The English underground is a branch in England's history of art, especially the

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

al traditions. It usually refers to popular musicians who have benefited from acquiring the sensibility of native English folk song, as that tradition has been passed down through the generations, often without any formal conveyance. It was first identified by the neo-romantic historian E. P. Thompson in 1963, in his ''

The Making of the English Working Class ''The Making of the English Working Class'' is a work of English social history written by E. P. Thompson, a New Left historian. It was first published in 1963 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and republished in revised form in 1968 by Pelican, after ...

'':

We must remember the 'underground' of the
ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
singer and the fairground which handed on traditions to the nineteenth century (to the music hall, or
Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...
' circus folk or Hardy's pedlars and showmen); for in these ways the 'inarticulate asses of people''conserve certain values - a spontaneity and capacity for enjoyment and mutual loyalties - despite the inhibiting pressures of magistrates, mill-owners, and Methodists.

The phrase was used, in a wider cultural sense, in

Jonathon Green Jonathon Green (born 20 April 1948 in Kidderminster, Worcestershire) is an English lexicographer of slang and writer on the history of alternative cultures. Jonathon Green is often referred to as the English-speaking world's leading lexicographer ...

's book ''Days In The Life: Voices from the English Underground, 1961–1971'', a collection of first-hand accounts of the 1960s

counter-culture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...

that often drew on carnivalesque and music hall traditions and styles. The term is now often used among educated music fans, to identify a songwriting tradition which is usually taken to have arisen in the past fifty years, via the work of Syd Barrett, Robert Wyatt and Nick Drake. ''

The Wire ''The Wire'' is an American crime drama television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The Wire'' premiered on June 2 ...

'' magazine also regularly applies the term to the gothic-tinged, neo-romantic

post-industrial music Industrial music is a form of experimental music which emerged in the 1970s. In the 1980s, industrial splintered into a range of offshoots, sometimes collectively named post-industrial music. This list details some of these offshoots, including f ...

of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Coil,

Current 93 Current 93 are an English experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1982 by David Tibet, who has been Current 93's only constant member. Background Tibet has been the only const ...

and others, calling it "a shadowy scene whose work accents peculiarities of Englishness through the links and affinities they've forged with earlier generations of the island's marginals and outsiders".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:English Underground English music Underground culture UK underground