Punk in Germany | 37 | Perspectives on German Popular Music | PHILIPP (original) (raw)

Introduction ‘Globalisation’, understood as a process of diffusion of cultural elements all across the world, is one of the most prominent terms in contemporary research on social phenomena. Just like hip-hop or reggae, the story of punk starts locally. Hip-hop spread from the back lots of New York and reggae began in the Caribbean, although this beginning is really a point of coalescence of older African roots. Likewise, the story of punk rock begins in the United Kingdom. There are a number of important competing narratives about punk, whose protagonists often include pre-or proto-punk bands from the United States such as MC5 and the Stooges from Detroit or the New York Dolls, yet the genesis of the genre is usually connected to the English entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren. Indeed, the birthplace of punk is sometimes localised to the very shop he ran, along with fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, in Chelsea in London. Punk style may have begun in that shop, but it was through managing the Sex Pistols that McLaren inspired a cohort of adolescents to establish punk: ‘deviant’ behaviour, unconventional clothing and appearance and a typical style of music. Punk may have begun in McLaren’s shop, but, appearing in an era of increasing contact and exchange between (mainly but not only) Western societies, the rate of exchange that has only increased in the four decades since the Sex Pistols’ debut – this particular set of subcultural elements has spread on a wordwide scale, and punk rock has become a global phenomenon.1