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An Interview with Ramdasha Bikceem

& A Recap of Our Workshop with Black Zine Fair!




If you're reading this, it might actually be too late, but (in case it's not) we are officially slated to attend the Black Zine Fair this year on May 9 at Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn, NY! We have 6 different mini zines we'll be handing out for free all day, so feel free to stop by if you're in New York. We couldn't be more grateful to Black Zine Fair & Sojourners for Justice Press for the opportunity to share our zine with guests.


In the weeks leading up, I was also given the chance to facilitate an online workshop in collaboration with the fair, called How To Be Young, Hardcore, & Black in Suburban New Jersey, that was inspired by and examines the New Jersey-based 90s zine, GUNK, by a teenage Ramdasha Bikceem. In addition to being the name of Ramdasha's band at the time, GUNK was a zine centered on skateboarding, as well as the local punk and riot grrrl scenes. Issues of the zine, spanning roughly from 1991 to 1996, and other items from their collection were preserved at NYU's Fales Library and Special Collections by archivist (and active member of the riot grrrl movement through the 90s), Lisa Darms. Having been in the suburbs of Jersey myself during the later years of the 00s, as mainstream 00s indie, punk, and emo were coming to a commercial end, I was excited to have a dialogue amongst Black alternatives from the tristate area (and beyond), to reflect on the parallels between the work in Ramdasha's GUNK, and the impact these various 00s alternative cultures had on our lives.


Issues of GUNK were covering topics from insecurities harbored by women in professional skateboarding industries to the pressures of having to prove oneself within punk and DIY scenes, while simultaneously processing the frustrating lack of diversity. By the time I was an alternative kid in the suburbs, scenes had shifted from communicating through zines, meetings, and activism to navigating skinny jeans and social media as a means of gaining popularity and signaling aesthetics. During the workshop, we processed topics branching from fast fashion versus slow consumption, to the intersection of punk and rap music, and how adopting alternative aesthetics and communities were often a gateway to self-accepting queer identities. The discussion ended in a circle of thoughts on how to validate these intersecting identities within our own communities, or how we move past the need for validation from anyone at all. After surfing the Internet for interviews featuring Ramdasha, as well as scrolling through the editorial work showcased on their Instagram, I decided to reach out. They were kind enough to send me audio clips with answers to my questions on GUNK's legacy, leaving New Jersey, as well as their views on the Black alternative identity spectrum.



How does it feel to see your work being archived, and what is your perspective on your own legacy? Is legacy something that was ever important to you, or is it a concept that you are still processing?

I guess when I was making the zine when I was—I started my zine when I was 14 or 15, and I wasn’t really thinking about that at all, actually. I mean, I was a teenager, so now I'm almost 50 years old. No wait—I'm 50 years old [laughs], and I think it’s really important for work like mine and others to be documented. Particularly at a time when people are relying on social media, and there’s so much censorship, and so much monetization of people's identity and anything they post on the internet, so I think it’s really important to keep the work alive of zines that were more underground, more subversive. At this point, I would say it’s important to keep this type of work in the consciousness, and for me, particularly as a Black queer, and that—people like me are often erased out of history books and especially out of punk. You know, there’s not much mention of the contribution of Black queers and, yeah, so even though it is a little cringe at times to see work of mine that’s archived and I made as a teenager, I do recognize the importance of it and how it can be inspirational to younger people and anyone who comes across it.


Moving from the suburbs to different cities, did you notice changes or have surprises in how people responded to you as an alternative Black person? Did you feel the need to prove yourself more or less, and did that vary by city or simply progress with societal evolution?

