The Entrepreneurial (Straight) Edge: How Participation in DIY Music Cultures Translates to Work and Careers

Abstract

Only recently have researchers begun thoroughly examining the role of youth music cultures and subcultures in participants’ ‘adult’ lives, suggesting that participation does not end with an abrupt transition to adulthood. Significantly, how subcultural experience translates into work skills and job opportunities needs further investigation. Based upon interviews and participant observation with older straight edgers – clean-living punks associated with the hardcore music scene – over the course of five years, this article examines subcultural entrepreneurs, in particular straight edgers, who have used DIY experiences to start businesses or advance careers. I first examine how involvement in DIY scenes can influence choice of career; many participants chose work reflective of their DIY values and/or created their own career. Next, I discuss how participants’ DIY dispositions influence their work, including tolerance for risk, confidence, self-reliance, and adaptability. I then demonstrate how participants translate scene experience into useful and marketable skills, including management, organization, marketing, and job-specific proficiencies.

White, Male, and Bartending in Detroit: Masculinity Work in a Hipster Scene

“…Citing Mizruchi, Llyod (2006) notes that perhaps “thirty is the tipping point beyond which such a slack existence ceases to be socially acceptable” (159). A longitudinal study of hipsters would address whether youth subcultures are “stickier” than previously conceptualized and if the subcultural capital they provide is commonly turned into cultural capital (Haenfler 2018). In the meantime, this study provides a vivid picture of the masculinity work done by some hipster men and shows why subcultural membership still holds allure.…”

So close yet so far: DIY cultures in Portugal and Brazil

“…normative social experiences, and prescribed, linear, and saturated life trajectories (Ferreira, 2016;Guerra, 2017Guerra, , 2018Haenfler, 2018). Given the data, the need arises for a reconceptualization of subcultural resistance.…”

“…Similarly focused on the British cultural context in the 1980s and 1990s, McRobbie (2016) argues that one the major influencing factors on the current shape and entrepreneurial spirit of cultural industries was precisely the involvement of many contemporary artists and creative workers in the movement around music, dance and rave culture. Haenfler (2018) discusses the ways in which subcultural music experiences translate into marketable skills and job opportunities, with the caveat that such things are strongly conditioned by issues of gender, class, and ethnicity. Concentrating on the straight edge movement and the hardcore music scene in the United States, Haenfler demonstrates that many among the older straight edgers chose or created their own careers, grounded in DIY values shared through their subcultural experiences.…”

“…Regardless of any discussions about the current significance of DIY cultural production practices and their greater or lesser intersection with commercial or mainstream logic and know-how, the strategies referred in Table 4 and developed by these social actors to ensure their professional careers are sufficient to consider maintaining a DIY approach to "art as existence" in the analysis of career building in musical and artistic scenes in Brazil. This approach has, in fact, been present in research into different music genres in different geographic, social, and cultural contexts (Haenfler, 2018;Reitsamer & *The total sum of the percentages is greater than 100 because several interviewees mentioned more than one reason behind the practice of DIY-ethos-based activities, due to the fact that these numbers were extracted from the semidirected interviews held. Prokop, 2018;Scott, 2012).…”

Social Sustainability in Adolescents’ Music Event Attendance

“…There were only very infrequent references to the DIY music culture or active involvement in any musical scene. The DIY ethos was essential, for instance, in the formation of punk, metal, and rap cultures [71], which also gave opportunities to create long-term careers in music [72]. However, there have been changes in the musical tastes of youth.…”