History of modern Western subcultures  

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History of subcultures and underground cultures in the 20th century

Contents

1900-World War I

In the early part of the 20th century, subcultures were mostly informal groupings of like-minded individuals. The Bloomsbury group in London was one example, providing a place where the diverse talents of people like Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and E.M. Forster could interact. [1] [Apr 2007]

Other pre-World War I subcultures were smaller, social groupings of hobbyists or a matter of style and philosophy amongst artists and bohemian poets.

In Germany, from 1896 onward there developed a movement of young men (and later young women) which focused on freedom and natural environments. Called Wandervogel (translated as "hikers", "ramblers" or, more precisely, "migratory birds"), they wanted to throw off the strict rules of society and be more open and natural.

The first known organised club for nudists, Freilichtpark (Free-Light Park), was opened near Hamburg, Germany in 1903.

In Italy, a popular art movement and philosophy called Futurism championed change, speed, violence and machines.

World War I

1920s and 1930s

In the 1920s, American Jazz music and motor cars were at the centre of a European subculture which began to break the rules of social etiquette and the class system (See also Swing Kids). In America, the same flaming youth subculture was "running wild" but with the added complication of alcohol prohibition. Canada had prohibition in some areas, but for the most part, thirsty Americans coming over the border found an oasis. As a result, smuggling escalated as crime gangs became organised. In the southern United States, Mexico and Cuba were popular with drinkers. Thus, a drinking subculture grew in size and a crime subculture grew along with it. Other drugs were used as alternatives to alcohol. When prohibition ended, the subculture of drink, drugs and jazz did not disappear, and neither did the gangsters.

The German nudist movement gained prominence in the 1920s, but was suppressed during the Nazi Gleichschaltung after Adolf Hitler came to power. Social nudism in the form of private clubs and campgrounds first appeared in the United States in the 1930s. In Canada, it first appeared in British Columbia about 1939 and in Ontario nine years later.

In the art world, the spiritual home of most subcultures, the surrealist movement was attempting to shock the world with their games and bizarre behaviour. The surrealists were at one and the same time a serious art movement and a parody of other artforms and political movements. Surrealism had been developed by Andre Breton and others from the Dada movement. Based in several European countries, surrealism was destined for trouble when the Nazis came to power. Subcultures and "degenerate art" were almost completely stamped out and replaced by the Hitler Youth.

In North America, the depression caused widespread unemployment and poverty, and a consequent malaise among adolescents that found its expression in urban youth gangs --the so-called dead end kids . The dead end kid phenomenon was fictionalized on the stage and screen where it became a popular image with which people could identify. Films featuring The Dead End Kids, The East Side Kids, Little Tough Guys etc. were popular from the 1930s to the 1950s (see also: The (Unofficial) Bowery Boys' Page). The genre also found its expression in the kid gang comic book stories of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, including The Boy Commandos and Newsboy Legion features.

The Dust bowl disaster forced large numbers of rural Americans from Oklahoma and elsewhere to move their entire families to survive. They were labeled as "Okies" and treated poorly by the authorities in other states. Their refugee status was recorded in folk songs (many of them by Woody Guthrie); John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, and a film adaptation starring Henry Fonda also reflected upon this theme.

1940s

Avant-garde artists like Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall fled Europe following the outbreak of World War II. These artists arrived in the United States, where a subculture of surrealism and avant-garde experimentation developed in New York City, becoming the new centre of the art world.

American fashion remained gangster orientated, with gangs gravitating around immigrant and racial cultures. In California, hispanic youth developed the distinctive zoot suit fashion, such as the black widows, women who dressed in black. The zoot suiters use of language involved rhyming and pig latin (also known as backslang). This style, collectively known as Swing or Jive talk (see: Dictionary of Swing), included Afro-American, Cuban, Mexican and South American elements, as well as bits introduced by Slim Gaillard (see 'McVouty oreeney).

