Doubly Punk: Bad Brains & Black Liberation in Hardcore Punk

This was one essay as part of a series that I put together for one of my favourite undergrad courses, The Study of Heavy Music. We were tasked with constructing a response essay to an extreme music phenomenon, seeking out its social poetics and critically assessing its place in the world of music. As an appeal to my middle school self, I chose to write about Hardcore Punk - specifically, a band named Bad Brains - and how their existence came from an incredible niche of hypermarginalization. Their marginalized place in society came from a three-pronged feedback loop of communities - from the black community, in that they were punk; from the hardcore punk community, in that they were black; and from the punk community, in that they played hardcore punk.

This was a cool project that combined my love for music with my affinity for sociological models of learning. You can find the full writeup here -