DIY or Die?
A look at DIY culture and how we (Gen Z) can carry the torch. (By. Matt Brady)
What’s the purpose of DIY culture in an age of information?
To answer this question, first, we have to look at the people who paved the way for us.
The history of where we are now
The term “do-it-yourself”, or simply, “DIY”, embedded itself into English slang back in the 1950s, first being associated with home improvement, specifically with altering the appearance of your house without the help of an expert.
Two decades later, the term would be heavily associated with the rise of punk rock- notably with its ugly, jagged, and faster sub-genre, hardcore.
Characterized by faster-than-light BPMs, dissonate, chugged power chords and maliciously screamed vocals, punk’s subgenre popped up all over the late 1970s/early 1980s America, creating historic scenes on both coasts: from New York, Washington D.C. (Bad Brains and Minor Threat) and Boston (SSD) to northern (Dead Kennedys) and southern (Black Flag) California.
40 years on, hardcore’s power still shatters ear drums and knocks unsuspected listeners on their asses, but inseparable from the world of hardcore is the practice of DIY ethics.
The raw sound, in-your-face look and “fuck you” attitude of hardcore stood out from the status quo of the time, aiding in Tipper Gore’s “Parental Advisory” label for albums in the 80s (watch Jello Biafra’s stance on the matter), bands being shunned from labels to release music and hardcore gigs sometimes resulting in police violence.
Furthermore, the distaste for the mainstream of the time- pop, disco, new wave and glam rock- only contributed to the ethics that so many still hold dear today.
DIY
DIY culture/ethics is characterized by actions and associations removed from big business, big money and capitalist ideals.
It’s about truly doing things for yourself and not relying on help from others to get by.
In a music context, it’s about booking your own tours, recording your own music or doing it with a close friend out of his spare bedroom, creating your own merch or working with a printer who’s doing it out of their basement, creating your own flyers or having your graphic designer friend help you, making your own zines, burning your own CDs, dubbing your own cassettes, working with a DIY label, etc, etc.
DIY in a musical context is about the love of the craft, not the product’s price. It’s about the love of the crowd, not the love of what’s in their wallets.
The reality
This speculation may be all existential, but let’s be honest: it’s hard to fulfill all of these requirements to live a fully DIY life.
You need the internet to connect with people. You need social media accounts to make connections and be up-to-date with what is going on. You need a phone to call people. You need to make a living for yourself and provide for the people who need you.
At Brain Graffiti, we make our zine completely by hand but use Canon applications for scanning our pages and a printing company for our final product. We have a website but the builder is powered by a big corporation. We both have swamped personal lives at the moment so we resorted to posting stories on Substack, which is a big company. We have social media accounts that are powered by Meta, one of the biggest corporations on the planet.
Are we really DIY?
How Gen Z should co-opt DIY ethics and push it forward with the times
The internet has permanently set the bar for how to do things: how to communicate, how to interact, how to work, how to learn, etc, etc.
It would be impossible to completely live DIY and not do so off the grid.
We can complain about it all we want, but the reality is that the internet is pushing culture as we know it and will probably do so for the foreseeable future.
Generation Z has been passed the torch to continue the ethics of DIY and the evolution of local music scenes and genres: starting venues, creating zines, writing songs, starting bands, etc, etc, but it’s impossible to keep the standards of 80s/90s music scenes today.
People back then didn’t have Macbooks to create flyers. People couldn’t spread the word about their band through Instagram posts. DIY venues couldn’t create social media pages for their basement.
You can say that it meant more back then, but it depends on who you’re talking to.
Current DIY is about actions and associations that go against the norm, while not selling out to big money and big business.
Creating zines, starting venues, recording music and bringing bands together is all DIY, and using social media, websites, Substack and whatever else to market your art can go in tandem with that.
Even though you’re using these “mainstream” applications- TikTok, Instagram, Squarespace, Substack- you’re still pushing a very real, physical product. That is what means something.
In this sense, using these social media sites to push your art is going against the norm, the essence of DIY music and DIY culture.
“Dear Oakland- choose love”: Gen Z’s responsibility
At 11:20 pm on Dec. 2, 2016, a DIY art space/venue in Oakland, CA known as Ghost Ship, caught fire, resulting in the deaths of 36 people.
Families and friends of the victims were devastated by the news, sparking lawsuits and hailing the incident as “the most lethal building fire in the US in more than a decade.”
With the devastating fire just being shy of a decade old, it’s a solemn reminder of what can happen if community organizers are not careful.
Gen Z has a responsibility to never let something like this happen again and every single one of us- venue owners, attendees, photographers, zine makers, bands and artists- have to put the correct precautions in order at performance spaces.
Make sure there is a fire extinguisher on deck. A shit load of bottled water at every corner of the space. Harm reduction services and Narcan when it’s needed. A med kit if someone starts bleeding, gets a nasty cut or anything else that should arise. A short evacuation protocol and knowledge of exits. Call out dangerous bullshit when you see it and kick their fucking asses to the curb.
The preservation of these spaces is sacred and putting safety first will keep the DIY scene’s spirits high.
My personal thoughts
To me, DIY culture isn’t only about trying to do things for yourself and going against the grain, but it’s also about opening up to new experiences, challenging your brain, bettering yourself and expressing who you are without the confines of society weighing you down.
Jess and I had a bit of internal debate when creating the Substack (look at our first story that we published) because we continuously push the narrative of physical media with the zine. We thought that creating the Substack would go back on everything that we preach.
It’s important to know that today’s technologies can positively help push physical products: starting an Instagram and website to promote your products, a Substack for more accessible, free stories and so on.
Gen Z has a responsibility to keep the DIY culture and music scenes going to ensure the future of art by creating safe spaces, encouraging positive innovation and cultivating an inviting community of creatives.
-Matt and Jess