Underground from a Basement: DIY Music, Chicago-Style

Students study the history of bohemian culture, connections between historical radical art movements and contemporary underground music, and learn about underground cultural production and consumption in urban environments. Guest speakers include members of punk bands, alternative radio show hosts, rappers, music promoters, beatmakers, and record label owners. Our class field studies introduce students to the world of fanzines and public art. Most students who enroll in the class begin without knowledge of underground music; they tend to think that the underground refers to musicians playing at the Jackson Street El station. However, as the term progresses, they begin to understand that there are a variety of important creative cultural practices in Chicago that fly below the mainstream radar.

In the end, the Underground Music Culture course highlights important connections between DePaul’s urban social justice mission and the cultural politics of Chicago’s underground music scenes. My hope is that when the students complete the course they will think more critically about the politics of culture, understand the power of creative community, and develop some basic fieldwork skills. But I also secretly hope that when they enter a dark, damp basement they see a space where punk bands could play shows, rappers could spit rhymes, DJs could learn to mix, and beatmakers could develop cutting-edge sounds and then go about transforming that space from a collection of cobwebs and unused gas cans to one that is a space where underground music thrives.