Manifestos of Rupture and Reconciliation: Do-it-Yourself (DiY) Music Practices, Ethics and the Quest for Authenticity in the Cultural Industries

Abstract

This chapter considers three manifestos by UK-based music promoters and record labels that had influenced the ideas and practices of my interlocutors in Glasgow at the time of my ethnographic fieldwork on Do-it-Yourself (DiY) music practices (2010–2011). In exploring these statements, I highlight their function: what do these manifestos do, and how? I focus on the content of the statements, their formal qualities and the rhetorical techniques used by the authors. In doing so, I underscore the ways in which these texts project a matrix of ethical values pertinent to work in creative economies and convey an underlying quest for authentic conduct in the cultural industries. In an era when creativity has come to signify an economic asset framing market-oriented discourses, the three statements demonstrate that DiY stands as a useful example of an ethical and authentic mode of self-expression. They further show that contemporary manifestos may still retain the passionate rhetoric and revolutionary sensibilities of avant-garde manifestos, but in many instances they seek to reconcile the tension between creativity and commerce in the cultural industries.