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Underground is all about the history and future of DIY punk touring in the USA. Daniel Makagon explores the culture of DIY spaces like house shows and community-based music spaces, their impact on underground communities and economies, and why these networks matter. He shows that no matter who you are, organizing, playing, and/or attending a DIY punk show is an opportunity to become a real part of a meaningful movement and to create long-lasting alternatives to the top-down economic and artistic practices of the mainstream music industry. Punk kids playing an illegal show too loudly in someone's basement might not save the world, but they might just be showing us the way to building something better.
About the author
Daniel Makagon is an associate professor in the College of Communication at DePaul University. His teaching and research interests are in urban communication, ethnography, documentary, and community. Makagon is author of Where the Ball Drops: Days and Nights in Times Square and co-author of Recording Culture: Audio Documentary and the Ethnographic Experience. He has also published articles about guerrilla art, public life, and urban space in a variety of communication and cultural studies journals. His audio documentaries have aired on community and public radio stations and been featured on a variety of documentary storytelling Web sites. Makagon is also the editor of "The City," a series for the on-line journal Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies.