The entry of the United States into World War II was heralded by new legislation making zoot suits illegal due to the extra cloth required, resulting in the Zoot Suit Riots.

In Europe, black-marketeers prospered under rationing. Clothing styles depended on what could be begged or acquired by some means, not necessarily legal; There were restrictions everywhere. When the Americans arrived in Britain, black-marketeers, (called Wide boys or Spivs) made deals with GIs for stockings, chocolate, etc. Inevitably, subculture continued to have an image of criminality and the brave, the daring, the milieu, the resistance, etc. The black market in drugs thrived just about anywhere.

After the second war, the zoot suit craze spread to France in the form of the Zazou youths. Meanwhile, the intellectuals in France were forming an existentialist subculture around Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus in Paris cafe culture.

In post-war America, folk songs and cowboy songs (also known, in those days, as hillbilly music) were beginning to be more popular with a wider audience. A subculture of rural jazz and blues fans had mixed elements of jazz and blues into traditional cowboy and folk song styles to produce a crossover called western swing. Thanks to the prevalence of radio, this music spread across the United States in the 1940s. Radio was the first almost instantaneous mass media with the power to create large subcultures by spreading the ideas of small subcultures across a wide area.

Bebop, a new jazz subculture, formed from the rebellion against the melodic stylings of swing; Notable players included Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. In turn, bebop spawned the hipster and beat generation subculture.

In 1947, Jack Kerouac made an epic journey across America, which he would later describe in his novel, On the Road. In the same year, there was an incident involving a motorcycle gang at Hollister, California, and Harper's Magazine, published a story about it. In 1948, the Hells Angels formed in Fontana, California. The Hells Angels began as a motorcycle club looking for excitement in the dull times after the end of the war and became notorious as time passed. Motorcycle gangs in general began to hit the headlines. In 1953), the film, The Wild One, was released starring Marlon Brando.

1950s

See 1950s

1960s

In the 1960s, the beats (AKA beatniks) grew to be an even larger subculture, spreading around the world. Other 1960s subcultures included radicals, peaceniks, mods, rockers, bikers, hippies and the freak scene. One of the main transitional features between the beat scene and the hippies was the Merry Pranksters' journey across the United States with Neal Cassady, in a yellow school bus named Furthur. In the USA, the hippies' big year was 1967, the so-called summer of love.

The rude boy culture originated in the ghettos of Jamaica, coinciding with the popular rise of rocksteady music, dancehall celebrations and sound system dances. Rude boys dressed in the latest fashions, and many were involved with gangs and violence. This subculture then spread to the United Kingdom and other countries.

The mod subculture began with a few cliques of trendy teenage boys in London, England in the late 1950s, but was at its most popular during the early 1960s. Mods were were obsessed with new fashions such as slim-cut suits; and music styles such as modern jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, ska, and some beat music. Many of them rode scooters.

The mod and rude boy cultures both influenced the skinhead subculture of the late 1960s. The skinheads were a harder, more working class version of mods who wore basic clean-cut clothing styles and favoured ska, rocksteady, soul and early reggae music.

The disco scene originated in the 1960s, with discothèques such as the Whiskey A Go Go and Studio 54.

Subcultures were often based on socializing and wild behaviour, but some of them were centred around politics. In the United States, these included the Black Panthers and the Yippies. Allen Ginsberg took part in several protest movements, including those for gay rights and those against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons. In Paris, France in May 1968, there was a university student uprising, supported by Jean Paul Sartre and 121 other intellectuals who signed a statement asserting "the right to disobedience." The uprising brought the country to a standstill, and caused the government to call a general election rather than run the risk of being toppled from power.

The Hacker culture was beginning to form in the 1960s, due to the increased usage of computers at colleges and universities. Students who were fascinated by the possible uses of computers and other technologies began figuring out ways to make technology more freely accessible. The international anti-art movement Fluxus also had its beginnings in the 1960s, evolving out of the Beat subculture.

