A new club centered around DIY music and culture has been established, welcoming in all students who share an enthusiasm for local music, live shows, and music history.
The Underground Music Club was founded in September by juniors Kylen Santiago and Henry Koski, who recognized a need for a space that would inspire students to learn about and engage with their local music scene.
Long before they formed a club, Santiago and Koski formed a screamo band named Klenow. In previous years, CKHS had been the birthplace of several student-formed bands, with some garnering notability amongst students from performances at school-sponsored events and a few even going on to play for audiences at nearby venues. Since then, the number of CKHS bands has dwindled, motivating Santiago and Koski to take action, connect with student musicians, and try to help revitalize CK’s music scene themselves.
“I think it would be cool to just start a scene here, because from what I know, we’re like the only Central Kitsap band here,” Santiago said. “We’re super lucky to live in a place where DIY music is kind of enforced in a way. We have a lot of cool venues; you have the Charleston, of course, and then you have places in Seattle like the Vera Project that has all-ages shows that pretty much any type of genre can play, and I think it would be cool if people formed bands, and we could all play a show together.”
CKHS history and psychology teacher Blair Taylor had his own introduction to the Kitsap music scene after attending a punk show for the first time at an all-ages venue in Bremerton. At the time, he was a student attending Bremerton High School. Now an educator in the CKSD over 30 years later, Taylor has sustained a strong passion for punk music and witnessed Kitsap’s music scene change and evolve.
“Music was foundational for my whole life trajectory,” Taylor said. “I think the punk music scene politicized me. It taught me what fascism was and [what] was not anti-fascism. [During] my very first concert there was conflicts with Nazi skinheads, so just being aware of that, I think, is something you don’t necessarily come across at your Taylor Swift concert — although she did dip her toe into politics recently as well, I hear. But yeah, that’s probably played a role in me getting into political science and studying social movements, and I’ve been a vegetarian for 35 years.”
Since Santiago and Koski met Taylor, they have connected over their shared love for music, sometimes even running into each other at the same shows. Thus, when the two students were ready to begin the process of starting the club, they knew they wanted to approach Taylor about becoming their adviser.
“I think their idea was to support and foster a scene of DIY music, because they started a band; they did it themselves, so they want to support other people to start bands and to go to shows of like-minded bands, and basically support local music, the DIY music scene, trade music, share music [and] bands we’re into,” Taylor said. “We’ll often just sit around and go down a YouTube rabbit hole.”
The Underground Music Club meets every Friday after school in Room 3202. Meetings typically consist of club members sharing about upcoming local shows, swapping new music discoveries, and learning about niche subgenres or pieces of music history.
“It’s kind of fun to go to a club of people that have the same taste in music as you do, or even slightly different, because really, there’s nothing really around here like that, in school anyway,” Koski said. “Having conversations with people that like the same type of music as you, you can share music; you can be like, ‘I like this band,’ ‘Oh, I like this band!’ ‘I like this band who influenced this band.’”
Though the club is still in its early stages, members are optimistic about the club’s future and encourage interested students to stop by. While the club primarily focuses on punk, hardcore, emo, metal, and related alternative subcultures, they invite anyone open to being exposed to new types of music to join.
“[Music has] directly influenced how I see the world, how I live my life,” Taylor said. “The DIY ethos of doing it yourself, I think, is pretty important. It’s a profoundly democratic notion. It’s the idea that we don’t have to be passive recipients of culture — that we just have the professionals do it for us and we pay them for these products — but we can do it ourselves. We can make our own music, make our own art, express things that aren’t commercially viable, but we think are important, because ultimately those things are commodities, and they’re bought and sold, and they have to find their market, and the lowest common denominator often wins.”
