Dirty Protest: Overcoming the Cultural Industries with Kunt and the Gang

When Theodor Adorno first coined the term 'cultural industries', he meant it as a pejorative for capitalist industries that he saw as stifling the creativity of artistic individuals (Adorno, 1941). Concerned both as a musician and as a Jewish man who had lived in the Nazi propaganda bubble, he claimed that popular music is standardised 'even when an attempt is made to circumvent standardization' and that, due to the stranglehold of the music industries, mainstream pop music has little to no value as an item of culture (Adorno, 1941).

A potential antidote to Adorno's problem has come in the form of Web 2.0. Websites such as Bandcamp have made it easier than ever for independent artists to gain fame and get their music out there and these sites act in tandem with free custom site builders like Wordpress. A good example of this in action is Kunt and the Gang, the persona of a singer from Basildon, Essex whose real name I have not been able to source. Before the rise of the internet, a stage name of such vulgarity- let alone song titles like "I'm Wanking Over a Pornographic Polaroid of an Ex-Girlfriend who Died"- wouldn't have even courted an independent record deal. But in the early 2000's Kunt opened his website (Kunt and the Gang, n.d. a) and began selling records, booking dates in pubs around the country and promoting music on his YouTube channel (Kunt and the Gang, 2017). His ethic of self-reliance, which he carried up until his retirement in 2016, makes it poignant that he opens his first album with "Use My Arsehole as a Cunt", about struggling to achieve a record deal and needing to make certain 'compromises' to get ahead in the music business.

Kunt's concept of rebelling against the music establishment can also be seen in the song "#dirtyprotest", in which he urges the listener to send Simon Cowell pictures of their feces on account of the supposed fakeness of the artists in his talent shows . In this respect, it could be argued that Kunt is a champion of Adorno's ideals, or at least a parody of those things Adorno would call false. This begs the question- would Kunt and the Gang be classed as a pop act by Adorno? We can of course never answer that, but his 4/4 time and catchy hooks might point to an affirmative answer. Therein perhaps lies the fault in Adorno's argument. If we treat pop as not simply a musical mode, but an aesthetic with semiotic codes beyond the way it sounds, then I do not believe Kunt to be your typical pop prince at all. After all, would Justin Timberlake have a great hit with "Jesus Died of a Stranglewank"?

SOURCES:

Adorno, Theodor W. "On Popular Music". Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9 (1941): 17-48. Print.

Kunt and the Gang, (n.d.). Home. [online] Kuntandthegang.co.uk. Available at: http://www.kuntandthegang.co.uk/ [Accessed 8 Feb. 2017].

Kunt and the Gang, (2017). clubtuppence. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/clubtuppence [Accessed 8 Feb. 2017].