Then a punk-jazz explosion blazed into the 1970's. Bad Brains is a phenomenal D.C. hardcore band who upended everything about conformist music.
Jazzy melodies and prominent horn sections wove their way into punk. Artists like H.R. (Bad Brains) started there.
Mind Power's heroes were Mahavishnu Orchestra, etc., and preceded Bad Brains as a jazz-funk group.
Bad Brains' future vocalist Ras Israel Joseph met Ryan Bland at a Prince concert years ago! Ras shared a quintessential punk cassette, Rise. Meetings like this are how Ryan discovered this music, and he isn't the only one!
Punk is about synergy. Paul "H.R." Hudson found powerful spirituality and a creative outlet via music, plus Rastafarianism.
Former Dead Kennedys and Red Hot Chili Peppers percussionist Darren Henley/D.H. Peligro personifies his name: King of Afro Punk!
1970's-2020
Punk in Africa describes punk as the anti-apartheid soundtrack to Soweto, South Africa's uprising, Zimbabwe's freedom movement and more. National Wake were killin' it in the motherland since 1975.
As punk is often a mixture of bandmates from varying backgrounds, the dynamics could draw further attention to social injustice—and rockin' frontwomen like Marianne Elliott-Said.
A Sex Pistols show at a moody English pier set her on a lifelong punk path. I Am A Cliche is a fabulous autobiography that is co-directed by Poly Styrene's daughter, Celeste Bell! Watch the trailer.
She passed away in 2011 as a true hero of her hardcore era: a jazz-punk frontwoman like a whirlwind on stage, second home. It made Poly anxious to perform.
Sometimes, punk's aggression and misogynoir are too much to handle (The Guardian). But she did it, and perhaps because of that sense: a renaissance was coming.
Our time was beginning, and had to start with musicians like Poly Styrene. Remember her in our hearts and songs. Fishbone's jazz-punk-R&B-ska fusion is unbeatable now, then and forevermore.
How do you take a Curtis Mayfield track and make it so punk rock? Only Fishbone!
Flora Lucini is the East Coast bad-ass bassist in The 1865 and Maafa, an "Afro-progressive hardcore group that spans 90's to 2020's punk, jazz and Black Brazil. She shared her initiation as a punk rocker in D.C. too!
"I definitely have a lot of friends and family back home in D.C. that are Black and brown, BIPOC or that we grew up together. They're still in the scene to this today, predominantly Black women, which I'm very blessed.
Black women got me into hardcore...And it was great, I mean they took me to some of my first hardcore shows"!
Honeychild Coleman had grown up as a post-punk power chord grrrl, and felt seen by another Black rocker: Tamar-kali! "I couldn't even visualize finding another sister who played the kind of music that I liked...or had her own band! Like that was next-level fantasy...
She would come over, and we used to watch The Box and used to watch all these different videos from Underdog, No Doubt to Rage Against The Machine."
"The Black Kids: Rewriting the Very White History of Punk" beautifully portrays punk's multicultural patterns, its bold timeline in modern music.
Death, Pure Hell, Ryan Bland (Bushmon/Ache), Big Joanie, Flora Lucini (Maafa/The 1865), Honeychild Coleman, Sacha Jenkins (The 1865), Crystal Axis, The Muslims, Deathbard Thanny, Winter Wolf are part of a global punk family!
Deathbard
Thanny - 'Thannarchist' (Anthem for the Era)
(5-17-24)
#RockTalk: Deathbard Thanny (5-12-24)
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