I contend that Barthes' consideration of music as a simple category divided between active and passive types is both unnecessarily limiting and myopic. Music (especially practical music) must be understood as a complex activity around which a whole constellation of attendant cultural practices and ideologies (norms and forms) can cohere. Thus, a musica practica can be the nexus linking a myriad of cultural activities: the pressing of records, the publication of magazines, the booking of tours, the making and meeting of friends. The notion of doing which is so important in the practice of music then escapes the limitations of the sphere of music itself. Nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the underground culture(s) of punk and hardcore (HC); indeed, the guiding principle of punk/HC has been to "do-it-yourself- (DIY). .
Since its inception, punk/HC has always been something considered to be "more than music- (to use a popular slogan of the hardcore scene). Sociologist Dick Hebdige, for example, analyzed British punk fashion "popularized and commoditized by bands such as the Sex Pistols "as symbolically conveying politically and ideologically subversive meaning. Punk (for Hebdige) operated as a closed, subcultural entity within a specific national (British) configuration of class, race, and generation. Yet, punk/HC must be understood as something more than a mere "music and fashion- national youth subculture. It now operates at a level which transcends national, ethnic, and class boundaries. At the time of Hebdige's writing, punk was still in its nascent, formative period. In the past twenty-five years, however, punk has experienced a remarkable growth and development on an almost worldwide scale. The spread of punk to new locations around the globe perhaps parallels the phenomenon of globalization since the 1980s "in many ways, the spread of punk/HC is a direct result of globalization itself.
