A howl of the estranged

Abstract

In the 1980s, post-punk underground scenes emerged as a distinctive phenomenon in Bulgarian popular music. This chapter focuses on their subcultural meanings, influences and longevity, using ethnographic and participatory research methods. Bulgaria is situated in south-eastern Europe on the Balkans, at a crossroads between perceived Eastern and Western cultural constructs. ‘Older’ generations involved with music cultures–as in the case of Bulgarian post-punk–allow the inheritance of values, meanings and practices. Post-punk scenes in Bulgaria emerged in the 1980s, during the communist regime. The genre developed as part of the subcultural music scenes associated with the holistic-rock spectrum subjected to censorship, restriction and even criminalization. Prohibition and censorship acted as creative impulses as rock genres grew to become the aesthetic and musical core of pre-1989 Bulgarian youth subcultures, including hippie, rocker, punk and post-punk. Bulgarian post-punk scenes’ contemporary subcultural value is contained in their artistic continuity and their flexibility in constructing critical alternatives to dominating paradigms.

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