Session 8: Race and Identity II

Session 8: Race and Identity II
Chair: Carmen DeAnna

The Importance of Being ‘Metal’: The Music Press and Youth Identity Construction
Andy Brown
Department of Media, Film and Cultural Studies, School of Historical and Cultural Studies, Bath Spa University, Bath, United Kingdom

There has been very little work done on the popular music magazine and even less on the metal music magazine (but see Brown 2008). Existing authoritative accounts of heavy metal as a cultural formation view media as a secondary and confirmatory source of youth identity (Weinstein 2000: 193-7). This paper argues that media is much more important to metal culture than such classic studies allow, particularly in offering ‘clues’ as to how to ‘live’ metal as a youth identity. Given the almost complete lack of engagement with metal as a youth culture offered by most forms of youth communications (TV, Radio and the press) the role of branded media – such as Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and Terrorizer in the UK and Decibel, Revolver and Metal Maniacs in the US – are essential in offering a mediated arena where a range of ways of ‘being metal’ are communicated within the ‘circuit of culture’ of the contemporary magazine format.  Based on research into how youth adopt metal as an identity choice in the face of a range of conflicting and dominant narratives of ‘inclusion’, this paper argues that forms of metal media offer a mediating link to the ‘imagined communities’ of metal fandom, essential  to those wishing to anticipate acceptance within a group that they have little or no prior knowledge of.  Examining a representative sample of metal magazines that are successful within the UK and US markets, the paper argues that the metal music magazine does not offer an essentialist identity to readers but rather a range of ways of accessing metal culture that are variously: commodified, narrativised and deliberative.

True Ayryan Black Metal: The Meaning of Leisure, Belonging and the Construction of Whiteness in Black Metal Music
Karl Spracklen
Leeds Metropolitan University, United Kingdom

Debates in leisure studies over the meaning of leisure, couched in terms of freedom and constraint, have hinged on the postmodern turn (Bramham, 2006; Henderson, 2006; Spracklen, 2006). At the same time, researchers of popular music have theorised the development of neo-tribes as the effect of postmodernity on practices of consumption and identity formation (Hodkinson, 2002; Bennett, 2006). Black metal is a form of heavy metal music taken to extremes of image, content and ideology, exemplified by the church burnings and murders in Norway at the start of black metal’s recent history (Kahn-Harris, 2007). Previous work on black metal (Spracklen, 2006) has linked the discourses of identity in the scene to a Habermasian framework of communicative and instrumental rationalities at the end of modernity (Habermas, 1981:1984). In this paper, previous and new research into the discourses about black metal on an internet forum will be examined alongside scene literature to explore the tensions between black metal as a neo-tribe and black metal as a site of  the construction of whiteness (Garner, 2006) and white (racist, Aryan, heathen) identity. As an insider in the black metal scene, I use my knowledge of that scene to observe discussions on a black metal on-line forum about what it means to be a black metal fan (being “kult”). In addition, six adult black metal fans were interviewed about their involvement and understanding of the music and its extreme ideologies. In identifying the tensions between playful belonging and elitist ideology, it will be suggested that an imagined, white community is being created that resists notions of postmodernity, globalisation and consumption and casts doubt on the completeness of the postmodern turn. In turn, this doubt about the postmodern turn will raise issues for our understanding of leisure.

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How Diverse Should Metal Be? The Case of Jewish Metal
Keith Kahn-Harris
Goldsmiths College, London, United Kingdom

Many critiques of metal mention its ‘whiteness’ as a problematic feature of it. Such critiques are to a certain extent refuted by the increasing number of studies that have demonstrated the national and ethnic diversity in metal scenes across the world. Metal is increasingly invested in notions of location and national origin, resulting in forms of ‘folk metal’ developing in metal scenes around the world. At the same time, there are some striking limitations as to the diversity of global metal. Metal scenes are much less developed in some conspicuously ‘non-white’ places including much of sub-Saharan Africa and many ‘non-white’ ethnic and national groups, such as those of Chinese origin, are under-represented in metal worldwide. It is also true that most of the metal scenes that are dominant in global terms, such as the Swedish scene, are overwhelmingly ‘white’.
This paper examines how far the aesthetic and political validity of metal is dependant on its diversity. To what extent is pushing for ethnic and national diversity within metal an important political, social and aesthetic goal? This paper examines the case study of Jewish metal to illuminate these questions.