Manchester, Joy Division and the Environment of Post-punk

Music and British Identity: The Post-war Environment of Manchester and the Emergence of Post-punk

The following is mini-documentary of documentaries: collections of visions of Manchester during the troubled 1970s as Joy Division and the post-punk aesthetic emerged. This documentary is meant to provide some critical insight into the socio-political climate of Britain close to the 1978-1979 "Winter of Discontent," and how we might view the emergence of Joy Division and other post-punk music in light of such depressed times. The following footage contains segments of interviews with Factory Records founder and Manchester proponent, Tony Wilson, and members of the Manchester post-punk music scene (e.g., Bernard Sumner of Joy Division, journalist Paul Morley) from a BBC Documentary on Factory Records; and a brief BBC Radio 1 interview from 15 September 1979 with Manchester music producer and visionary, Martin Hannett, who discusses how the environment of the Mancunian industrial north affects and creates the "Manchester sound":