1970s

See: The Seventies

In the 1970s, the hippie, mod and rocker cultures were in a process of transformation which temporarily took on the name of freaks (openly embracing the image of strangeness and otherliness). A growing awareness of identity politics combined with the legalisation of homosexuality and a huge amount of interest in science fiction and fantasy forms of speculative writing produced the autre with an attitude freak scene.

At some stage, though it's unclear when, some of the hacker/computer nerd subculture took on the derogatory word geek with pride, in the same way the freaks had done. Computer usage was still a very inaccessible secret world to most people in those days but lots of people were interested in computers because of their appearance in science fiction. The dream of one day owning a computer was a popular fantasy amongst science fiction fandom which had grown from a minor subculture in the first half of the 20th century to a quite large contingent by the 1970s, along with horror fandom, comics fandom and fantasy freaks.

Since the freak scene was connected to the revolutionary political ideas of the alternative society, the bands on the freak circuit cultivated an anti-capitalist, communal lifestyle. Freak bands like The Edgar Broughton Band or The Pink Fairies would play at free festivals, spurning more commercial venues. The music/fashion/subculture which the pop industry created as a commercial alternative to the freaks was glam rock. Glam was a continuation of the trendies of the mod culture in the 1960s, appealing to the androgynous trend of the 1970s.

Skinhead culture from the late 1960s continued into the 1970s, and some skinheads became influenced by the punk subculture. These skinheads became associated with the Oi! subculture, and some skinheads became involved with far right politics, creating the Nazi-Skinheads (despite the fact that the original 1960s skinheads were very influenced by black culture).

Disco, which had begun in gay dance clubs, became a really significant centre of subculture from about 1975 onward. However, in some sectors, particularly in the NYC area, where disco had seemingly "taken over" all aspects of youth life from fashion, to behavior, to music, to dance, an aggressive "counter disco" movement was born. In fact, NYC area rock radio stations as WPLJ and WPIX encouraged their listeners to destroy their disco records and embrace rock and roll. The artistic response to this anti-disco sentiment, in conjunction with an anti-hippy dippy movement, was the Punk Rock movement.

Musically and lyrically, punk rock was the intentional antithesis of the repetitive electronic disco music and the dated flower child wails of 1960s and 1970s. NYC Punk rock, as characterized early on by the Ramones or by more obscure bands such as the Day Glo Abortions, rejected both the continuation of the hippy peace-n-free love subculture and the notion of disco's polyester generation. Instead, early punks played aggressive, quick paced three chord riff rock-n-roll songs, singing of happy insanity, nihilism, and violence to small crowds.

Many of the early punks and early punk bands were considered actual lunatics, and incidents of extreme violence against band members and their following occurred, even in the clubs where they had created a community.

When punk was happening, some of the progressive rock elements took it as a challenge to live faster, harder and tougher than punk. They kept the long hair of the freak scene, adopted the black leather jacket as virtually a uniform and took on the name heavy metal (which is a phrase from the writings of William S. Burroughs).

The continuance of hippie ideas of spirituality and mysticism was in the New Age movement, which increased in size and influence.

Mods made a comeback in the 1970s as a post-punk mod revival phenomenon, inspired by rock band The Jam and the British film Quadrophenia.

In 1976, a hit song "Convoy" by C.W. McCall arrived in the pop charts and romanticised the Trucker and CB radio subculture. In 1978, the song inspired a film "Convoy" directed by Sam Peckinpah, and starring Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Ernest Borgnine, and Burt Young. The word "convoy" and quotes from the song lyrics became part of a popular cultural image of people standing up for their freedom.

Gradually, from the 1960s, 1970s and through into the 1980s, the cultural influences of the Merry Pranksters, the Freak Scene, the New Age Movement and the Convoy idea seem to have coalesced into what became New age travellers.

In 1979, the Usenet was created as a medium of communication over the, still very primitive, internet of the time. The Usenet and the BBS subculture would become increasingly significant over the next few decades.

