The Nation: Going Underground

On certain nights over the past two years, residents along a street in downtown Tulsa, Okla., have heard puzzling, ghostly wisps of guitar music floating up from beneath the pavement. For a long time, no one bothered to investigate, thinking perhaps that a sewer worker was listening to a transistor radio.

In fact, Tulsa's young were literally going underground. In groups of twelve to 25, they have been meeting regularly on Friday or Saturday nights in a small gallery of the city's labyrinthine storm sewers to play their music, smoke and relax. "I do my best playing down there," says Guitarist John...