Abstract: << This article, based on ethnographic research, discusses the creation of an album that belongs to the musical
subcategory of medieval black metal. The creator of the album, Christos G., re-imagines, recreates, and presents medieval peasant traditions of resistance and revolt in his Mystras project, but through the perspective of the rebels and not through the official descriptions of the events as written by medieval authorities who belonged to the victorious sides. To achieve this, the artist referred to folklore and traditional song; he wanted to illustrate that, if these two are used within an accurate historical context, they highlight a completely different picture of medieval times than the one usually depicted in black metal, where a white, homogeneous, and noble medieval Europe is constantly portrayed as part of ethnocentric ideologies and reactionary agendas. Folklore and traditional song become ideological “weapons” in Mystras that symbolise that just as the peasants of medieval times revolted against injustice and oppression, so should the artists and audience exclude and eliminate far-right ideologies from black metal. >>
[Source: Open-access PDF of article]