The article analyses the interweaving relations between politics, arts, rock music, the opposition, « counterculture » and « subculture » in the Budapest underground circles in the last decades of the socialist system. After discussing the common features and significant differences in the concepts of « subculture », « folk culture », « counterculture » and underground culture the article describes the political and artistical context of these phenomena in Hungary. The emergence of the rock « new wave » concomitant with the creation of alternative public spaces by political dissidents is an interesting topic for a historical and ethnological analysis.