Oi! is a subgenre of
punk rock that originated in the
United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The
music and its associated subculture had the goal of bringing together punks,
skinheads, and other disaffected working-class youth. Oi! became a recognized genre in the latter part of the 1970s, emerging after the perceived commercialization of
punk rock. It fused the sounds of early
punk bands such as the Sex Pistols,
the Ramones,
the Clash, and the Jam with influences from 1960s British rock
bands. Oi! has come to be considered mainly a skinhead-oriented genre and played an important symbolic role in the politicization of the skinhead subculture.
First-generation Oi!
bands such as Sham
… Read more 69 and Cock Sparrer were around for years before the word Oi! was used retroactively to describe their style of
music. The word "Oi!" is a British expression meaning hey or hey there! In addition to
Cockney Rejects, other
bands to be explicitly labeled Oi! in the early days of the genre included
Angelic Upstarts, the 4-Skins, the
Business, Anti-Establishment,
Blitz, the Blood, and Cock Sparrers. The prevalent
ideology of the original Oi! movement was a rough brand of working-class rebellion. Lyrical topics included unemployment, workers' rights, harassment by police and other authorities, and
oppression by the
government. Oi! songs also covered less-political topics such as street violence, soccer, sex, and
alcohol. Some Oi!
bands, such as
Angelic Upstarts, The
Business, the Burial, and
the Oppressed were associated with left-wing politics and
anti-racism, and others were non-political.
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