Also in 1979, Papa Wemba, a Rumba star in Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa began to be the leader of the Sapeur ('Société Ambianceurs et Persons Élégants' thus 'SAPE' for short), which he promoted as a youth cult. Papa Wemba's music has been influenced by previous stars of Rumba music in Zaire (such as Papa Wendo) and also by his visits to Europe and by the appearance, in 1974, of James Brown at the Rumble in the Jungle.

Wemba said: "The Sapeur cult promoted high standards of personal cleanliness, hygiene and smart dress, to a whole generation of youth across Zaire. When I say well groomed, well shaven, well perfumed, it's a propriety that I am insisting on among the young. I don't care about their education, since education always comes first of all from the family." The Sape was centred around Papa Wemba and Viva La Musica and continued to be a controversial movement in Congolese society for years to come, making a virtual religion of clothes.

1980s

At the beginning of the 1980s some of the followers of punk rock began to be bored with it and wanted to make it more stylish and introduce elements of glam. By 1981 this trend had become New Romantics and the music was synthesiser electro-pop.

New Romantics tended to be slightly camp and fay of behaviour regardless of whether they were gay or not. There was a bisexual vibe generally, regardless of the individual's actual sexual orientation. The clothes style was a return to the freak scene's roleplay of fashions from previous eras or imagined future ones. It was like using fashion to create a time warp. According to the music press at the time, there were some alternative names New Romantics wanted to call themselves. One was Futurists and another was the cult with no name.

Other punk rock followers took the genre and culture further underground, where it evolved into a faster, harder genre coined as "Hardcore" or "Hardcore Punk". Some early hardcore bands are Black Flag, Minor Threat and The Bad Brains, Weirdoz, Sf's Flipper, and Youth Brigade.

Along with the Hardcore Movement came the "straight edge" Movement. Many associate "straight edge" with hardcore punk rock, perhaps because the founder of straight edge, Ian Mackaye of Minor Threat, owns Dischord Records, a label that supports the DC hardcore scene. However, this is a misconception: even McKaye states that he was not initially a punk. In contrast, Straight Edge is a progressive lifestyle in response to the "live fast, die young" associated with Punk Rock or Hardcore. Straight Edge is a lifestyle and (counter cultural) subculture, existing worldwide, but most notably in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. It advocates abstinence in relation to tobacco, alcohol and recreational drug use (especially psychoactive and stimulant drug use), and for some people in relation to promiscuous sexual behavior.

There was an unsuccessful attempt to manufacture an artificial subculture around the pop group Adam and the Ants. Supposed to be called Antpeople this remained merely a fictional subculture and didn't catch on in reality.

Other former punks searching for a new direction around 1979 eventually developed into the nucleus of what became the Goth subculture. Gothic culture developed naturally enough, without too much media forcing. The goths are a sub-culture of dark dress and gloomy romanticism. Unlike the New Romantics goth has become a permanent part of the sub cultural scene still going in the 21st century with some claiming their roots reach backwards to the gothic-romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the UK goth reached its popular peak in the late eighties with goth bands achieving chart success but went underground after that.

Post punk and post hippie elements continued and a particular type of anarchist-pacifist subculture centred around the records being put out on the independent Crass label by Crass themselves and other bands including The Poison Girls. Crass records was a very independent operation enabling bands with an extremely raw sound to put out records when the major labels might not have bothered with them. Crass also organised gigs around the country for themselves and other bands and campaigned politically for the anti-nuclear movement and lots of other causes they believed in.

In American urban environments, a form of street culture using freeform and semi-staccato poetry, combined with athletic break dancing, was developing as the Hip hop and Rap subculture. In jazz jargon, the word rap had always meant speech and conversation. The new meaning signified a change in the status of poetry from an elitist artform to a community sport. Rappers could attempt to outdo each other with their skillful rhymes. Rapping is also known as MCing, which is one of the four main elements of Hip hop: MCing, DJing, graffiti art, and breakdancing. From the early to mid 1980s, poetry culture in a broader sense caught the same kind of energy as rap and so began the first of the Poetry slams. Poetry slamming became an irregular focus for the latest wave of poetry aficionados.

