Skinhead Movement Outline

1. Music & Society
Skinhead
Chris Baker
www.musicstudentinfo.com

2. Skinheads
• Named for their close cropped or shaven heads
• Working class subculture
• Originated - united kingdom - 1960s
• Spread to other parts of the world
• Influenced by West-Indian (specifically Jamaican) rude boys
and British mod
•Not originally about politics or race
•Since then attitudes toward race and politics have become
factors

3. Skinhead Haircut

4. Skinhead Background
•Britain's post-war economic boom 1950s
•Increase disposable income among young people
•Youths spent income on new fashions popularized by american
soul groups, movie actors and british r&b bands.
•1965 - schism between two skinhead groups :peacock mods
(less violent and & wore the latest expensive clothes) hard mods
(shorter hair and more working-class image)
•Hard mods became known as skinheads by about 1968
•Shorter hair may have come about for practical reasons, since
long hair can be a liability in industrial jobs and a disadvantage in
streetlights.
•Skinheads may cut hair short in defiance of hippie culture
popular at the time

5. Mod Modernists

6. Skinhead Music
• Soul, ska, rocksteady and reggae
• Artists - desmond dekker, derrick morgan, laurel aitken
• 1970s, some suedeheads also listened to british glam roc
bands such as the sweet, slade and mott the hoople
• Popular music style for late -1970s skinheads was 2 tone -
fusion of ska, rocksteady, reggae, pop and punk rock.
• 2 tone genre was named after a Coventry, record label
• featured the specials, madness and the selecter
• Late 1970s skinheads also liked certain punk rock bands, such
as the clash, sham 69

7. 2 Tone Records Coventry

8. Music cont. Oi!
Musical Sub-genre
•Oi! Subgenre was embraced by many skinheads and punks
•Oi! Combines elements of punk, football chants, pub rock and
british glam rock
•Journalist garry bushell,championed the genre in sounds
magazine
•Many bands 1980s such as the cockney rejects and the 4 skins
have reformed and are playing concerts and festivals all over the
world
•Europe - most cities sizable skinhead music scene - berlin,
bruges, madrid, valencia, milan, rome, belgrade, oslo, stockholm
and helsinki

9. Skinhead History
• 1977 skinhead subculture revived (second wave)
• Revival skinheads - reaction to the commercialism of punk
• 1979 onwards, skinheads - grabbed media attention - football
hooliganism
• These skinheads wore punk styles - higher boots than before
(14-20 eyelets) and jeans (sometimes splattered with bleach)
• in the united states, hardcore punk scene embraced skinhead
style and developed its own version of the subculture

10. Skinhead Boots Dr.Martens aka DM’s

11. Skinhead Clothing
• Hair men : shaved
• Hair women : mod style haircuts or punk - style hairstyle
• Men : boots, dr. Martens - steel-toe boots were called ‘bovver
boots’
• Women : boots or shoes, monkey boots, loafers, or brogues
• Hats : trilby hats, pork pie hats, flat caps
• Laces and braces - some skinheads, particularly highly
political ones, attach significance to the colour of boot laces,
braces - use them to indicate beliefs or affiliations

12. Racism Anti-Racism & Politics
• 1960s, some skinheads (& black skinheads) engaged in
violence against pakistanis and other asian immigrants -
‘paki bashing’
• Not an organized racist movement
• Early 1970s there were skinhead - aligned-white nationalist
national front
• Also anti-racist and leftist skinheads
• Many skinheads rejected political labels
• Some blamed non - white immigrants for economic and social
problems, and agreed with far right organizations' positions
against blacks and asians

13. The End