Jejemon, jejcaps, jejebet

While browsing for something completely different this afternoon, I came across yet another awesome borderline permutation of the worldwide skinnyjeans style/social position matrix, which I inevitably spotted inevitably through an anti-video. The jejemons of the Phillipines are perhaps not as musically interesting as some of the other groups in the matrix, but their linguistic inventiveness (they've even got their own alphabet, sorry jejebet, and a weird mixed Tagalog-English sociolect) and their fun fashion totally makes up for it. Although the Indonesian Department of Education doesn't seem to think so.

And of course the name, involving a Spanish-Tagalog-English-Japanese linguistic clash, is pretty awesome in itself. These videos show some of the more mainstream, high-end jejemons, all wearing "jejecaps" and a variety of fun, colourful street clothing.





Note the distinct lack of actual Skinny Jeans in the second video. One web store defines jejemon wear as:

Jejecap - the jejecaps are rainbow colored caps. Bright/colorful t-shirt or tops (fit) Belt with much bigger buckle than the usual Metal chain, necklace and bracelet Colorful wristband Skinny Jeans (preferrably shiny/glossy and dark) Rubber shoes (at least 2-colored)

Which I guess is alright, but one fashion style I've really been much more intrigued by (which I can barely find any picture evidence of) is the kind worn by the boy second from the left in the bottom row of this picture:

And all of the guys in this picture, ignore the vile sentiment expressed in the caption:

It's Tupac-meets-football-socks, and the closest I've seen any skinny-jeansers come to actual leggings, which is surely the next step.

Now please bring on the "self-branding means they're all capitalist stooges" critiques.

The counterpublic and its parasitic counterculture

This may well be one of the best articles I've ever read on the internet.

Nearly two weeks ago Transpontine over at History is Made at Night (which is one of my favourite blogs) posted a response to my article about feminine men and their subcultures (a topic which, from another perspective entirely, has been getting a lot of interesting discussion over at Wayne & wax). In it, he pointed out an article on the blog Pop Feminist, entitled "Can Women Be Part of Counterculture?"

It's been spinning madly in my head ever since. It's a brilliant read and it's helped me get my mind straight on loads of issues I've posed questions over on this blog, issues of class, race and not least gender.


At heart, the article picks up a question which I've never given deeper thought before: why does the counterculture, or hipster culture, or alternative culture, consist almost entirely of kids from privileged groups? White, middle-class, heterosexual boys? If I'd offered up an explanation previously, it would have had to do with class almost exclusively – the counterculture is a middle-class culture and society excludes other ethnic groups and many women from economic gain.

Pop Feminist, on the other hand, offers a much more persuasive argument. Based in part on a critique of the "white negro" of Norman Mailer, she offers up a distinction of two types of marginal groups:

Let me suggest a basic foundation for counterculture:
Counterculture: Elective marginalization

Women and other disenfranchised groups, on the other hand, constitute a counterpublic:
Counterpublic: Forced marginalization

Whereas Mailer talks about the "psychopathology" of blacks, Pop Feminist puts in much more clear sociological terms. Counterculture, hipsterism, etc. is the concious approach towards a marginalised state from those who are privilidged enough not to have to be there. Those who are already marginalised have no place in it, and constitute a counterpublic. It really puts words on my distaste for a lot of the hipsteristic activities that I encounter, and it seems to me to be a very profound insight that I've still yet to fully digest. (As you can tell by this rather rambling post.)

It's frightening how many issues this cuts across that I've been dealing with in this blog and elsewhere. For instance, the whole discussion on slumming/trustafarianism/wiggerism that stirred so much controversy here suddenly appears to be of central importance after all. The attraction of hipsters to working-class and black culture that I've discussed here is given a good explanation, as is why the two nevertheless never meet.

And, of course, the issue Transpotine was responding to also makes much more sense. If the "feminine" men are thought of as "gender slummers", the exclusion of women that they participate in is a natural step – women can't be part of the counterculture since they're part of the counterpublic.

Täbb: What the internet age means for subculture

I love having a 15 year old nephew-in-law - he clues me in on all sorts of youth culture stuff I'm too old to catch spontaneously. (Oh, and Wayne, he claims that it is indeed Ludacris.) Last month I indirectly got the heads-up from him on a new subculture that's big around where he lives in an affluent suburb of Stockholm: the täbb.

