DIY House Shows and Music Venues in the US

The aesthetic pedagogies of DIY music

“…It therefore follows that DIY music involves novice, untrained, or otherwise amateur musicians starting bands, playing shows, releasing albums, and touring outside of professional music channels. A DIY approach to music also expands beyond making music to all aspects of music production: labels, venues, journalism outlets (in the form of zines), and merchandizing all hold counterparts that contribute to a broader DIY culture (see Makagon, 2015;Verbuc, 2014). While this independent approach to cultural production has existed within a wide range of musical traditions (see Spencer, 2005), punk music (along with its subgenres, such as hardcore and post-punk) in part distinguished itself from these other musical forms by framing DIY as a counter-cultural and political ideology.…”

“…As both Bestley (2018) and Schwartz (2015) contend, punk's aesthetic practices (both in terms of visual and aural aesthetics) routinely build on and draw influence from mainstream music and arts traditions rather than acting in opposition to these cultural spaces. Similarly, countless artists have used DIY culture as a steppingstone towards broader commercial success (Verbuc, 2014), in turn contradicting the political ideologies espoused by some punks. But rather than undermining the THE AESTHETIC PEDAGOGIES OF DIY MUSIC 6 counter-cultural claims proposed by practitioners and scholars, these assertions indicate a polysemic cultural space that embraces multiple understandings and enactments of a DIY ethos within punk cultures (see Gordon, 2014).…”

“…As a way to address both of these aspects of DIY music, I turn towards the aesthetic theory of Paulo Freire and the notion of relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 1998). I do so for two reasons: first, punk pedagogy scholars have routinely relied on Freire within their work (see Haworth, 2010;Santos & Guerra, 2018;Torrez, 2012) but have rarely engaged his aesthetic theories and, second, the notion of collective empowerment behind relational aesthetics (see Rancière, 2009) provides a clear analogue to the egalitarian nature of DIY communities, venues, and performances (Makagon, 2015;Verbuc, 2014). I will therefore use this section to situate both of these aesthetic theories within the context of punk pedagogy and DIY music more broadly.…”

“…By purposefully acting against the divide between audience and artist through spatial orientations (e.g. a lack of a stage) as a means towards collective participation (Verbuc, 2014) and using non-traditional venues (such as houses or basements) to create space for personal relationships to form at shows (Makagon, 2015), DIY scenes align with the aims of relational aesthetics by foregrounding and fostering relationships via performances.…”

“…Even in those moments when she drops or moves her instruments, the audience remains motionless. This passivity continues despite the common reaction from audiences at DIY shows to breach the imagined, and often dissolved, boundary of the stage and help performers adjust and account for their collapsing instruments (Verbuc, 2014). The power and meaning behind Falsetto therefore emerges through the distributed process of musicking (Small, 1998).…”