Through the 1990s, and before a guy named James Spooner and a thing called Afropunk came along, Black punk rockers were relatively few in number and otherwise overlooked. Like most things race-related, it was actually a rather deep and complex situation.
Several years ago, the organization Afropunk captured this predicament pretty well on social media with a post linking to a picture of a smiling, 20-something Black man and the headline: “Black Man Attends Punk Show Without Anyone Mentioning Bad Brains.” (See David Britton’s article in The Hard Times, 26 July 2017.) If you understand that all of Bad Brains’ members are Black, and yet they are a crucial part of the hardcore scene’s foundation, it is a funny meme.
That is, Black punks have been rare enough that when encountering them, a white punk may feel compelled to suddenly name-drop Bad Brains. Or, sometimes a white person may feel the need to show how not racist they are—by bringing up race for no reason. Of course, at times, there has also been more overt racism in punk. Enter Afropunk.
Afro-Punk is a 2003 documentary-film-turned-music-festival-turned-cultural-movement with a purpose of recognizing and giving support to Black punks. Since then, Afropunk has grown enormously, indeed helping make punk a more viable lifestyle for people of color and even facilitating a new punk aesthetic altogether. James Spooner addresses all of the above in his engaging punk memoir, It Starts with Anger: A Punk Beginning. An Afropunk Ending.
This is Spooner’s third literary effort, after his graphic novel The High Desert (2022) and the anthology Black Punk Now (2023), co-edited with novelist Chris L. Terry. The “Anger” in this book’s title makes sense, though this is not an in-your-face or vitriolic sort of punk story. Spooner’s is a more personal, more observational coming-of-age tale, yet one that plainly illustrates the power of simply connecting with others and maintaining DIY punk values.
His story ranges from his teen years and a world of “basements, living rooms, and rec centers” to life in the New York underground punk culture to an international stage. Mostly it is Spooner’s restless drive that pushes the narrative. He becomes more and more connected within the punk community, but, at the same time, also grows more aware of how he doesn’t fit in. Along the way, the pieces of the Afropunk story fall into place.
Spooner is largely a clear-eyed narrator throughout, and his writing style is appropriately loose for a punk memoir. He also utilizes his graphic art talents, and every few pages of text give way to a comic panel or two and some multi-page vignettes. At one point, for example, he discusses the challenges of putting on DIY punk shows in New York, which is immediately followed by a very cool and helpful two-page comic-punk economics lesson.
His story starts as a Black/biracial teen in a poor, single-parent home, living in largely white communities, and feeling out of place. He soon faces the punk dilemma: find a place to fit into—while still being himself…and a rebel. Race, however, will greatly complicate things.
James Spooner’s teen years are an enjoyable recollection of discovering punk in his local scene. It is a fun recollection of a time when trusting new people can hinge on the credibility of the bands they follow—and you had better be able to actually name the bands’ best albums.
On a practical level, he learns some lessons the hard way, such as the proper direction of a mosh circle (counter-clockwise). Otherwise, he makes solid observations that will serve him later on, such as that the crowds at hardcore shows are partly there to make friends—an idea unheard of at mainstream shows. He also reminds readers that 1990s alt-rock really was trying hard to cross punk with “Black” genres like hip-hop and funk—it just rarely did it well.
At one point, Spooner reaches out via regular mail to various punk bands and fan clubs, which leads to bus rides and couch-surfing across the country—all while still a teen. He learns about a far-flung but tight-knit culture that functions, though on absurdly small amounts of money.
In New York, Spooner describes life in a strong underground scene, and being out at his favorite punk and fringe clubs every night. It is something of a “bohemian dream”, and he even finds a way to make a living as a face-to-face “influencer” of sorts, drawing crowds to certain clubs.
He tells stories about underground players, such as the singer who crowd-surfs while walking upside down on a club’s low ceiling like a “spider”. There are references to semi-legendary underground bands like skate-punk McRad, as well as Rorschach and Vida Blue. Also, there was a Hare Krishna hardcore band?!? Yes. It is also, however, a story of the “burnout youth culture in Washington Square Park” in Manhattan, and some big-city hostilities. On the subway, for example, he learns that some Black kids simply don’t understand what a Black punk even is, and they respond with anger.
Spooner also has a more direct and overdue accounting of racial issues in punk, and he is on point. Reading It Starts with Anger is a reminder of how so often Western society can seem to simply accept that some trends are “white” ones and others “Blac,,” and that is just the way it is. Really, there are always very specific reasons for how things get so divided and how they stay that way. Spooner lays out the punk version of this, but the dynamics are familiar, too.
He starts by showing how a Black perspective can be negated, even unintentionally, and he lays out a fair breakdown of punk legend Patti Smith’s problematic 1978 song, “Rock n Roll N—–”. He further notes that most of the punk songs of the 1980s and ’90s that did touch on race are, at best, “confusing”, like “White Minority”, by the otherwise esteemed Black Flag. Worse, blatantly racist songs such as “Speak English or Die”, from thrash brand Stromtroopers of Death, were supposed to be “written off as jokes” in the punk rock community. Even in a genre defined as “outsider”, a person of color, Spooner explains, still needs “two faces”.
James Spooner has considerable self-awareness and, though straight, early on he connects with the gay community as fellow outsiders. At one point, he will have to directly address a band’s homophobic lyrics, and remind them and the crowd that “The gay community helped build Afro-Punk!” Plus, even while living something of a “Bohemian dream”, he knows he is missing something. The last several of It Starts with Anger‘s 21 chapters address his documentary film and then the music festival.
He didn’t even have any film training, but he nonetheless made his very DIY, low-budget documentary, Afro-Punk. The film was a surprise indie success, and he screened it around the world. He has clearly tapped into something.
