Event Title
Session 5A: Metal under Totalitarianism
Location
Kennedy Union Ballroom
Start Date
7-11-2014 9:30 AM
End Date
7-11-2014 10:45 AM
Description
Wolf-George Zaddach: "'On through the mist and the madness, we are trying to get the message to you': Heavy and Extreme Metal Behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s"
Heavy Metal music developed from around 1970 and major stylistic differentiation began occurring in the 1980s. Today, the 1980s are considered the “golden age” of heavy and extreme metal (Walser 1993: 3). The music and the codes of heavy metal spread globally at varying rates, with some regions and scenes developing and experiencing changes sooner than others. Behind the Iron Curtain, heavy and extreme metal were embraced surprisingly early on as a ‘Kulturwelt’ by the youth. For the political elite, the nomenklatura, it was seen more as a threatening influence of the enemies of state socialism in the broader Cold War discourse.
In order to examine the historiographic specifics of metal scenes behind the Iron Curtain, this paper will be structured around the following questions: Under what specific circumstances could a metal scene develop, grow, and survive in state socialism? What social and aesthetic/musical practices emerged in comparison to western metal scenes like those in Western Germany, or the USA? To what extent did cultural transfer behind the Iron Curtain play a role in the development of certain limitations, adaptations, networks, and cultural production? And, more generally, how should such an examination be figured against the backdrop of the Cold War?
This paper focuses mainly on the 1980s GDR scene, but incorporates additional contextual sources regarding the scenes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Ukraine. The main body of primary research is drawn from oral history interviews and archival research, mainly from files of the GDR’s secret service, the Ministerium für Sicherheit.
Boris von Faust: "Metal Culture in Media and Public Opinion during the Decline of the Soviet Union"
In recent years, heavy metal music and its fans received a heightened consideration of the academic community, not only from merely cultural perspective, but also from social, psychological, and cultural standpoint. However, metal’s role as a valid political force remains largely overlooked by academics and critics alike. Nevertheless, as a countercultural movement, heavy metal was instrumental in altering political worldview of an entire generation of Eastern European youngster during the final decades of the Cold War, which reflected in younger generation’s resistance to the domination of Communist ideology. As a first-hand witness and participant of these cultural, political, and social transformations, I chose to explore the role of metal counterculture in the Soviet press during the final decade of the USSR’s existence in my graduating thesis, entitled “Banned in the USSR: Counterculture, State Media, and Public Opinion during the Soviet Union's Final Decade.” The knowledge of original primary sources and my personal experiences in the Soviet metal underground would offer Western metal scholars, researchers, and aficionados a unique perspective on metal’s truly underground status behind the Iron Curtain. The presentation would cover metal’s coverage in Soviet youth media, the periods of official ban on the metal culture, the confrontation between the Kremlin’s official ideology and the Soviet metal fan base, and the music’s eventual rise above the adversity and towards nation-wide acceptance as one of the dominant cultural youth movements in the years of Gorbachev’s democratization reform. The presentation will also cover some of the consequences of the post-Soviet era on the metal culture, including the disturbing connection between Russian neo-fascist metal scene and the current imperialist politics of Putin’s regime.
Heather MacLachlan: "Burmese Metal (and other musics) in the Western Media"
Burma, also known as The Union of Myanmar, underwent a putatively democratic transition in 2010, and since then Western journalists have published a sharply increasing number of news articles about the country and its culture. A number of these articles, which appear in the most widely-circulated English-language media outlets, seek to describe Burma’s “underground” music scene. “Underground” music, as the term is used by Burmese insiders, includes heavy metal, punk and some hip hop musicians and their fans. As the author of a book about Burmese pop and rock music, I have often been consulted – or quoted without consultation – for these articles, and I am struck by how little my scholarly assertions, based on years of ethnographic research conducted in the Burmese language, weigh on the published products. The narrative that Western journalists consistently recount about contemporary Burmese musicians always involves suffering under the pre-2010 military regime, and bravely forging a path toward personal and political freedom. In this presentation I will argue that this narrative owes less to the facts on the ground and more to the journalists’ (their editors’) desire to tell a story which will appeal to Western readers. Furthermore, certain Burmese musicians are adroitly leveraging this narrative in order to pursue success outside of Burma, success which they have been so far unable to achieve at home.
