Inklings #24: Blitzkrieg Bops - Alli Patton
What happens when aggressive, riotous punk music becomes the peacemaker?
What happens when aggressive, riotous punk music becomes the peacemaker?
What happens when aggressive, riotous punk music becomes the peacemaker?
What happens when aggressive, riotous music becomes the peacemaker? Since its inception, punk has defied convention. Angry, unruly, and equipped with an ‘anti’ ethos – aggressively anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, anti-corporation, and anti-conformity – it became a rebellion bound in leather, secured by safety pins. But it also became so much more.
Chronicling a brief history of punks at war, Blitzkrieg Bops studies those who have soundtracked a movement, whether Belfast’s Stiff Little Fingers against the backdrop of the Troubles, the integrated National Wake in Apartheid-era South Africa, through Kyaw Kyaw witnessing violence pierce through peace in Myanmar’s Saffron Revolution, to those protesting for a free Palestine to this day.
Journalist Alli Patton speaks to musicians who wield their music as a weapon on the frontlines for their future, spanning decades and continents, and digs more deeply into the intersection of politics, protest and punk – of those creating music to overthrow corrupt governments, stomp out oppressive regimes, fight the establishment and, in turn, fight for their lives.
