HISTORY OF ZINES AND MUSIC
BY SOPHIE BRADECICH
Visual art and music have long been intertwined. Just as Katsushika Hokusai inspired Debussy, music has influenced the creation of zines. According to Molly Tie of Punktuation Magazine, a zine is “any self-published, cheap/free publication (typically a magazine-style format) that has a small circulation.” The art of the zine is in its limitlessness. A zine could include poetry, visual art, photography, opinion pieces, news, sheet music, collages, or anything those working on it are creative enough to dream up. In the modern age they can also include digital elements, or be created entirely for an online format. The zine evolves with us.
Zines tend to find their way into niche, creative, passionate, and frankly nerdy communities. The first zines trace back to the 1930s in the sci-fi community. The Comet was the creation of the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago and ran for 17 issues before the club shut down. But Zines remained in the science fiction community through the 60s when Star Trek came out and along with it the fanzine Spockanalia.
Picture courtesy of The FANAC
Zines became easier to create in the 70s with the invention of copy shops, allowing mass production for significantly cheaper than the science nerds had to fork up. Ironically, this innovation allowed for a shift away from the sci-fi community and to the Punk scene.
Similarly to Beatnik movements of the 50s and 60s, zine culture largely centered around going against the grain. Punk and zines went hand in rebellious hand, and zines were produced not only about punk music and culture, but politics and human rights issues. Laura Van Leuven, a writer for the University of North Carolina blogs summarized the core of punk zines as the representation of “aesthetic and ideals of an entire subculture, a condensed version of this cultural revolt against authoritarianism.”
A personal favorite sub-subculture is Riot Grrrl and its zines. The Riot Grrrl genre carved out a place in the larger misogynistic punk community for women, and one of the most visible components of Third Wave Feminism according to the New York Times. It includes bands like Bikini Kill who published Zines about their thoughts on music, politics, feminism, and activism all in that chaotic punk-rock style.
picture courtesy of LLC Zine Collection
However, even the Riot Grrrl community, though creating place for women in punk, lacked diversity. Lisa Darms lists Ramdasha Bikceem as an influential Riot Grrrl zine creator for the Paris Review. Bikceem combatted this lack of diversity through her zine GUNK. In her fourth issue she describes her view of the community: “This sounds kinda snotty but I see Riot Grrrl growing very closed to a very chosen few i.e. white middle class punk girls. It’s like some secret society, but then again there are some who feel that a secret society is what we need.”
Photo courtesy of The Paris Review
Zines are still around today, and are currently in resurgence. It makes sense that a generation so fueled by activism, would create art centered around it. There are zines for every music genre now, from folk to to metal. You can find physical copies sold on Etsy, in some record stores, or independent bookstores. Many artists market their zines on social media, and many colleges and cities will have zine-making societies/clubs.
