4 pages argument essay

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IJCM 7 (2) pp. 149–151 Intellect Limited 2014

International Journal of Community Music Volume 7 Number 2

© 2014 Intellect Ltd Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/ijcm.7.2.149_2

EdItorIaL

Gabby Riches and KaRl spRacKlen Leeds Metropolitan University

Raising the horns: heavy

metal communities and

community heavy

metal music

By raising the horns, heavy metal fans and musicians demonstrate their sense of community through both fleeting and prolonged encounters at gigs, online, and in formal and informal scene spaces such as rehearsal rooms, studios, record shops, clubs and bars. Research on heavy metal music has become a growing part of the subject fields of musicology, sociology, women’s studies, leisure studies and cultural studies over the last ten years: this scholarly inter- est reflects the growing global popularity of heavy metal and its importance as a genre of popular music. The idea of the ‘metal community’ has remained an important focus in heavy metal scholarship and has become a prominent framework in studying the everyday aspects of heavy metal culture. This is reflected in the burgeoning number of community-themed academic metal conferences such as the ‘heavy metal community’ roundtable at the Heavy Metal and Popular Culture conference in Ohio in April 2013 and also the one- day event Heavy Metal Music and The Communal Experience that was held at the University of Puerto Rico in March 2014. This special issue reflects not only

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Gabby riches | Karl Spracklen

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the importance of community within heavy metal but also illustrates the ways in which academics from across various disciplines are beginning to trouble this ostensibly stable and taken-for-granted concept, and that maybe it is time that we utilize a different framework. On-going discussions around commu- nities of heavy metal illuminate the fact that heavy metal is always enmeshed in the localized and globalized cultural landscape; so, as our modern world is constantly shifting the communities of heavy metal will be implicated by those shifts.

We are very pleased with the international scope of the papers that speak to the global impact that heavy metal has in places such as South Africa, Malaysia, Puerto Rico and New Zealand. Ferrarese’s article illustrates how heavy metal in non-western nations such as Penang Island, Malaysia plays a vital role in promoting the development of multiethnic community inter- actions, which as a result reconfigures and blurs ethnic boundaries. Hoad’s research on Afrikaans metal in South Africa highlights how heavy metal can reclaim a sense of ‘lost’ identity while redrawing the racialized map of nation- hood. Some articles go beyond traditional identity categories such as race, class and gender and examine how religion and religious metal groups (Varas- Diaz et al.), for instance, play a central role in the development of local metal scenes. Snell’s research on Bogans exemplifies how marginal communities exist within the global community of heavy metal and how this raises ques- tions around the complexities of inclusion and exclusion that emerge when identity is entangled with national and subcultural status. At a more personal level, Hines and McFerran focus on the myriad of emotions and feelings that are experienced by men when they engaged with metal music during their adolescence. They argue that heavy metal affords young men the opportunity to boost their confidence and explore personal and global concerns while also acting as a facilitator when the men grappled with difficult feelings such as anger and sadness.

The articles in this collection also implement a range of methodological avenues to look at the nuances of heavy metal music such as the use of ethno- graphic mapping of metal venues, phenomenological microanalysis, in-depth interviews, magazines and heavy metal cookbooks. In her analysis of heavy metal cookbooks Phillipov emphasizes that cookbooks not only reveal how transgressive cultural forms, such as heavy metal, can be incorporated and ‘domesticated’ by the mainstream but also how transgression itself can be reworked to suit the changing lives of music fans, especially as they age. For Riches and Lashua the use of digital and ethnographic mapping of several metal venues in Leeds, UK, is useful in understanding the fluid and recipro- cal relationship between heavy metal and urban change. Because heavy metal predominantly operates with urban landscapes, cultural and political changes within the city reconfigure the spaces of metal communities and these spatial relocations directly impact the people involved. Community has been a long- standing lens in which to study heavy metal music but as Hill suggests in her article, a new framework is needed when studying hard rock and metal fans collectively. She uses the concept of ‘imaginary community’ to consider how female fans imagine themselves as part of a larger community and Hill argues that this concept also centralizes the pleasurable aspects that attract women to heavy metal in the first place.

The articles within this special issue speak to heavy metal as community, heavy metal as leisure, and heavy metal as a place that fosters local and global senses of belonging and inclusion in an increasingly commercialized and

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atomized world. With original and creative contributions to existing heavy metal scholarship all of the authors stress the importance of heavy metal as a global community and are attentive to the spaces, discourses and practices that shape heavy metal as community music.

We would like to thank the editors of the International Journal of Community Music for allowing us to put this together and we want to thank all the contributors for creating a collection that seeks to push the boundaries of metal studies.

Gabby Riches and Karl Spracklen have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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Applied Theatre Research is the worldwide journal for theatre and drama in non-tradi- tional contexts. It focuses on drama, theatre and performance with specific audiences or participants in a range of social contexts and locations. Contexts include education, developing countries, business and industry, political debate and social action, with children and young people, and in the past, present or future; locations include thea- tre which happens in places such as streets, conferences, war zones, refugee camps, prisons, hospitals and village squares as well as on purpose-built stages.

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