AFRAM 337 Blog Post #4: The DIY Ethos: Music, Art, & Community

Name: Allison Bennett

AFRAM 337 Blog Post #4: The DIY Ethos: Music, Art, & Community 

Three letters bound punk and Chicano rock music, community, and visual and performing art all together: DIY. As explained in American Sabor, many punk bands and Chicano rock bands were deeply connected to visual artists and helping their communities. The Bags, for instance, “had close ties to visual artists… [performing] at the LA Contemporary Exhibitions to promote an exhibit” by local artists (Habell-Pallan et. al 235).  Furthermore, these musicians often performed in special venues designed specifically for such collaborations between visual/performing arts, music, and community. For example, the Troy Café provided spaces for Chicano bands to perform and for community members to meet and discuss social issues (Habell-Pallan 253).

While American Sabor provides an overview of this DIY, community-centered, multimedia ethos that formed the backbone of punk and Chicano rock scenes, the Dawes piece reveals how both the founders of Home Alive and the Rock, Rage, & Self Defense: An Oral History of Seattle’s Home Alive documentary makers actively participated in that very ethos. Galvanized by the rape and murder of punk musician Mia Zapata, several of her friends created Home Alive, “a nonprofit organization that promotes alternative methods for women to protect themselves within the community” (Dawes). In other words, Home Alive was born out of a grassroots effort to help women in the local community. Further illustrating the DIY mentality behind Home Alive, hand-crafted “posters, zines, and newsletters” were used to raise awareness about it at a local level. On top of this, the founders of the organization released a 44-track CD compilation, entitled Home Alive: the Art of Self Defense as a method of making their knowledge and work accessible to as many women around the world as possible (Dawes). In this way, music and community-centered goals came together under one project. In addition to Home Alive itself, the women who made the documentary about the organization, Therrien and Michaels, had no experience in filmmaking, yet nonetheless taught themselves how to edit and “use a camera,” just as “Home Alive taught themselves to teach self-defense classes” (Dawes). By emulating the DIY ethos embodied by the original Home Alive founders, the Home Alive documentary filmmakers added the visual art element to the preexisting collaboration between music and community.

For my DJ selections, I chose songs by bands that exemplify the punk and Chicano rock scenes’ community-oriented, DIY mentality, rather than focusing on the lyrics of the songs. “Hypocrite,” by the punk band Catholic Discipline, exemplifies “DIY” in that the group never formally recorded any of their music. Instead, this song, among others, were eventually released on a hodgepodge CD compilation of live recordings (“Catholic Discipline”). When listening to the song, the image that comes to mind for me is the band playing in an intimate, hole-in-the-wall venue before local community fans; in fact, this performance occurred in a cafe. Next, I chose to highlight the “El Canelo” music video by the Mexican American Son Jarocho band Cambalache to represent the visual art element of “DIY”. When watching this video, the community-centered focus of the band becomes clear; interspersed within scenes of the band playing before a small group of smiling, dancing audience members are scenes involving the band members going through their everyday lives. Also, “Cambalache” is Spanish for “exchange”; the band seeks to encourage their audience to “participate in their performances in the spirit of fandango” (“Cambalache”). Taken together, both songs illustrate the persistence of the DIY approach in two seemingly different musical genres.

DJ Selections:


“Hypocrite” (performed in 1979) by Catholic Discipline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mot99deOzHQ&list=PL67E76D882E3D1E77&index=3 


“El Canelo” (2013) by Cambalache: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbiz5J4-DOU





Works Cited:


“Cambalache.” Jarochelo, Radio Jarochelo, jarochelo.com/cambalache/. 


“Catholic Discipline .” Last.fm, https://www.last.fm/music/Catholic+Discipline/+wiki. 


Dawes, Laina. “Finally, Filmmakers Tell the Forgotten History of Seattle DIY Self-Defense           Group Home Alive.” Bitch Media, 5 Dec. 2013, www.bitchmedia.org/post/finally- filmmakers-tell-the-forgotten-history-of-seattle-diy-self-defense-group-home-alive.


Habell-Pallán, et al, “Doing It Yourself/ DIY, 1980s-2000s” American Sabor, American Sabor:         Latinos and Latinas in US Popular Music||American Sabor: Latinos y Latinas en La Música Popular Estadounidense. Bilingual. Co-authored with Marisol Berrios-Miranda and Shannon Dudley.