Swedish progressive music

Progg was a left-wing and anti-commercial musical movement in Sweden that began in the late 1960s and became more widespread in the 1970s. Not to be confused with the English expressions "progressive music" or "prog rock," progg is a contraction of the Swedish word for musical progressivism, progressiv musik. While there were progg bands playing progressive rock, the progg movement encompassed many different musical genres.

The political progg movement culminated around the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in after ABBAs victory in Brighton the year before. It was expressed that "music can't be a contest" and an "alternative festival" was held in protest. Due to this debate, Sweden did not participate in the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest.

The progg movement was closely connected to similar movements in arts, theatre and design, as well as alternative lifestyles and left wing views. While being a political movement, some bands labelled as progg were nonetheless unaligned with any political agenda. The people playing and listening to this music came to be called proggare (literally "proggers") in Swedish.

Alternative bands began to form in the late 1960s, but the movement emerged in full in the summer of 1970. A big alternative music festival was held at the field Gärdet in between June 12 and June 14. The festival was illegal, as a permission for it had not been obtained. The new independent record company Silence released a compilation record with music from the festival as their first record, and signed some of the bands that played, including Träd, Gräs och Stenar and Gudibrallan. In 1971 MNW was formed. During this decade the progg movement had a strong position in the musical landscape of Sweden.

At the end of the 1970s, however, the movement started to decline, as many of the bands disintegrated and the music forums were closed. The left wing ideals became less dominating among young people, and the rock and folk music also became less popular than new genres such as hard rock and electronic music.

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