Global Metal

I found this weeks subject matter and readings very interesting because we have spent so much time talking about globalization in the business world. It is true that the world is becoming more and more connected. Less than one hundred years ago, the only way to get across the world was by boat which would take months and months. However with the advent of the commercial airplane, you can travel to China in a matter of hours. On top of this, with the introduction of the Internet in the last twenty years, you can send files and talk to people from across the world instantaneously. It is absolutely amazing and it comes by no surprise that this phenomenon has affected the music world and more specifically the metal world.

Watching Sam Dunn's documentaries Metal: A Headbangers Journey and Global Metal, he points out the differences in metal across the world. It was so interesting to learn about how metal differs from place to place. I thought it was very interesting how in Bali (I think) they sang about topics of everyday life. Instead of singing about fictional brutalities or about witches and dark topics, they just sang about their lives. When you listen to the song, it doesn't sound that way because they sing with a harsh, raw voice. In contrast, when San Dunn went to Norway, he found that the bands sang about ancient Norwegian gods. It just shows that the sound of the metal stays constant, but what they sing about is completely different.

The article Heavy Metal Cairo, the author talks about metal in the middle east. In this example, metal heads were persecuted by the government and put into jail to be tortured. On January 22, 1997, The dawn “fajr” occurred where "machine-gun wielding Egyptian security forces in full body armour bust down the doors of some 70 middle-class homes, dragging the dreamers from their beds and locking them in squalid jail cells." I find this so outrageous that the government would come into people's house while they were sleeping and arrest them for listening to metal. They persecuted them by asking them personal questions that were ridiculous such as "do you spit on graves?" The only thing I can relate this to, but on a much lesser scale, is when the US government and church groups were so against metal and tried their hardest to rid it or censor it. However, Dee Snider represented metal as a whole in front of a grand jury and stood up for metals rights. Maybe this is something that needs to happen in these countries.