Since the first harsh notes rang out, the dominant story of punk has been a Western one.
To most of us, this genre of music is distinctly White-coded: created and sustained by the White working class, fuelled by insurgent Caucasian identity. But it has been a global and culturally diverse revolution from the start.
BRAIN POLICE AND PROTO-PUNK IN JAPAN
Punk music, in the 1970s, seemed custom-made for Japan.
The country was still reckoning with post-World War 2 trauma, grappling with a “bubble economy” characterised by high inflation, and maintaining its stoic global image through enforced conformity and the ostracism of outliers.
In films and music, a revolution was brewing. Horror, anger and noise would be its weapons.
As early as 1969, proto-punk outfits such as Zuno Keisatsu (Brain Police) were drawing from hippie counter-culture and far-left politics, for songs such as Declaration of Global Revolutionary War and Grab a Gun. The band’s debut album, an independent release, was considered so shocking, many of the tracks on it were banned from the radio.
By 1980, Tokyo and Osaka were home to vibrant scenes. Groups such as Anarchy and SS played at breakneck speed and ear-splitting volume, screaming out nihilist and anti-imperialist slogans. Gigs could be extraordinarily violent; audience members regularly beat each other up; protestors from among the conservatives added to the mayhem, as did the yakuza (occasionally), and often the police.
GISM frontman Sakevi once shot a flamethrower into the crowd. Hijokaidan (Emergency Staircase), the band that helped pioneer the Japanoise scene, made venue destruction part of their acts. Windows were smashed and fire-extinguishers directed at the audience.
The frenzy eventually calmed and, as in the West, the genre became more accessible, even mainstream. Pop-punk acts such as The Blue Hearts and girl band Shonen Knife found both critical and commercial success.
The music lives on. So do the DIY labels and gigs, and the spirit of music as community organisation and political activism. Subversive lyrics still confront ideas of conformity, in songs that sing of choosing to be ugly (Linda Linda by The Blue Hearts) and opting to be child-free (I Am Not Maternal by the contemporary girl band Otoboke Beaver).
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FIGHTS BREAK OUT IN THE PHILIPPINES, HONG KONG
In an Asia where colonial governments had been replaced by authoritarian regimes, punk became the sound of rebellion.
In the Philippines, a small but vibrant scene emerged in the 1980s, under the nose of, and in opposition to, the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. It was led by bands such as The Jerks and Urban Bandits.
A similar scene grew up in Hong Kong, sharing underground spaces with growing pro-democracy movements. Regular police raids on venues have kept the scene tiny and underground, but pop-up gigs and contemporary bands such as Dagger and King Ly Chee have kept it going.
Their music was loud and confrontational, but often not explicitly political. This changed amid waves of protests against new Chinese laws around the turn of the century. Bands now began to write about the struggle, and raise funds to support legal aid for arrested activists. “We hear your voices loud… / Our will to persevere is why stand as one,” King Ly Chee sang, for instance, in Unite Asia (2006). The songs, fundraising, and protests continue.
THINGS GO BOOM IN INDONESIA
Indonesia came to the party late, but oh what a scene it’s had since.
Punk bands of the 1990s, inspired by a version of the genre then going mainstream in the West (think, Green Day, Nirvana, Bad Religion) inspired music, fashion and, crucially, zines.
Amid Suharto’s repressive regime, this subculture became a key site of political resistance.
The government initially ignored the noise, which gave bands such as Superman Is Dead, Turtles Jr and Puppen the room to release and perform dramatically subversive, anti-establishment songs.
Zines such as Submissive Riot and Kontaminasi Propaganda dealt explicitly with social and political issues as viewed through an anarchist lens.
Then, on New Year’s Eve 1995, after a self-organised gig in Bandung, 150 anarchist punks marched 10 km, destroying billboards and damaging cars with elite government licence plates along the way.
A year later, the genre was no longer being ignored. The government announced shoot-at-sight orders ahead of New Year’s Eve 1996, for any “anarchist punks” participating in political rallies or action.
By 1998, economic distress, student protests and sustained rioting had toppled the 32-year Suharto regime. As a political elite continued to rule, and corruption and poverty remained rife, iconic bands such as Marjinal sang: “Our country wails / All that remains is the story / Suffering and suffering / Keep telling the story.” (Negri Negri or Country Country; 2014).
Many bands still live the philosophy, setting up communal houses, selling records and merchandise through DIY networks and using proceeds to support charity kitchens and political-protest movements.
So prevalent is the subculture that the government of Aceh, a province that follows Sharia law, organised a series of crackdowns in which punks were detained, had their heads shaved and piercings removed, in 2011. Punk remains an “unofficial crime” in Aceh, but despite occasional crackdowns, retains an active scene.
Indonesia is currently home to one of the largest punk populations in the world.
LOUD UNDERCURRENTS IN CHINA
Punk began to take shape here in the late 1990s, in the wake of reforms dating to the late-1970s that led to greater economic and cultural freedoms. The music was heavily influenced by the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, in which troops fired on pro-democracy student protestors, killing hundreds.
Beijing and Wuhan became early hubs of an underground subculture. Bands such as Brain Failure and SMZB released songs on subjects ranging from corruption to workers’ deaths amid preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Hitting out at the country’s autocratic governance, SMZB released Born in the PRC, as part of their 2016 album The Chinese Are Coming.
The scene has remained small, constrained by a lack of venues and crackdowns by the state.
A new wave, made up of bands such as Hiperson and Gong Gong Gong, now also sings of the burnout many young Chinese people face. In Some Kind of Demon, for instance, Gong Gong Gong capture generational anxiety in disconnected phrases choked out in Cantonese: “It’s a pity / As long as / Can only / But not / Still.”
FOOD, NOT BOMBS, IN MYANMAR
As Buddhist monks took to the streets in 2007, protesting economic collapse amid the rule of the military junta in Myanmar, six young men came together to form the anarcho-punk band Rebel Riot.
They have singlehandedly shaped punk culture in the country in the year since, in a rather evocative illustration of the power of one.
They, and their fans, sport the look: mohawks, piercings, studded leather jackets. But they also run soup kitchens as part of a Food Not Bombs project, and create music in support of the pro-democracy resistance.
Most recently, after the country’s military toppled its democratically elected government again in 2021, the band released To… Dear Comrade (2024), a pean to Myanmar’s pro-democracy protestors, with songs that range from the militant (Spring Nightmare; Modern Slave) to a poignant, stirring cover of the Spanish anarchist anthem A las Barricadas (To the Barricades), popularised during the Spanish Civil War.
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(Click here for the punk in Asia playlist)
