Punk has always been somewhat in contradiction with itself. It was founded on the very principle of inclusiveness, yet abhors the idea of becoming too popular. While punk is about providing a space for outsiders to express themselves freely, it risks blending into the mainstream and losing its subversive originality if too many people join the ranks of self-proclaimed punk rockers. Perhaps then it is no surprise that early punk musicians have been recorded saying that they didn’t think their music would last overnight, let alone 40 years.

Questioning the authenticity of the punk movement has never been easier than in 2016, a year that will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the genre with the festival Punk.London, set up by the BFI and endorsed by both the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Mayor of London. It’s impossible not to be aware of the irony of a festival celebrating an anti-establishment movement being funded by a Royal Charter institution. But do facts like these signify the end of the punk era, or must we instead celebrate punk’s rich legacy which is manifested not only through the music of contemporary groups like The Slaves and Pussy Riot but also through the very notion that it was punks who first politicised music. They can be credited with dragging music out of the recording studios and onto the streets, creating a subculture whose influence can be seen all around today; a movement that defined generations of people’s identities and provided them with an entire lifestyle that would have been unthinkable to generations prior.

When it first began, punk was about embracing the DIY aesthetic. The New York Dolls are sometimes considered the real forerunners of the punk movement, as they supposedly influenced Sex Pistols’ manager Malcom Mclaren to start a band based on their image. At the time, McLaren was going out with Vivienne Westwood, who can be praised for introducing the punk aesthetic into mainstream fashion. The punk scene was also thriving in the USA, with bands like Black Flag, Dead Kennedy’s and NOFX making a scene. It was inherently political, anarchic, and pretty much anti-everything - even music. Musicians were learning to play whilst onstage and some couldn’t play at all. In Susan Dynner’s documentary ‘Punk’s not Dead’ Monkey from the Adicts describes how ‘everybody had a band…we had no songs, no instruments, but we had a band.’ If you went on stage and urinated – that was punk. If you went up and smashed a typewriter to pieces with a sledgehammer – that was also punk.

Around the 80's and early 90's, there is a notable gap in punk history. Some date this gap from the Pistols breaking up to the start of Nirvana, and others to the start of MTV. I spoke to Gina Birch, founding member of The Raincoats, an early post-punk band whose admirers included Johnny Rotten and Kurt Cobain, about this shift in punk culture. Birch describes how ‘With MTV taking over, Maggie Thatchers Britain, and women's bright blue power suits and shoulder pads, we felt even more out of step with the mainstream. 

Bands like Scritti Politti were going pop and the Gang of Four felt they should be at the heart of the beast with EMI and The Clash at CBS, we felt we had lost our allies. The Pop Group were disbanding, the Slits had broken up. The movement lost its joy for me and we ground to a halt."

However, punk never really went away and neither did The Raincoats. Birch dates the onset of Riot grrrl in the 90’s as turning point for her and the band: "we were re-energised as suddenly history began to live again, for us". Punk was starting to emerge in different forms, for example the ‘pop punk’ of the late 80’s and early 90’s, which saw the explosion of a certain type of ‘punk’ into the American mainstream. This newfound popularity in the punk aesthetic was concerning to many, partly because it was making it increasingly difficult for those who saw themselves as true punks to forge an identity out of being subversive.

This could serve to explain why contemporary punk groups often seem take the political to the extreme through their music – for example Pussy Riot, who have served time in prison for ‘hooliganism’ and for speaking against Putin in their lyrics, or Slotface, who recently filmed the music video for their latest single ‘Sponge State’ during a protest against a mining company dumping chemicals in a fjord. Seeing a video of Pussy Riot members being whipped in Sochi certainly feels different to watching clips of punk rockers moshing in basements. It seems that in the current climate, it takes more direct action to make an impacting statement.

Despite not adhering to the same style of music or aesthetic as older generation punks, Gina believes that she shares an affiliation with these newer groups: "It seems that a line can be drawn from us to riot girrrl to pussy riot.  Incidentally we sometimes have had three generations of women at our gigs". And so whilst many lament the mainstream appropriation of punk, perhaps rather than spending time indulging in a morbid nostalgia for the good old days of authentic punk culture, perhaps we should appreciate how its ideology continues to be passed on between generations through a supportive network of punks, whose persistent provocation of the system is an integral part of a culture of free speech and creative liberty.