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Underground culture, or just '''underground''', is a term to describe various Alternative Culture s which either consider themselves different to the Mainstream of Society and Culture , or are considered so by someone. The word Underground is used because there is a history of Resistance movements under harsh Regime s where the term ''underground'' was employed to refer to the necessary secrecy of the resisters. For example, the to the clandestine movement of people and goods by the American Indian Movement in and out of occupied Native American reservation lands. (See Wounded Knee (References: {Link without Title} ). The unmodified term "The underground" was a common name for World War II Resistance Movement s. It was later applied to Counter-cultural movement(s) many of which sprang up during the 1960s . These 1960s and 1970s underground cultural movements had some connections to the ''" Beat Generation "'' which had, in turn, been inspired by the Philosopher s, Artist s and Poet s of the Paris Existentialist movement which gathered around Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus in the years after World War II . Sartre and Camus were members of Combat a French Resistance group formed in 1942 by Henri Frenay . Frenay, Sarte and Camus were all involved in publishing Underground Newspaper s for the resistance. The French underground culture which inspired Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg in America in the 1940s was steeped in Socialist thinking before the Cold War began, but this wasn't the monolithic socialism of the Totalitarian Soviet state, but rather the free-thinking and expressive socialism of artists and dreamers attempting to re-think society. Jack Kerouac (In '''' etc. Since then, the term has come to designate various Subculture s such as Mod Culture , Hippie Culture , Punk Rock Culture , Techno Music / Rave Culture and Underground Hip Hop . Applied to the Art s, the term ''underground'' typically means Artist s that are not corporately sponsored and generally do not want to be. However, with the advent of the World Wide Web (or Internet ), many experts argue that there is ''no'' underground since so much art and so many politcal ideas, especially music, is far easier to locate and because so it provides artists and activists a means to promote their work and ideas without large, established corporate interests. Even the concept of obscurity is questionable given 21st century access to information about past or current artistic trends. Perhaps the best way to define it is a quote by Frank Zappa : "The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground." ETYMOLOGY The use of ''underground'' as adjective meaning " Subculture " is attested is from 1953, from World War II application to resistance movements against German occupation, on analogy of the dominant culture and Nazis {Link without Title} and, at least, as far back as the Underground railroad. SEE ALSO
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