Punk musicians from Soweto to Ukraine describe a scene shaped by identity and community

Punk musicians from Soweto to Ukraine described how the music shapes their lives in interviews published by the Guardian on 9 October 2026. Their accounts range from playing guitars during military service to building a skate scene and raising money through shows. They offer readers a view of particular musicians and communities, rather than a measure of punk’s reach worldwide.

The Guardian presented first-person accounts from musicians in Ukraine, Morocco and Spain, South Africa, India, Brazil, Latvia, China and Greenland as punk reaches its 50th-anniversary milestone. The musicians describe different pressures and uses for the music: personal expression, a sense of belonging, political songs and practical work in their communities. Their circumstances differ substantially, and each account is the speaker’s own.

Twenty One Children and Soweto’s skate scene

Abdula Skink, vocalist of Soweto band Twenty One Children, told the Guardian he found punk through skateboarding, video games and older friends who skated. He said the band began in 2023. Its name, he explained, came from his work teaching 21 autistic pupils and from his age at the time. In his account, music and skating grew together rather than arriving as separate interests.

Skink also described activity beyond performances. He said guitarist Thula Nkosi built Soweto’s first do-it-yourself skate park and that the band had played charity shows for orphanages. A separate February interview with Raw Critters records the band discussing its work to help make skate parks and put on benefit shows. That earlier conversation places the activity within a small local punk scene, as the musicians themselves described it.

Skink told the Guardian that the band’s song ‘Scab’ drew on an incident in which, he said, police stopped him while he was skating, accused him of drug use, damaged his T-shirt and dropped his laptop. Those details are his account of the encounter; the available interviews do not independently establish the officers’ conduct. The song is one example of how he says the band turns lived experience into music.

What musicians in Ukraine and Morocco described

Andriy Zholob, vocalist and guitarist of Ukrainian band Beton, told the Guardian he began service as a frontline surgeon in 2022. He said he kept guitars with him and played in the evenings to relax. According to Zholob, Beton recorded ‘Kyiv Calling’, a cover of the Clash’s ‘London Calling’, to raise money for the Ukrainian resistance. He said he later left military service and now works with veterans, some of whom attend the band’s shows.

Nao, vocalist of Taqbir, described a different constraint. She told the Guardian she had performed anonymously in Morocco because she feared being recognised and harmed. Now living in Spain, she said the band helped her express anger and find room to be herself. She said she hopes to perform in Morocco one day. That hope is a stated ambition, not an announced concert.

Political expression in other punk scenes

Other musicians in the Guardian’s collection likewise connected songs to their surroundings. Aditya Naik of India’s Punk on Toast said the band received threatening online messages after releasing ‘Modified’, a song he described as addressing right-wing efforts. He also described people searching online for members’ personal details. These are Naik’s reported experiences; the interviews provide no separate verification of who sent messages or searched for information.

Latvian vocalist Evisa Petrovka said she writes about local politics, gender expectations and social norms, and described performing as an outlet for anger. Henrike Baliu, of Brazilian bands Blind Pigs and Armada, recalled punk bands playing under Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1980s and said they opened a path for later musicians. Both accounts describe how the artists understand their own scenes and influences.

SMZB vocalist Wu Wei told the Guardian that authorities had prohibited his band from performing a few years earlier, confiscated some albums and taken its work offline. He said the band released a bilingual album for its 30th anniversary. Those claims about official action are attributed to Wu Wei and are not independently verified by the cited interviews.

Together, the interviews show musicians using punk for expression, mutual support and local projects under markedly different conditions. The Guardian’s selection is testimony from individual artists, while Raw Critters offers an earlier, independent account from Twenty One Children. Neither publication supplies a survey or comparative figures that would show how common these experiences are across punk scenes. What the accounts establish is narrower and concrete: what these musicians say they have made, faced and done.