Abstract: "Extreme Metal is a form of dark tourism and leisure activity whose artistic radicalism and underground scenes invoke intense debates from musicians as well as audiences. Traditional cultural studies have assumed that its disenfranchised and transgressive music expressions are an ideological resistance to increasing homogeneities of industrialized society. As such, considering the nature of festivals as a mechanism where culture is created and transmitted, the operations and promotions of Extreme Metal festivals are inevitably engaged in the wider cultural politics of Extreme Metal. The roles of festival producers thus must be emphasized, who act as powerful agents in engaging artists, developing audiences, arranging programs, and so forth. Indeed, no festivals can be simply described as improvised events – they are carefully programmed, planned, and constructed for audiences to hear and see. With this in mind, this study serves to explore the experiential predicament of these culturally embedded event producers.
In particular, the identities of the festival producers compose the focus of investigation for this research. That is, considering the contested contexts that are at play in shaping the very existence of Extreme Metal, the producers are constantly acting as intermediaries between these contexts. The discursive practice by which they give meaning to their festival production practices, contain profound dissonance between 'what they imagine their selves to be' and 'what they actually are’ as related to their turbulent ‘referential world’ of Extreme Metal festival production.
With this in mind, this study employs the theoretical framework of narrative identity in the examination of the ‘referential world’ by which identities are related. Narrative identity is considered as an approach to understand how people resolve themselves, life events, actions, and other forces in their life. Considering that a self, in narrative, is given meaning through the narrator’s relation of the self to their referential world, analyzing the narrative moments where conflicting contexts are at play provides a sensitization to the struggle of Extreme Metal cultural transgression within festival production. Specifically, it is learned how this tourism is considered ‘dark’. In doing so, three main research questions are asked: 1). How can we understand the festival producers’ identities as negotiated and emerged from the interview narratives? 2). In regards to the festival producers’ identities, what socio-cultural forces in relation to the apparatus of Extreme Metal are involved? 3). How do such findings illuminate the makings of tourism festivals at large?"
(Source: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing)

Abstract: This study looks at female musicians performing in subcultural rock genres commonly considered non-gender-conforming, such as punk rock, heavy metal, noise, and experimental. Twenty-four interviews were conducted with female musicians who reflected on their experiences as musicians. Themes emerged on women’s patterns of entry into music, barriers they negotiated while playing, and forces that may push them out of the music scene. Once women gained a musician identity, their gender functioned as a master status. They negotiated sexism when people questioned their abilities, assumed men played better, expected them to fail, held them to conventional gender roles, and sexually objectified them. Normative expectations of women as primary caregivers for children, internalization of criticism, and high personal expectations are considered as factors that contribute to women’s exit from musical careers. This research closes with suggestions for how more women and girls can be socialized into rock music.

Abstract: Nicodemus! The Beds are Burning Again: The Ascension of Gorgomath is a 22-minute concerto for piano and chamber orchestra that explores the use of narrative as a means of unifying disparate musical languages into a cohesive single-movement structure. The narrative, as implied by the fourteen programmatic indicators within the score, features a protagonist, Nicodemus, and an antagonist, Gorgomath. Additional contrasting elements essential to the plot are: the burning beds, outer space, the ultimate weapon, and the three rituals. The programmatic indicators, to be listed in the program, function as a framework from which the listener can fabricate their own version of the story.
The narrative begins with “The beds are burning,” a heavy-metal inspired musical theme characterized by a pervasive rhythmic structure interspersed with virtuosic piano displays. Full orchestral forces add to the intensity of a relentless motor rhythm heard first in the piano. Following “Ritual I,” a transitionary theme of soli strings and piano, Nicodemus’s theme develops, a musical antithesis to “The Burning Beds” theme. It employs a simple melodic loop over a basic four-chord harmonic structure, reminiscent of 8-bit video game themes, and is voiced as piano accompanied by tremolo in the woodwinds and strings.
Nicodemus’s journey into space begins with a rapid deceleration in tempo. The following slow ternary form includes a funerary dirge bookended by the piece’s most lyrical piano writing, expressed by the rise and fall of melodic octaves. The pounding neo-Shostakovian strings of “Ritual II” transition directly into the development section, “Nicodemus seeks the ultimate weapon.” Nicodemus’s theme undergoes significant transformation, assuming the guise of stride piano and North Indian tabla music. These styles are unique to this section, as is their orchestration of high, sustained winds alternating with orchestral hits between low strings and percussion.
The piece’s recapitulation, “Meanwhile…,” begins with a return of the burning beds. Here, “Gorgomath’s Theme,” identifiable by the instability of its 7/16 motor rhythm is briefly foreshadowed. It appears in its entirety in the coda, “Boss Battle.”
The resulting work uses original narrative to blend polystylistic elements into a cohesive single movement structure with a dramatic musical arc.