Session 4B: Filling the Metal Void

Session 4B: Filling the Metal Void
Chair: Elizabeth Clendinning

Metal in Rio de Janeiro1980’s-2008: An Overview
Claudia Azevedo
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Música, Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

This paper aims to offer an overview of metal in Rio de Janeiro since the beginning of the 1980’s, considering aesthetic characteristics of subgenres (sound, lyrical themes and iconography), as well as the effects of economic constraints and the political context acting on the existence and maintenance of the scene in the city. Rio de Janeiro is in the south-east of Brazil and known for its tropical landscapes, beach culture and samba music, with a metropolitan area of about 12 million inhabitants. Apart from the touristic image of the city, the metal subculture in Rio de Janeiro has been active since the beginning of the 1980’s, when bands frequently sang about political issues and chose names in Portuguese. In 1985 – the year which marked the end of the political dictatorship in Brazil – with the Rock in Rio festival, and following an international trend, metal became more popular within mainstream media. As a result of the popularity of the festival in general and the success of the night dedicated to the metal bands, as well as a sudden stability of the national currency, several foreign bands had records released in Brazil, record companies became interested in local bands who were at last able to release records and Brazil entered the route of international bands on tour.  Therefore from the mid-1980’s onwards, local bands have thought of international careers and started to write in English, following international aesthetic trends both in sound and iconography. In the 1990’s, with the advent of grunge and due to political changes in the country, metal bands were back to their previous underground condition, that is, not participating in great media events, having had to developed their own alternative net of communication. This situation has remained the same throughout the 2000’s, relying heavily on the internet.

Filling the Void: The Heavy Metal and Hard Core Punk Archiving Project
Brian Hickam and Thomas Atwood
Librarian for the College of Health Science and Human Service, The University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, USA. and Coordinator Information Literacy & Library Instruction, The University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, USA

There is a crisis in the state of preservation of heavy metal books, magazines/fanzines, and audio & video recordings – primary sources on which today’s and future researchers will depend.  While the metal and related communities have done excellent jobs over the decades of documenting the music and cultures, no repository exists.  If scholars don’t act to create a permanent, openly accessible, exhaustive collocation of materials, most items will become lost and there will be gaps in the historical record.  This need is exemplified by Daniel Ekeroth’s 2006 book Swedish Death Metal.  Since it was not listed in the catalogs and websites typically used by librarians, traditional purchasing practices likely would have missed it.  Ekeroth’s book is currently out-of-print and is listed in only two libraries: The National Library of Sweden and Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
One year ago, no library or archive was making an attempt to create and maintain a research-level “special collection” in the area of heavy metal music and culture.  This winter, a cooperative effort between The University of Toledo (Ohio) and Bowling Green State University’s (Ohio) Sound Recordings Archive and Department of Popular Culture was established to create such a repository.  This paper will present strategies for establishing multi-lingual archives of heavy metal in three to five strategic locations around the world.  Academic institutions would have the funds, space, and policies to ensure that materials are available to future generations.  We’ll examine the current state of source material availability and thrash out the reasons why such resources have been neglected.  In this paper we investigate the many challenges and potential benefits afforded by a metal archiving project, focusing on preservation, publicity, and accessibility.  The positive message is that the heavy metal community can remedy the voids in our stored history.