Unearthing the Music

From Polish jazz to Iberian punk―a colossal record of the underground music that soundtracked protest movements across Europe from 1950 to 2000

This monumental volume is the analog component of an international project initiated in Portugal, an online archive for experimental and underground protest sounds from the latter half of the 20th century. This archive covers sounds that have emerged under the "real socialism" of Eastern Europe as well as the often-overlooked regimes of Spain, Portugal and the Greek military dictatorship. Unearthing the Music charts the key stages of sonic resistance: the citizenship's fraught relationship with the state, the accruing power of counter-communities producing dissident sounds and the disappointments that follow liberation. Abundantly illustrated with archival photos and ephemera, the volume traces the development of jazz in Poland and the GDR, conceptual post-punk in Yugoslavia, state-run electronic music studios, Roentgenizdat and Magnetizdat productions, Romanian avant-garde, Iberian punk and the Ukrainian underground, among other topics.