After the New Romantic fashion broke and had been around for a lot less than the five years they talked about, the trend moved on. There was a brief abortive fashion which was called Urban vagrants but which failed to become a true subculture. Urban vagrants was too artificially manufactured by the media.

A subculture relishing free enterprise capitalism sprang up in the mid 80s and were branded by the tabloid press with the name of Yuppies (the first two or three letters intended to mean either Young Urban Professional or Young and Upwardly mobile and the remainder to sound like hippies). In the USA the yuppie style was contemporaneous with the Valley girl stereotype which was all about outer flash and cash at the apparent expense of any inner spirituality or gravitas.

Wine bars gained popularity over the traditional pub as a meeting place in Britain of the 80s. Wine bars in fact gained such popularity that many pubs converted part of their premises to a wine bar style. Along with this trend was a resurgence of jazz, especially in the forms of Jazz funk and Smooth jazz. In the late 80s and 90s this would lead to a subdued back-lash, seeing many independent establishments and chain pubs re-assume a more traditional decor, in the spirit of the end of Thatcherism.

The free festival movement was still going in the 80s and, in fact, expanded to create different types of events.

In 1985 Stonehenge Free Festival was disrupted by a massive police presence attempting to prevent the festival and break up the Peace Convoy. The resulting Battle of the Beanfield was the largest mass civil arrest in English history.

Free parties and raves began from the mid-80s and became a flourishing subculture. The music was electronic dance music which developed from Techno, pioneered in Detroit and Chicago by people like Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, as well as electronic music, pioneered by Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage and others, taken by way of progressive rock bands like Hawkwind, filtered through the sounds of dub-reggae and the electro-pop bands like Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode and given a different twist via Art of Noise and early hip hop and recycled psychedelia. Towards the end of the 80s rave culture had diversified into different forms connected to music such as Acid House and Acid Jazz and would continue to diversify into the 90s. Rave culture thrived from the mid-80s to the end of the century and beyond.

The Usenet and BBS subculture had developed an element called Slashdot subculture which involved its own forms of etiquette and behaviour patterns both social and anti-social and the phenomena of trolling, spamming, flaming etc. The computer subculture was also influenced by fictional subcultures of the future to be read about in cyberpunk literature.

1990s

The 1990s saw most of the subcultures of the 1980s continuing in some form or another, such as dance music, raves, pop music, hip hop, rock, goth, punk and hippie. The 1980s valley girl look was recycled in Japan as Kogal.

The term Generation X or Gen X was introduced to describe a condition experienced equally by previous generations and presented in a published form by journalists and novelists as if it were a new phenomenon.

In the UK, the Britpop scene arose, influenced by the 1960s mods, the 1970s/1980s mod revival, and other British rock music styles. Other popular music genres that gained prominence were grunge, drum and bass, house music, rave, techno, trance music, hardcore and electronica.

One of the main popular technological developments of the 1990s was the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee created HTML, which made the Web possible. Running on top of the older infrastructure of the internet (with its bbs, email and ftp protocols, the web allowed small subcultures to grow into large global online communities. Online gaming communities, online forums, chat rooms and Internet cafes became popular.

The 1990s saw an increase in anti-globalisation protests. This was a response to the increased impact of globalisation and global capitalism. Tha anti-globalisation protest movement was accompanied by the fair trade movement.

A few subcultures developed that were directly linked to specific bands, such as the Juggalos, who are based around the band Insane Clown Posse; Maggots, who are based around the band Slipknot; and Ghoulscouts, who are based around the band The Murderdolls. These subcultures were not particularly large or strong compared to other subcultures.

Revivals of the 1970s freak scene and 1980s new romantic subculture appeared in Japan. Two fancy dress styles that became common in Japan were Visual kei and Gothic Lolita.

See also

Further reading (fiction and non-fiction)


See also


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