Session 5A: Metal under Totalitarianism
Kennedy Union Ballroom
Wolf-George Zaddach: "'On through the mist and the madness, we are trying to get the message to you': Heavy and Extreme Metal Behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s"
Heavy Metal music developed from around 1970 and major stylistic differentiation began occurring in the 1980s. Today, the 1980s are considered the “golden age” of heavy and extreme metal (Walser 1993: 3). The music and the codes of heavy metal spread globally at varying rates, with some regions and scenes developing and experiencing changes sooner than others. Behind the Iron Curtain, heavy and extreme metal were embraced surprisingly early on as a ‘Kulturwelt’ by the youth. For the political elite, the nomenklatura, it was seen more as a threatening influence of the enemies of state socialism in the broader Cold War discourse.
In order to examine the historiographic specifics of metal scenes behind the Iron Curtain, this paper will be structured around the following questions: Under what specific circumstances could a metal scene develop, grow, and survive in state socialism? What social and aesthetic/musical practices emerged in comparison to western metal scenes like those in Western Germany, or the USA? To what extent did cultural transfer behind the Iron Curtain play a role in the development of certain limitations, adaptations, networks, and cultural production? And, more generally, how should such an examination be figured against the backdrop of the Cold War?
This paper focuses mainly on the 1980s GDR scene, but incorporates additional contextual sources regarding the scenes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Ukraine. The main body of primary research is drawn from oral history interviews and archival research, mainly from files of the GDR’s secret service, the Ministerium für Sicherheit.
Boris von Faust: "Metal Culture in Media and Public Opinion during the Decline of the Soviet Union"
In recent years, heavy metal music and its fans received a heightened consideration of the academic community, not only from merely cultural perspective, but also from social, psychological, and cultural standpoint. However, metal’s role as a valid political force remains largely overlooked by academics and critics alike. Nevertheless, as a countercultural movement, heavy metal was instrumental in altering political worldview of an entire generation of Eastern European youngster during the final decades of the Cold War, which reflected in younger generation’s resistance to the domination of Communist ideology. As a first-hand witness and participant of these cultural, political, and social transformations, I chose to explore the role of metal counterculture in the Soviet press during the final decade of the USSR’s existence in my graduating thesis, entitled “Banned in the USSR: Counterculture, State Media, and Public Opinion during the Soviet Union's Final Decade.” The knowledge of original primary sources and my personal experiences in the Soviet metal underground would offer Western metal scholars, researchers, and aficionados a unique perspective on metal’s truly underground status behind the Iron Curtain. The presentation would cover metal’s coverage in Soviet youth media, the periods of official ban on the metal culture, the confrontation between the Kremlin’s official ideology and the Soviet metal fan base, and the music’s eventual rise above the adversity and towards nation-wide acceptance as one of the dominant cultural youth movements in the years of Gorbachev’s democratization reform. The presentation will also cover some of the consequences of the post-Soviet era on the metal culture, including the disturbing connection between Russian neo-fascist metal scene and the current imperialist politics of Putin’s regime.
Heather MacLachlan: "Burmese Metal (and other musics) in the Western Media"
Burma, also known as The Union of Myanmar, underwent a putatively democratic transition in 2010, and since then Western journalists have published a sharply increasing number of news articles about the country and its culture. A number of these articles, which appear in the most widely-circulated English-language media outlets, seek to describe Burma’s “underground” music scene. “Underground” music, as the term is used by Burmese insiders, includes heavy metal, punk and some hip hop musicians and their fans. As the author of a book about Burmese pop and rock music, I have often been consulted – or quoted without consultation – for these articles, and I am struck by how little my scholarly assertions, based on years of ethnographic research conducted in the Burmese language, weigh on the published products. The narrative that Western journalists consistently recount about contemporary Burmese musicians always involves suffering under the pre-2010 military regime, and bravely forging a path toward personal and political freedom. In this presentation I will argue that this narrative owes less to the facts on the ground and more to the journalists’ (their editors’) desire to tell a story which will appeal to Western readers. Furthermore, certain Burmese musicians are adroitly leveraging this narrative in order to pursue success outside of Burma, success which they have been so far unable to achieve at home.