Yes, I did notice some differences when I moved to bigger cities. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey—mostly white. And me and my friends that weren't all white got treated pretty differently, like bullied for being punk. There wasn’t as much of like a trend of that back then, so we were definitely outsiders. And as far as being Black goes, definitely felt it in the punk scene in New Jersey, which didn’t have a ton of representation of Black people, or queer people weren’t really out at all. When I moved to New York, definitely like… felt more at home. I never really identified as an alternative Black person, because I always thought that Black people naturally have always been pushing boundaries with music, with style, with everything, and being, you know, counterculture in a lot of ways, even though we are the—kind of the epicenter of culture. I definitely felt a sense of being more at home when I moved to New York, and finding more community, and finding more like-minded people, and finding people that look like me, too. And I spent some time in Oakland, as well. And the scene in Oakland at the time, in the early 2000s/late 90s, was definitely more mixed with all types of ethnicities and races in the punk scene. A lot more Black and Brown people I experienced there—and more queer, and I loved it. Even when I lived in New Jersey as a teenager, I was always interested in the East Bay/Northern California punk scene, and always was like, “I can't wait when I'm old enough to be out there and participate!”


There’s been a lot of conversation on social media (specifically Black Twitter) about this topic lately. In your opinion, should Black American aesthetics be categorized as "Alternative," or is that a watering down of Black culture for the sake of legibility?

I don't really think there’s a need for there to be a specific alternative Black, like, genre because by nature of our existence, we are always having to, you know... reinvent ourselves. And I don’t, like—I feel like since the beginning of music, I feel like there’s been so much innovation from Black people. I mean, I feel like some of the punkest people you know, like Screamin' Jay Hawkins in the 50s/40s... Those were all people that I feel like were definitely kind of like early punk and avant-garde, so I don’t really feel like there’s a need to make that a category. I definitely think things like Afropunk definitely got watered down and commercialized when they started, you know, really taking off, and some of the people, you know... The people that were performing—it’s not that I'm against it—but it’s like those people were not like [laughs]... anything to do with punk. I mean, it’s great music, but not anything to do with punk, and that was kind of a bummer, because in that way, I did feel like things got watered down, but I don't feel like there’s a need to separate a category for like alternative Black because it just doesn’t really mean anything to me, you know?



What I had always found myself fascinated by growing up, as seen in trends like the "Hallmark town" on TikTok, was the mundanity and stillness of suburban life. However, as the culture is designed to do, I had no network. It was difficult to always have friends to talk about my niche interests with, so I relied on forums and websites like Tumblr. The issue with this, as we talked through in our workshop, is that counterculture movements often become stripped from their historic context, so a wider audience can participate in the aesthetic consumption, without engaging in its politics. Finding myself overly concerned with crafting and curating, GUNK was the antithesis of that. From handwritten essays, a lack of formatting, and cut-and-pasted imagery, the sense of urgency and vulnerability are clear through the zine's visual and recorded messages.


Not that I think anyone introduced to alternative culture through the glitz of the 00s emo-scene phenomenon should feel guilty, but rather conscious of it. It's no surprise that as a scene kid, my self-esteem was mostly dictated by my placement on my friends' Top 10 on MySpace on any given day. Granted, I was 12 going on 13, so that was bound to happen anyway, but GUNK amazes me because young Ramdasha was able to articulate in their zines what I was still struggling to notice around the same age. I thought myself so lucky, in college, when I sat down to watch The Punk Singer on Netflix and finally became privy to the riot grrrl movement. Mistakenly thinking I had gotten a head start, it would be years before I reflected on the alternative scene, which I came up in, and how it informed my lack of political interest, until I went to college. While the right to personal expression without excessive questioning was (and perhaps always will be) somewhat of a fantasy, being a tween and admitting to yourself that you don't quite fit in with the others in your group (and perhaps never will) isn't easy to process. No matter what environment you grew up in, the hypervisibility that comes with being a Black alternative is, for now, a given. However, those differences that are initially isolating can also craft a more mature and evolved identity when they're empowered by strong values, community, and a well-documented cultural legacy.



If you'd like, you can watch the recording of the workshop we did with Black Zine Fair, and catch up on more resources we gathered below in the Study Guide. If you're interested in how you can participate in New Jersey’s hardcore scene today, you can hit up the Mosh for Charity event on May 9 at coLAB Arts in New Brunswick, in support on Men's Interfaith Rotating Shelter (and grab frybread from my friend Chahar, while you're there)!


I'm returning to this post to add the recorded workshop session, as soon as it's finished exporting. I've also shortened the video to remove anyone's personal information, and cropped out anyone on-camera, to maintain the group's privacy.



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