.com/feature/ afropunk.

Zarha, Jamela. “A Talk With James Spooner, The Creator of Afro-Punk.” High.

How Are You?, 19 Mar. 2019, www.highhowareyou.com/talk-james-spooner-creator-afro-punk/.

A special thank you to all the Black, Brown, queer, and people of color striving to create safe and accepting space for the marginalized.

Another thank you to Professor Sean Leavey, for making my first semester of college one to remember, and for assisting me in expanding my interests and knowledge.