Politics as Sound

Uncompromising and innovative, hardcore punk in Washington, DC, birthed a new sound and nurtured a vibrant subculture aimed at a specific segment of the citys youth. Shayna L. Maskell explores DCs hardcore scene during its short but storied peak. Led by bands like Bad Brains and Minor Threat, hardcore in the nations capital unleashed music as angry and loud as it was fast and minimalistic. Maskell examines the musics aesthetics and the unique impact of DCs sociopolitical realities on the sound and the scene that emerged. As she shows, aspects of the musics structure merged with how bands performed it to put across distinctive representations of race, class, and gender. But those representations could be as complicated and contradictory as they were explicit. A fascinating analysis of a punk rock hotbed, Politics as Sound tells the story of how a generation created music that produced--and resisted--politics and power.