Centaurs and Conceptualists: Towards a Re-Evaluation of Underground Rock in Post-1968 Czechoslovakia

Abstract

The present contribution attempts a more complex, cultural-sociological understanding of the adoption of Anglophone rock music as a central element of the Czech 'adversary culture' of the last decades of Communist rule. Specifically, it discusses the intellectual and aesthetic links of Czech underground rock to previous Czech artistic movements or Western post-war practices, primarily as expressed through the critical texts of Ivan M.

Jirous and the discussions and polemics in the samizdat periodical VOKNO. Secondly, it aims more broadly to situate alternative-popular cultures in both East and West of the Cold War division within the wider situation of late-20th century modernity.