The Canterbury Scene

Even many of those who dismiss most prog rock as pretentious tripe are charmed by the branch of British art rock known as the Canterbury Scene. The small southwestern England city's music scene started in the mid ‘60s with The Wilde Flowers, a short-lived group whose key members went on to form flagship Canterbury outfits Soft Machine and Caravan. While the musical sophistication and technical prowess of the Canterbury bands are comparable to that of more aboveground prog acts, there's a fleet-footed jazziness and a quirky, very British sense of humor to their work that sets them apart from their more dramatically-minded symphonic-rock cousins. If Yes and King Crimson were the musical equivalent of philosophical founts Khalil Gibran and G.I. Gurdjieff, respectively, the Canterbury crew were the rock representatives of a sensibility more akin to irreverent wits Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse. Though the initial movement petered out by the end of the '70s, the amiably eccentric spirit of the Canterbury sound has been adopted by subsequent generations of artists all over the world, with the long, rich solo career of founding Soft Machine member Robert Wyatt becoming especially influential.