The Midwest Clump

The United States, despite being the third largest nation in the world, has a pretty noticeable clump for Prog fans. That clump is the American Midwest. It seems like a great majority of U.S. Prog came from the Midwestern United States, which seems a bit strange. Usually, progressive rock was both a socially and politically liberal movement (there's an exception here and there), which would point to the Northeast and the West Coast as the expected Prog grounds. So, why is it that the track of land roughly stretching from Cleveland to Wichita make so much progressive music.

There's no good answer to this question. The only other area of the U.S. where Prog seemed to be a really major scene was the New York Metropolitan area, which makes sense due to the great amounts of political liberalism and the fact that New York City is so cosmopolitan. The Midwest, however, had a great number of conservatives, and also had a much more uniform population of white protestants. Yet, the diverse and very blue West Coast saw little to no action.

I personally think that the fact that a great deal of large cities exist in the Midwest would have led to lots of word-of mouth spreading. A few very good prog bands probably started a trend in individual cities, and it went from there. This seems to be backed up by more specific slices of America, because some Midwestern cites like Chicago, St. Louis, and Minneapolis had lots of Prog rock, but others like Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Kansas City were silent. Likewise, this may be why Prog caught on in New York City but failed to take of in Philadelphia or Boston. There just wasn't enough people to spread the word in the pre-Internet age.

More to the point, however, the clump is just an oddity. The Midwest made its fair share of good and bad Prog, and the Northeast, South, Mountain West, and Pacific Coast made contributions that were lesser in quantity but equal in quality.