punk powered protest
With Chardine Taylor-Stone
Chardine's work spans from music and protest to writing all coming from a punk lens. In this interview, she touches on the many influences behind her style and voice that she acknowledges have shaped her and she now can see falling on future generations. Also touching on the fluidity of identity and youth and the many anxieties that haunt us in our formative years.
Chardine is one of our Outreach Champions and has previously collected stories on Alternative Subcultural Voices.
Interview by Esta Maffrett | 01.09.23
So first up, was how would you describe your practice?
I'd say I was a musician, cultural producer, and I guess I'm an activist, but I’ve sort of calmed down on that a bit now, because I've been too busy with other things. And a scholar. So you know, obviously, I play drums in Big Joanie, a black feminist punk band. And I write as well so I've written for various newspapers, publications. I've done lots of workshops, curation, consultancy, that sort of thing, usually on arts and culture, mainly around class and black women's experiences, subcultures. And that's about it really.
As one of our outreach champions you wrote, “fashion, music and subculture help people develop a sense of self in a world that tries to render them invisible”. I was wondering what subcultures you belong? Did you belong to or identify with any when you were growing up? And how has this had a lasting effect on your identity?
It's quite interesting to me, people's journeys through different subcultures. When I first got into alternative music, I was living in the Midlands, we used to call anybody that liked something that wasn't mainstream music or dance music ‘Grebs’, or ‘Queps’. That's what I wanted to be because those kids seemed cool. Just hanging out at the skatepark and taking in all that fashion, the baggy jeans or spiffy jeans, the tops with the sleeves underneath, the chokers. So that's kind of how I started off as a baby, I was about 13 which seems to be around the age when people start getting into things, interests. And then I got more into Indie, and a little brief kind of Mod moment, which I think everyone does, because it's like the most accessible one. It's the one that everyone knows about. I had a boyfriend at the time, he used to have a scooter, which was quite cute and then, I just got really into Punk and Hardcore. Really properly around like 17. So finding little spaces, dressing a bit Goth, dressing a bit Greb, dressing a bit Mod, I really settled into the Punk and Hardcore scene when I moved to London. In London I went to clubs like NASIN, which was short for ‘Not Another Shit Indie Night’. And so this is 2004, so you got to think this is like what now we're calling it Indie Sleaze, like deep Indie Sleaze period. I think it's quite funny now looking back on the whole Indie thing because I hated it at the time. I used to work in Camden Market and as a Punk saw the East London Hipsters stealing our stuff, we weren't into it. As I got older I got more into sort of Punkabilly… shit my subculture knowledge has gone, what did we call it? Psychobilly! Bands like Tiger Army, Meteors and The Gun Club who I still absolutely love.
So growing up I’d say the most significant scenes to me were the vintage music scene, Punk and Hardcore. I never went to uni at that age so those sounds expanded my interests into different arts and cultures.
That's interesting, because I definitely think with uni, obviously, you get the educational side of it, but so much of it is a cultural education through the people you meet. And the club nights, the shitty ones, the good ones that you go to, it's that kind of wild scoping experience.
I went back to uni when I was 25. I went to fashion college first and then did some other bits but a lot of the reading and stuff that I was introduced to, was much more a cultural theory side. The core books that everyone would read on the scene because it's very connected to music, reading Jack Kerouac because of its jazz connections more so than its literary history connections.
Coming from a Punk and Alternative scene as opposed to just purely academic roots that influences me. Some of my things like Black Girls Picnic and some of the Black Feminist conferences that I’ve organised, and also the politics that are in view at those events, yes, they're black feminists, but also they're punk as well.
I think so many people, their path is usually dictated by music. When we're young music is the thing that grips us, kind of shapes us and it definitely sounds like that for you, I guess it was the fashion and the music. But also coinciding with your identity and your interests took you into the academic route of reflection on it, but you make the music as well, so you're balancing both bits there. How do you feel your practices and inspirations crossover and intersect?
