The Spectre of Authenticity in (Bradford’s)
Underground Music
For those of us with a passion for the ‘real deal’, Bradford delivers
in abundance. Home haircuts outnumber salon-styled angular
fringes; layers and practical footwear appear more crucial than up-
to-the-minute fashion statements; local brews are sunk in public
at medieval hours of the day without shame. The city’s industrial
history is embedded in the landscape; falling-to-bits mills, empty
units, time warp shopping centres and nostalgic markets. The
streets are paved not with gold but grit. The characters that
populate them are diamonds in the rough. Mostly.
Bradford attracts a different type of thrill-seeker. Not necessarily
your aspiring career-ladder climber or city-living lover looking
for slick standardisation and professional sheen, but rather a
connoisseur of the idiosyncratic, the context-specific and the
original; someone willing to - and likely to have an unhealthy habit
for - looking beyond appearances, digging beneath the surface and
not afraid of (getting) dirty fingernails.
No surprise, then, that the underground music scene in the city has
long been an integral piece in the Bradford puzzle. There are plenty
of the void spaces, the cracks and the dark nooks and crannies in
which such activity breeds and thrives. One need only look to the
history
of the illustrious 1 in 12 Club to see how, given the time, space and
energy, normally discounted ‘fringe’ activity can materialise into
a world-renowned (counter) institution. People from all over the
world
have flocked to Albion St over the last three decades to experience
‘real’ musical expression of a mostly crusty type.
Naturally it’s not the sole example of thriving
community-led or grassroots culture in the
city; we can identify the same in the South
Asian arts scene; the Topic Folk Club, running
for fifty years; and in the grimey urban music
emerging from outer ring road council estates,
to name a few. Bradford is the home of punk in its
many cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary
guises.
What is the attraction though? How and why does, for some, grit
charm like glitter? What type of value does it embody? For me
the answer lies in that elusive and not unproblematic promise of
‘authenticity’.
It is fair to say that when things are done regardless of commercial
concern, that is, for Love Not Money - LNM fast becoming my
preferred term to DIY in the shadow of the Big Society – the
parameters for evaluation and production shift and change. No
longer is making something ‘accessible’ or audience-targeted a
priority. In music it isn’t important whether the song is the sort
of thing you’d buy, or whether it’s catchy or sticks in your head,
or even that it has a discernible tune or beat. This often leads to
accusations of indulgence and elitism: ‘How can you enjoy listening
to this?’, ‘It does nothing for me’, and so on. It would be facetious
– and factually incorrect - to suggest that freedom from market
constraints inevitably leads to ‘good’ or enjoyable music.
What is on offer instead is a concentrated hit of the authentic: an
enactment of the thing-in-itself rather than as a means-to-an-end,
uncompromised and unabashed. Previously I’ve compared watching
weird noise-rock bands to surveying child’s play or experiencing
amateur sports events. At its best non-commercially oriented music
is an embodiment or materialisation of that passion for (collective)
activity and creative expression that animates us, undiluted by the
self-interest and conservatism of profiteering.
Perversely such authentic and unprecedented
expression can come across as the exact
opposite – ‘This is so odd and pretentious’ - so
rare does it occur in our culture. Equally the
rough edges and unrefined, abrasive quality
of DIY/LNM activity make it less immediately
palatable. It is often lo-fi (done on the cheap),
strange and scary and as such intimidating,
except perhaps to those grit-prospectors
amongst whose numbers I include myself.
Nevertheless grit becomes addictive; you may
find yourself a filth-junkie. Once the taste has
been acquired everything else can seem sterile
and artificial. Importantly, the hunt for the
authentic is a never-ending trail. Once you
appreciate the rough-edged in art, music and
culture it can lead to the embrace of an entire
‘dirty old town’.
Still, for all its attributes we should be wary of making a fetish out
of filth. A critical distance is required. A love of grit is a broadening
of experience and we need to be wary of simply substituting
the capitalist (false) desire for the clean, shiny and professional
with a blanket disregard for anything with a whiff of luxury or
craftmanship. Why constrain creativity with new limits? In the punk
and DIY music scene such rules - sometimes explicit, sometimes
implied - have included ‘no high production values, guitar solos,
or other indulgences’. Just as all that glitters is not gold, it is not
bullshit either. Sometimes fun and excess are authentic too.
Likewise roughness does not always equate with the real. Lo-fi
aesthetics and crust-chic are easily copied and sold back to us.
Remember Levis-fabricated grunge band Stiltskin? Indeed, the
more of an aesthetic we attach to authenticity the easier it can
be synthesized and profited from. Keeping underground expression
and LNM/DIY activity fluid, contingent and slippery is one way of
preventing it from being identified, captured and recuperated by
the foot soldiers of commerce who wish to drain it of its radical
potency.
Moreover, the very concept of authentic expression needs to be
critically appraised. There is more than a hint of exoticism and
middle-class voyeurism in the embrace of grit by those for whom it
is a chosen reality that they can exit at will - a dirty weekend away.
Also, underlying the appreciation of grit is an essentialist logic
that assumes that there is something universal and ‘real’ beneath
capitalist sheen; a mistaken and dangerously naïve belief that deep
down we’re all the same. I would suggest that even when we’re all
covered in dirt it is important to appreciate difference, just the
same as recognising that whilst we may all be in the same boat we
have different horizons. There may be grit in our teeth, but that
doesn’t eradicate the need to talk or sing about why it’s there.
Andy Abbott
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