Emo Culture

Emo Origins

Emo emerged from the hardcore punk scene of early-1980s Washington, D.C. Both as a reaction to the increased violence within the scene and carrying on the personal ideas made by Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat , who had changed the focus of the music from the community back towards the individual. Minor Threat fan Guy Picciotto formed Rites of Spring in 1984, breaking free of hardcore music's boundaries for melodic guitars, varied rhythms, and deeply personal, impassioned lyrics. Many of the band's ideas would become familiar sights in later generations of emo music, including nostalgia, romantic bitterness, and poetic desperation. Their performances became public emotional purges where audience members would sometimes cry with emotion.

'Emo' becomes Mainstream:

Emo broke into the mainstream media in the summer of 2002 with a number of big events: Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American album went platinum on the strength of "The Middle", which reached No. 1 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart. Dashboard Confessional reached No. 22 on the same chart with "Screaming Infidelities" from their Vagrant Records debut The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most, which was No. 5 on Independent Albums, and became the first non-platinum-selling artist to record an episode of MTV Unplugged (the live album itself was a No. 1 Album in 2003 and went platinum).  New Found Glory's album Sticks and Stones debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. 

Locations:

Emo started off in Washington D.C. but quickly moved throughut the states to Midwestern and Central United States · New Jersey and Long Island. So Emo's mainly exist in the U.S. but of course it's not a requirement to live in a certain part of the world so they exist throughout other countries such as the U.K.

 

Fashion:

Today emo is tied to fashion as well as the emo subculture. Usually among teens, the term "emo" is stereotyped with wearing skinny jeans, sometimes in different colors, and tight t-shirts which often bear the names of emo bands. Studded belts and black wristbands are common accessories in emo fashion. The emo fashion is also recognized for its hairstyles. Popular looks like long side-swept bangs, sometimes covering one or both eyes. It's popular that is straightened and dyed black. Short, choppy layers of hair are also common.

Related Media:

Emo culture has ofter been blamed for it's possible connections to suicide and has been blamed for occurences of it in young children claiming that it is poisoning their minds with these ideas. Case in point, Hannah Bond a 13 year-old girl from Kent hung herself and EMo music was blamed. Roger Sykes, the coroner who gave the verdict of suicide on May 7, suggested that the fact that she was an obsessive fan of such music was linked to her death.

What might it be a reaction to:
It could have been a reaction a new wave of music which came out at the time such as artists 'Jimmy Eat World' and 'Dashboard Confessional' to which people who loved the music so much dedicated the way they dressed and acted  and lived thier lives to it.