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The Canterbury School, an immense musical and cultural heritage that still endures today.

(Note: All links to the musicians' works are in the articles at the bottom of this page or on the "Artists" page)

The Canterbury School (or Canterbury Scene) is more than a musical genre; it is an artistic movement, a creative attitude, which began at the end of the 1960s in the English city of the same name.

The history of the Canterbury School is one of the most fascinating in 20th-century music, an intertwining of musicians who redefined the boundaries between rock, jazz, and the avant-garde. It all began in Canterbury, Kent, with a student group called The Wilde Flowers. Although they did not release anything at the time, among their members were almost all the future giants of the scene: Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Pye Hastings, and brothers Brian and Hugh Hopper. Their music was a mix of soul, R&B, and emerging psychedelia. I have spoken at length about them in the article “The Wilde Flowers: the origins of the Canterbury Scene” in which I retrace the key milestones.

But before talking about the beginning of the Canterbury Scene, let's talk about the "before," what were the influences that gave rise to the cultural and musical movement. The Canterbury School was in fact the result of cross and mutual influences between European classical music, American jazz, and British psychedelia of the 1960s.

Modern Jazz and Free Jazz are the deepest influence, with Miles Davis in his “electric” period influencing its structural freedom and improvisation. John Coltrane, with his modal and spiritual approach to saxophone and composition, was fundamental for bands like Soft Machine, a revolution in jazz that shifted the focus of music from constant chord changes (typical of Bebop) to single musical scales (the "modes") that were explored and developed for long periods. The free jazz of Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman greatly influenced the Canterbury musicians to break the barriers of traditional song form. Contemporary and Avant-Garde Classical music influenced with 20th-century composers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich who influenced the solo works of Robert Wyatt and Soft Machine. Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók for the use of odd time signatures, syncopated rhythms, and harmonic dissonances, especially evident in bands like Egg. Also Erik Satie, with his ironic, eccentric approach and the use of circular and dreamy melodies. 

But also Psychedelic Rock and Blues had an influence; indeed, we cannot overlook the fact that the Canterbury groups were immersed in the London scene of the 1960s, and that was the period of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles and also of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with Hendrix being a close friend of Soft Machine (who opened his American tours), and it is impossible to exclude from the list of influences the great Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Zappa was a huge influence for the union of absurd humor, social satire, and extreme technical complexity.

There was also a great influence from the intellectual currents of the time. Jarry's "science of imaginary solutions" is explicitly cited by Soft Machine, with its absurd approach defining the irony and nonsense of the lyrics. The Beat Generation, with writers like William Burroughs (the name Soft Machine comes from his novel The Soft Machine), influenced the fragmented and visionary aesthetic of the early years. Pink Floyd (from the Syd Barrett era), with whom they shared the stages of the UFO club in London, mutually influencing each other in spacey psychedelia.

From the ashes of the Wilde Flowers mainly emerged two legendary bands: 
The Soft Machine, the more experimental and avant-garde component, led by Wyatt and Ayers, became the protagonists of psychedelic London (alongside Pink Floyd) and then evolved towards an abstract and complex jazz-rock.
The Caravan, the melodic component. Led by Pye Hastings and Richard Sinclair, they fused rock with folk elements and dreamy lyrics, culminating in the masterpiece In the Land of Grey and Pink (1971).

During this period, the scene expanded and became a laboratory of virtuosity and nonsense humor:
Bands like Egg (a keyboard trio devoted to Bach and Stravinsky) and Khan (with Steve Hillage) and Hatfield and the North were born, representing the perfect synthesis of the genre: extreme technical complexity, ethereal female choirs, and ironic lyrics about everyday English life.
The Gong of the legendary Daevid Allen were born, bringing the scene towards a unique space-psychedelic mythology. A key figure along with Wyatt and Ayers for the genre.

With National Health, the scene reached the height of compositional complexity. 

At the same time, many musicians (like Chris Cutler, for example) began to collaborate, bringing Canterbury influences towards the more political and challenging movement of Rock in Opposition (RIO). 

Together with bands that had prolific careers such as Caravan, Cos, Daevid Allen, Egg, Gong, Moving Gelatine Plates, Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine, Steve Hillage, Supersister, there are some that produced very few albums, real METEORE like Hatfield And The North, Khan, Matching Mole, National Health, Quiet Sun, Wilde Flowers.

We have seen so far the great impact on European music, but the influence of the Canterbury Scene on Italian music was also great, a deep and lasting influence, which began in the early 1970s when the profile of Italian Progressive Rock was taking shape, finding in the sounds of Kent an alternative to the epic symphonism of bands like Genesis or ELP that dominated the music scene.

In the 1970s, many Italian groups absorbed the use of distorted (fuzz) organ, odd time signatures, and the jazz approach typical of Soft Machine and Caravan:
Arti & Mestieri, the group closest to the jazz-rock fusion of Canterbury, had a technical rhythm section and made great use of violin and horns. Picchio dal Pozzo, the Italian heirs of Canterbury, with their self-titled 1976 album paid homage to the style of Robert Wyatt and Hatfield and the North, with surreal lyrics, complex vocal arrangements, and dreamlike atmospheres. The immense Area, more oriented towards radical jazz and politics, but with the vocal experimentation of Demetrio Stratos and the use of electronics, share the same intellectual freedom as Soft Machine, but more abstract.

Musicians constantly moved from one band to another, influencing each other's sound, but maintaining some common characteristics: the distorted organ (Lowrey or Hammond), and a critical distance from the mainstream record market, preferring absolute creative freedom, characteristics that we find in the legacy of the movement and that are still expressed today, even though the movement ended in the early 1980s, the spirit of Canterbury has never died. 

Contemporary artists such as Singlelito (Colombia), Zopp (United Kingdom), and Tom Penaguin (France) have revived the use of fuzz organs and complex harmonies, demonstrating that the "Canterbury sound" has become a universal and now timeless language.

With the end of classic prog, the influence also shifted in Italy towards the Rock in Opposition (RIO) movement with La 1919, the group of Luciano Margorani embodied the edgier and more industrial soul of that Canterbury-derived style, combining radical improvisation and avant-garde structures. Stormy Six fused Italian folk with the complexity of the Canterbury scene. Homunculus Res led by Dario D'Alessandro, are today the leading exponents of the genre. Their music blends the melody of the Sicilian school with the humor of the Caravan and the complexity of Hatfield and the North.

Musically, to sum it up extremely, it is the Jazz-Prog fusion, the improvisation and harmonies typical of jazz with the structures and instrumentation of progressive rock. As mentioned, the symbolic instrument is the Hammond organ filtered through fuzz pedals (typical of Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine and Dave Stewart), which creates a distorted and scratchy, yet harmonic sound. There is extensive use of horns, electric pianos (Fender Rhodes), and a very dynamic and virtuosic percussive approach.
The lyrics are ironic and surreal with typically English humor, nonsense, and sometimes extremely surreal lyrics. 
The compositions are extremely complex, dominated by odd time signatures and unusual scales, dissonances, but the music often maintains a playful atmosphere, reminiscent of the simplicity of pop.

The Canterbury scene is essentially the intellectual, jazzy, and ironic side of progressive rock, an immense musical and cultural heritage that still endures today.

Canterbury Scene

Articles in order of publication