ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out an evaluative approach through which the relationships between anarchism and music, and culture more widely, can be explored. It asks: ‘What is anarchist music?’ Aesthetics and lyrics, while interesting as points of discussion, are too subjective to provide grounding for evaluation of ‘anarchist music’, and highly susceptible to co-optation by capital and the state. It is argued that production processes are a more fruitful avenue of evaluation. As a bulwark against co-optation and recuperation, an oppositional countercultural consciousness is necessary for any radical culture and it finds expression in the anarchist movement through ‘cultures of resistance’.