From that point on, Spooner navigates the age-old challenge: how to scale an authentic social movement without losing what made it vital in the first place. This is especially challenging in a genre like punk, of course, whose very currency is authenticity. Spooner’s account, here, is personable, but he also provides a valuable perspective on the harsh realities of the music business.
Before moving forward with that, however, a significant misstep has to be addressed. Spooner goes to considerable lengths to express his disdain for the 1990s cultural phenomenon known as Seattle’s “grunge” movement. He claims that this was not a “real” movement and, more oddly, that it was “never a community”. His claims need to be clarified, but this is also a discussion point that speaks to the broader questions at hand regarding integrity and some practical realities.
For Spooner, the success of grunge clearly hits a nerve. His main point is that the word “grunge” was a marketing creation of the then-small Seattle indie label, Sub Pop. He also pulls up a quote from punk icon Kurt Cobain, who early on dismissed Pearl Jam as “corporate”. (Spooner does, also, and accurately, call out how the mainstream co-opted the term grunge altogether, but that is a separate issue from the genre’s origins.)
It is true that Sub Pop’s co-founders initially used the term “grunge” to market bands on their then-unknown label. It is also true that many of the Sub Pop bands did not love the grunge marketing angle. (Yarm, 2011)
To be clear, the word grunge had first been used, informally, by a member of Mudhoney to describe his band’s music. Mudhoney was Sub Pop’s first signee, probably the quintessential Sub Pop/grunge act, and widely respected. It is also worth noting that pre-grunge, pre-Starbucks, and pre-Microsoft, 1980s Seattle was scarcely even on the pop culture map.
Spooner’s accusation that grunge is “not a community” is, unfortunately, just “off”. Well before any major labels came around, the Seattle-area groups in question had formed a notoriously organic and unified scene. Cameron Crowe, for example, was so inspired by the tight chemistry of the city’s music community that he set his 1991 film Singles there.
The bands Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains, and, from not-far-away Aberdeen, the Melvins and Cobain’s Nirvana, all shared similarly murky, heavy sounds and punk and metal influences. Band members dressed in a similar thrift-store-ish style (which regularly included flannel and work boots) favored by typical middle- and working-class males in the Pacific Northwest at the time. All of this was squarely at odds with the prevailing style of the day’s MTV stars.
Spooner also goes all in on—but misreads—a now-infamous incident when the mainstream media did finally come calling, and a Sub Pop receptionist duped a New York Times reporter by presenting them some entirely ridiculous, made-up terms and told them that it was the hip new slang of the Seattle scene. This was, arguably, the precise opposite of selling out.
Before he passed, Kurt Cobain was known to have come to embrace Pearl Jam, as did most other contemporaries, critics, and fans. Pearl Jam even famously stepped out of the spotlight and has maintained a solid following ever since. In short, the original Seattle/grunge scene was about as organic and as authentic as anything.
To be clear, James Spooner has a ton of credibility on punk rock and integrity. Still, maybe not every music scene has to be as raw and as austere as hardcore punk. Even his stated original punk inspiration, the Sex Pistols, broke punk on the world stage, in part due to their shock value and some careful media manipulations by their manager, Malcom McLaren. Nirvana released Nevermind (1991) on a major label. Thus, scaling and/or spreading anything of value may just not be an easy, one-size-fits-all situation, as Spooner suggests.
In any event, in the early 2000s, the Afropunk music festival grew quickly, with concerts first in Brooklyn and soon in London, Paris, Johannesburg, and elsewhere. Spooner’s challenges—such as in dealing with sponsors—ramped up as well. In one cringe-inducing moment, for example, he comes to learn that in the marketing world, it is accepted that “Black people like red drinks.”
Other questions are raised: How many Black members does a band need to have to perform at the Afropunk music festival and maintain its mission? What about hip-hop? As a specific example, what to make of a young Santigold? Early in her career, she is compared to a particular pop star, yet she is Black, has strong roots in the Philadelphia punk scene, and is backed by the great “straight punk” band Stiffed. Spooner sorts through it.
Spooner also discusses forming an Afropunk partnership with music manager Matthew Morgan. However, when the festival itself becomes, in Spooner’s eyes, too corporatized, he cuts his ties from it all.
Afropunk has become a worldwide phenomenon, with several million social media followers. It has also, however, faced complaints that it has diluted its original message by drawing too heavily on pop-oriented acts and has less focus on true activism. (Ellis, 2018)(Ibrahim, 2018) In discussing his Afropunk breakup, James Spooner comes across as fair and largely accountable for his own missteps, while he is also clear about the lines he believes that others have crossed. He is direct, but not malicious. The fact that he left Afropunk while the fest was still growing seems to only bolster his credibility on the matter.
In short, it is hard to imagine a world in which an entire swath of the population would be unable to fully embrace the punk attitude and aesthetic, and even reconfigure it. James Spooner and Afropunk, however, have helped do just that. Spooner’s story is one of simply trying to connect with others and remain as authentic, i.e., as punk, as possible.
Sometimes punk is in your face or even shocking, but it can also be a more organic and consistent effort, too. Here, Jaems Spooner reminds you that you can, in fact, grow a community and still be true to yourself. In doing so, the impact may last long after the hype fades.
Additional Works Cited
Ellis, S.-A. “Afropunk Festival Staff Reports Abuse from Company”. VIBE. 20 October 2018.
Ibrahim, S. (2018, September 4). “Couple thrown out of Afropunk for protest T-shirt questioning festival’s inclusivity, eroding punk nature [updated]”. The Root. 4 September 2018.
Yarm, M. Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge. Crown. 2011.