Paula Guerra

1
; Paula Abreu
2
; Joo Campos Matos
3
; Tnia Moreira
3

1
Assistant Professor/Ph.D, IS/FL/UP;
2
Profesor Asistente/Ph.D, CES/FE/UC;
3
Sociology MA student, DS/FLUP. Portugal
Ideally, punk assumes itself as a contesting movement
in the scope of the artistic, economic and social dimen-
sions.
After 1978, many affirmed that punk was dead. Yet,
this is a more symbolical than actual death, as the
movement changed and restructured itself in light of a
relative incorporation by the existing cultural industry
system. We know that the history of pop often walks up-
on itself, reinventing new underground scenes as an an-
swer to hegemony.
The creation of popular music is not an individual mat-
ter, not to be understood through a focus on music or
musician, but, instead, as a multifaceted process that can
only be understood in the context of the social environment
in which creates and appropriate soundtrack.
Outline a preliminary approach (the first approach to
punk in portuguese society) and the experience of portu-
guese punk today, considering him not only a social move-
ment, as an experience and a scene.
Contextualize this global phenomenon on a national
scale, where the protagonists, pathways and specific set-
tings are necessarily very different from what happened in
England (UK) and in USA.
Assumptions
We focus in this paper on the speeches of people, in a description, eval-
uation and analysis of the context in which the punk emerged and devel-
oped in Portugal, and at the same time, making a scoping exercise and a
presentation of the trajectories belonging to the movement, realizing that
this individuals construct meanings for their participation.
Methodology
Objectives
In Portugal, punk emerges almost at the same time as it did in countries such as Eng-
land or the U.S.A. The portuguese revolution of April 74, worked as a catalyst of will, of change and of
freedom, providing a favourable context for the emergence of the first punk manifestations.
The emergence of punk in Portugal is characterised by a mimetism/reappropriation of the
north-american and british realities, a mimetism which isnt, nonetheless, specific to the foun-
ding moments of punk in Portugal as it can be found through the generations of individuals and
their paths/connections through/to punk.
It is important to stress that the attendance to international festivals, the foreign literature
and the possibility of listening to imported records were determinant for the emergence of the
portuguese punk scene.
After the first punk wave of the end of the 1970s, in the mid-1980s we could watch the
emergence of a second wave, ten years past the punks eclosion in the U.K.: here we can find
bands like Peste & Sida, Mata Ratos, Censurados, Crise Total and Bastardos do Cardeal. They
play shows in Lisbon in places like A Teia, Rock Rendez Vous, Antnio Arroio Artistic School or the
Fine Arts Faculty and they wanted to be heard.
The portuguese punk scene is, nowadays and resembling what happens with other punks scenes all
over the world, constituted by several subgroups, united around the sonority of the bands and, in some
cases, of a set of, mainly political, ideals.
Results
In Portugal, we can subdivide the con-
temporary punk scene in seven groups wich
can be found among the following sonori-
ties:
1. political punk/anarcho-punk
2. hardcore
3. metallic hardcore/metalcore/post-metal
4. crust/d-beat
5. punk rock
6. skapunk
7. pop-punk/melodic hardcore