Apparently coming to wide attention just a couple of months ago via a now deleted Facebook group, it's got a lot of the trappings of a traditional subculture. There's the group-identifying name (possibly derived from Täby, the suburb where they first appeared, and possibly derogatory). Obviously, there's the look (via):



Which is seemingly based on the style ideal of Swedish Idol 2006 contestant Danny Saucedo, and consists of, among other things, hair gel (not wax), 96 brand jeans from G-Star, visibly orange-looking fake tan and lip gloss, rubber bands around the ankles, Open shirts with folded-up collars and tacky souvenir necklaces. It it, as yet, exclusively male. Nor does it seem to have a musical style attached, beyond normal-ish post-electro house - but of course music is uaully no more than an accessory among others in these cases, so I'm sure a specific set of artists will soon develop.

Still, somehow, somewhere, it all feels slightly wrong. It's like it's almost a play at, or a superifical gesture towards a subculture rather than a real one. At the end of their lives, subcultures are reduced to clichés - people have "70's parties" over them. Here it's almost like all other stages are bypassed in the subcultural process, and people are dressing up as täbb instead of being täbb. Even the original practitioners.

A subculture rising meteorically in popularity is hardly a new phenomenon but here it's as if there's just the rise, nothing before. Again, it seems like a mere surface, an ironic joke of a subculture which no-one takes seriously. Does this kind of thing say something about the internet? There's been a lot of play towards cultural detachment on the internet in the past few years. Sites like Discobelle, that post a little of everything, are clearly not out to be subcultural at all. (Ironically leading to their output being labeled blog house, but that's another story.)

Maybe täbb is what happens when kids are totally uprooted - they believe the surface is the content. Much like, I think, Discobelle. Or the entire Global Ghettotech thing. It's subculture construed as a non-cultural phenomenon - a community without a community.

Which, I think, is bloody confusing.

Selling in: Musical Gentrification and Its Effects

A frequent concept in the lay history of popular music, as it exists, is the idea of going mainstream. A musical genre is dislodged from its original community (a subculture or a high-culture setting) and enters a broad, generally well-known and generally well-liked central stream in the world of information, being frequently featured in all media. It reaches the lower-middle class and probably the working class, and in the process gets looked down upon and becomes uninteresting for the participants in the original subculture.

This certainly happens, and happens reasonably frequently. But it's perfectly possible, though significantly rarer, for the opposite to happen - for a broadly working-class, declassé genre to become a hip cultural expression for the clever, upper-middle-class subculture, what Swedish magazine ODD at Large called the "sharp culture".



Think of it as a process of musical gentrification. Without passing through a middle-class, "mainstream" phase first (like happened with rock'n'roll), a contemporary working-class music becomes the musical expression of choice for a cultural elite. It is made possible entirely by separation - the lower middle-class shuns the musical products of the working class but the elite who never encounters them can well embrace it.

Nevertheless it is rare. Let's exclude "the tradition in Britain [...] of being interested in declining forms of Negro popular music" (Gillett) and other purist folkie roots-seeking, focussing only on contemporary moves. Let's also skip all the music stuck in the initial stages of (a) people being interested in the music and (b) people being the interpreters and distributors of the music and focus on the music that's actually become the music created by the sharp elite. Only a contemporary sublimation where the music goes from being created by the working class to being created by an elite.

I can only think of a small number of examples. Alt. country is a textbook one - a small, artistically inclined elite picks up totally contemporary working-class music and adapts its imagery, musical themes and methods of creation. Eurodisco, for a brief period before going completely mainstream, is a straightforward adaptation of contemporary African-American music by a european elite, admittedly via a New York one which, at the time, didn't create music itself. Currently, in Brazil, the highly elite "Não Funk" crowd with bands like Bonde Do Role and Edu K are busy taking the music of the favelas to the upper-middle-class suburbs.


And then there's the global ghettotech of Ghislain Poirier and MIA. I guess that's a fairly good example as well, despite (or perhaps because?) of the great distance between the artists who have inspired and the artists who have taken it up.

I really wish I had a good reason to dislike this kind of music, because I mostly prefer the original stuff that inspires it, but I struggle to think of one. Unlike the "adaptation of declining styles" it doesn't necessarily slow down progress; in fact it can be highly innovative. Nor does it, being so narrow and all, usually have a major impact on the original scene, thus not destroying anything and just adding new music to the spectrum. Being artists themselves, the musicians act considerably less like interpreters/potential warpers, and only stand for their own music.

Nevertheless, I can see two potential effects that can be seen as negative. Firstly, it is quite possible as the disco example illustrates that the musical gentrification is only a stage towards the genre going mainstream. I'm not sure this is always a bad thing, but still. Secondly, it's perfectly possible for the "new" genre to totally block out the original's resources and media space, the new artists having the verbal ability and the participatory voice necessary to reach out better.

What do you think? Is "gentrified music" a good thing or a bad thing, and why?