Global Metal

documentary by UVic anthropolgy major

There is an article in the Saanich News entitled “Heavy Metal Gets Academic Treatment at UVic.” The article is about a two-day Symposium here called South of Heaven: Religion and Heavy Metal.

 I tried to commit Alex and Duncan to going to this with me. No takers.

They have a grandmother who is interested in this huge group of metal heads who are in post-secondary institutions and the boys are pretty well interested in other things.

Today was the last day of Congress 2013. I knew there was a heavy metal display at the university library so I went to check it out. Not more than a four foot counter’s worth of CD’s, books and videos – and that is not stacking them, but laying them out side by side. “More advertising about this than the display merits”, the woman on the other side of the counter said. Not to give up, I looked at the display of images on the website, giving them a careful reading, and then looked at the four page list of the references, noting that the movie, Global Metal, that is showing tonight, is also in the library.

I got a key to a viewing room and watched the film. My interest was piqued. A few years ago there was a set of lectures at the UofC on the blues – I think 3 one-hour lectures and then a blues concert. I learned to love the blues because I went to them. Now I think I am going to like heavy metal – at least the part of it where my brain will analyze and intellectualize it.

Here are the titles in the Lecture Series for tomorrow:

1. Running with the Devil: The meaninglessness and incredible meaning of religious imagery in metal.

2. In Search of Orthodox Metal: Musings of a Convert

3. Middle Eastern Metal: A region-wide musical discourse of existential and political struggle and aspiration.

4. Unblack: Christian Black Metal

5. Man that you Fear: Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar as Social Prophet

6. The Devil Wears Denim: Heavy Metal, Satanic Folk Culture and Evangelical Parody

And now, from the documentary Global Metal, a funny vignette from Sao Paulo, Brazil and the band called Sepaltura. In speaking of their genesis, the leader says, we had no money, and we didn’t know how to play instruments. But we wanted to become a band. Other heavy metal bands wore bullet belts. One of our members said we should take batteries and glue them to our belts and from a long way away, no one would know the difference. We didn’t think that would work, but it did.

Should be fun tomorrow, but I think I am going alone. There is something about the way I am framing this that does not make it interesting to the boys. 

Should I have been talking about head banging and moshing instead?

Arta