Living in the Merry Ghetto reframes how people use music to build
resistance. Author Trever Hagen addresses the social context of
illegal music-making in Czechoslovakia during state socialism. He
tells the story of a group of rock'n'roll musicians who went
underground after 1968, building a parallel world from where they
could flourish: the Merry Ghetto. The book examines the case of the
Czech Underground and the politics of their music and their way of
life, paying close attention to the development of the ensemble The
Plastic People of the Universe. Taking in multiple political
transitions from the 1940s-2000s, the story focuses on non-official
cultural practices such as listening to foreign radio broadcasts,
seeking out copied cassette tapes, listening to banned LPs, growing
long hair, attending clandestine concerts, smuggling albums via
diplomats, recording in home-studios and being thrown in prison for
any of these activities. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with
Undergrounders, archival research and participant observation,
Hagen shows how these practices shaped consciousness, informed
bodies and promoted collective action, all of which contributed to
an Underground identity.
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