I think the intersection comes in my approach to things. Coming from a Punk and Alternative scene as opposed to just purely academic roots that influences me. Some of my things like Black Girls Picnic and some of the Black Feminist conferences that I’ve organised, and also the politics that are in view at those events, yes, they're black feminists, but also they're punk as well. The putting together of Black Girls Picnic was very much influenced by LadyFest, which was a DIY Feminist Punk thing with the idea ‘anyone can do it’, anyone can be an activist, anyone. It's like the whole thing of, you can play in a punk band if you just learn three chords, but then applying that to activism. This is how you do it now you can go off and do it too. And that's what happened. I just sent a brief manifesto and instructions for how people can do it as easily and cheaply as possible which is Punk. So that’s where the ideas intersect, the idea of questioning the society you're in, and why things are the way that they are, how they can be different, it comes from these scenes and cultures, definitely.
When you were young, or when you were growing up, do you remember a kind of first instance, or first understanding of activism, such as seeing someone and seeing activism and having an understanding of what it was? And did you find that it was something you saw out to do, or you just found yourself naturally doing it?
It’s interesting to me and I see it in my nephew, coming from a certain background such as black and working class, you become quite aware of the different positions of people around you. It’s quite sad to watch a young person, about eight years old, start to identify the differences in people's looks and houses particularly when children in school repeat the racism and prejudices of their parents. So I think from a young age I was aware but being conscious of it probably when I was about 12/13, when new Labour got in, who I hate but at the time I saw them as the people who are supposed to be good for us, good for people like me and my mum. In terms of being really involved or coming across activism the first time it was the Iraq War. I was 17 and got involved in my local town organising petitions and coaches down to the march. Those are my first experiences of activism but in general from growing up there was always a sense that something needed to be done, it’s not a new discover that things are a bit shit for some people because you’re growing up in a world where people were always struggling against systems. Even with the white working class side of my family people were having to deal with the dole office and all that kind of stuff. So you always have a sense that there are injustices around and how people dealt with them even in the smallest way.
I do wonder with my partner who’s middle class about the journey and the realisation that this stuff is happening because you’re often in your own little world where things are kind of okay, besides like sexism. But if you’re part of a class that’s not accepted by the system and you’re already questioning it from day, you don’t need to develop a very strong political viewpoint to know these people don’t care about us. I think for a lot of people it’s a shock to realise what’s going on.
My next question came from a quote you wrote, when you were doing the outreach campaign itself, and you wrote, “to self define, rather than to be defined”. So my question was what are the tools and opportunities we need to be giving people, maybe particularly young people, but people in general, to allow them to self-define?
Lots of young people are doing that already, serving their own needs. I think again we have to ask what is the society we want to create? What is the freedom to be oneself? And to question and to change as well I think is the most important. We’re often taught we need to decide what it is we want to be at like 15 years old when we choose our GCSEs and then here are your career paths. Instead we should be telling young people not to settle on only one thing, that they can identify as and be one thing at this stage and that might change later but that’s totally normal. I think, weirdly, adulthood when you’re growing up is such a mystery because you go by what you see on TV and that’s just clearly not it. I don’t think we talk to young people enough about the anxieties of adulthood, that we’re still working out what it is that we want to do, who we are is changing and so is how we define ourselves. It’s an ongoing process, there’s a lot of anxiety caused by ‘everything has to be decided now’ because older people must have their shit together, but actually, nobody does.
It's definitely true, how can we expect a young person to define themselves when societally the definition of a young person is also shifting so often? Whether that's by age parameters or just an increasingly working society. So yeah, maybe having a bit more of a frank conversation about how unrealistic it is to be able to ever really define yourself singularly. Yeah, refusing definition rather than seeking to define.
If you could put one object into the museum of youth culture what would it be and why?
Actually, what pops into my head was actually one of these tape recorders we used to record stuff off the radio. That's probably what I would put in there. I used to record stuff like John Peel. You'd work out the scheduling of the music. You'd have to just be listening all day and you'd be like, ‘okay, the song that I want is gonna come on next because they're playing that song’. And then press record when it comes on, so you can make your own little mixtapes without buying stuff. Or actually just stealing music from the library. You get the album recorded, they must have known because everyone did that shit. You get it from the library, and then you record it from the CD or the tape onto your own tape. Yeah. a blank, I'd pick a blank C90 tape.
You can find more from Chardine by following @chardinetaylorstone & @bigjoanieband
