ISMMS

SNARE DRUM AT MY WOMB: THE ROLE OF ROCK AND HEAVY METAL MOTHERING  Joan Jocson and Julie Turley   “After giving birth, I told the doctor I needed to leave the hospital for five hours. Our band was opening for Johnny Thunders. I think I was on an adrenaline rush.”   Cynthia, 67, B-Girls, Renegades, New York Junk     Musicking, a term first coined by professor-musician Christopher Small (1998), is the active way in which we take part in the creation of music and in establishing relationships with society–a form of engagement and meaning-making. While scholarly literature regarding popular culture … Read more

METAL AND WHITENESS Julian Schaap ‘Music brings people together,’ as the common saying goes. In reality however, it often seems to do so by sticking to the different groups we find in society. For example, when one ventures into a metal music concert, chances are that the audience members are overwhelmingly white (and very often … Read more

THOUGHTS ON THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF METAL RULES THE GLOBE  Jeremy Wallach    According to major streaming companies’ market research, heavy metal is the most popular genre in the world.  Not only that, when the US market is subtracted from the total global market, metal’s popularity goes up.  It turns out a music genre that has been all but written … Read more

DECOLONIAL METAL MUSIC IN LATIN AMERICA Nelson Varas-Díaz   “You want to make it sound like it came from a Latin American being,” said Luis, the lead singer of the Mexican band Acrania, as he explained why he integrated the trumpet and salsa arrangements into his death/thrash metal band. That encounter echoed many other experiences … Read more

If you ask metalheads why they love heavy metal music you will get loads of answers: the energy of the music, the intensity, the loudness…  But there will also be quite a few who will say that metal saved their life, or keeps them sane.  Music is a great coping strategy for many people, but metal in particular has only recently been understood within … Read more

Metal has often been critically reviled, subject to prejudice and persecution. Metal’s pretensions to art are frequently seen as laughable. It’s understandable, therefore, that the first scholars to take an interest in metal, were keen to emphasise its ‘seriousness’ as a genre. Pioneering studies by Deena Weinstein and by Robert Walser, published in the 1990s, … Read more

Borealism is essentially a form of exoticism, building on Edward Saïd’s “orientalism,” a concept detailing how European artistic depictions of African, Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures tended to emphasize violence, “primitiveness,” and sensuality. It is one way we define ourselves collectively by defining who we *aren’t*, often with a hefty dose of condescension. Borealism adapts … Read more

Ah nationalism and metal music… There are thousands of examples of groups promoting their history and their culture in the lyrics of their songs by using their national language, on their album covers with beautiful pictures of their landscape, or even in their music by utilizing traditional instruments. For many, simply evoking the equation “metal music + nationalism” raises a lot … Read more