Black Metal Symposium
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Hideous Gnosis, a "Black Metal Theory Symposium," will take place on December 12 at Brooklyn's Public Assembly. (Details are here.) It looks to be a presentation of papers, along with moderated discussion. The presenters include Nicola Masciandaro, a university English professor; Brandon Stosuy, whose writing portfolio includes Pitchfork, Stereogum, and The Believer; and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, guitarist/vocalist for Liturgy.
What it is about black metal that attracts academics? You don't see people writing treatises like "Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya" or "'Remain true to the earth!': Remarks on the Politics of Black Metal" on thrash or doom. I get wary when academia crosses with metal. Deena Weinstein and Keith Kahn-Harris have done good sociological work on metal, but I have little inclination to explore further. When brainy people take metal seriously, that helps justify it to the non-metal world, which is nice but not necessary. Louis Armstrong comes to mind: "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." So does Bruce Lee: "Don't think! Feeel!"
Scott Wilson, one of the presenters, says in this blog post:
Black metal and academic discourse are no doubt heterogeneous and cannot be conjoined, but in bringing one into proximity with the other it is, I believe, our expectation that this clash should result less in the academic illumination of black metal than in the blackening of discourse itself wherein the forces of black metal restore some of the powers and dangers of discourse which the procedures of academic institutions seek to ward off and master by controlling and delimiting them.
Black metal in 2009 is a curious source of "power" and "danger." 15 or so years after its prime, those elements have faded. In terms of danger to anything, black metal is pretty low on the list now.
Labels: black metal, clee, features
17 Comments:
Academics (and mainstream critics) still use terms like "dangerous" and "revolutionary" to refer to plain ol' rock music, which is in its 50s and is about as dangerous and revolutionary as Dixieland jazz. So if you're waiting for academics to get over the mystique of black metal, don't hold your breath. And yes, obviously the bands encourage this type of shit, even the ones who make anti-media/anti-"false" listener pronouncements that amount to shrieking "Don't look at me! Stop looking at me!" at the top of their lungs.
Quoting Louis Armstrong and Bruce Lee sorta renders any writing about music pointless, doesn't it? Music: It's visceral, not intellectual. Well, OK, sure. That's prima facie! But anyone arguing some music listening can't be intellectual or lend itself to intellectual avenues is simply incorrect.
Most of the expository pieces on this site asked questions that are not foreign to grad roundtable discussions. The framing is the same; only difference is the jargon.
While I certainly don't think Black Metal is dangerous these days, I don't give a shit if professors and their students take a stab. Can't be worse than three-quarters of the writing being posted on blogs or printed in magazines.
Pretentious people writing about pretentious music. Imagine that!
Stew - Yes, those quotes are certainly contextual. Jazz and martial arts are disciplines requiring intellectual study. But when it comes time to pull the trigger, the bullet will trump any discussion about it.
The more I write about music, the more I feel like I'm signifying nothing.
There must be some happy medium between commodified consumption of art and po-mo musings about it.
this blog!
It's something to think about, isn't it? Why black metal from all the subgenres.
I'm not sure but I wouldn't say it's hurting music to have academics ponder on things at all. It probably *is* indicative of various things though, socially.
I agree there's just something off-putting on the surface of it when you read "academic symposium on black metal" but it has to do with the words "black metal" being thrown at us again and again and again constantly in the last 10 years I think. If it was "academic symposium on doom metal" it would sound like a curiosity towards which we'd be more positively predisposed, right?
Also a thought:
"black metal is (or isn't) dangerous".
Perhaps it would be fortuitous to use a language that allows for a differentiation between a musical genre and the social spectacle that surrounds it. Black metal itself (whatever that may be, surely scenesters have been attempting to define it for a decade) was never dangerous. It was (perhaps still is for some?) the spectacle around it that was primarily arousing. That's what black metal enthusiasts are trying to keep alive, the spectacle, not any inherent quality of the music, which was from the beginning, fragmented and contradictory in aesthetics and purpose. All virgin music is as an impulse, before you sit down and look at yourself doing it, when you're just doing it, you're not concerned with keeping to the formula that sustains the spectacle, right? The doing is interesting enough.
I watched American Hardcore the other day and it was amazing for me how often the word 'scene' was mentioned in the interview segments. The music from the clips of the bands playing sounded completely interchangeable (besides the originating 3-5 bands) and it seemed to me like these people really really wanted to belong and the music was incidental to getting their scene running. I think a similar thing happened with scandinavian-type black metal after 1993 or perhaps even earlier if you were astute enough to notice it.
Unlike hardcore though which sounds exactly like you thought it would if you came to it spectacle-first, perhaps there's something to the violent cognitive dissonance between the actual music and the spectacle around it that explains why scenesters are hanging on to the norse murder mythology for dear life. I listened to my first black metal without knowledge of the early 90s Norwegian happenings and I experienced it as a continuation of death metal, it sounded odd but I eventually found a space inside me for it blah blah blah but imagine if you're coming to black metal with all this mythology around it, you expect the most extreme and devilish murderous music ever and all you get is some droning guitars over a tinny sounding drumbeat and somebody yelling in the far distance. The music wasn't (at least for the first few years) obvious at all, not like murder, stabbings, burning churces and satanism are obvious. That cognitive dissonance I think, explains why so many listeners hold on to the mythos so urgently, because without it they can't really justify listening to the music itself, because they don't really like it in itself.
also,
"There must be some happy medium between commodified consumption of art and po-mo musings about it."
That seems like a fascinating desire of yours, Cosmo. Would you mind explaining more?
Isn't writing/talking about the "commodified consumption of art" a po-mo musing?
Louis Armstrong comes to mind: "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." So does Bruce Lee: "Don't think! Feeel!"
I can't help but think that this is the exact type of thinking that keeps people slaved to religion. "Turn off your mind and just feel the presence of the Lord." is a sentiment I've been slaved to for most of my life.
Kirk Cameron has some words of wisdom for us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ5Pv_gZ4N4&feature=related
People should feel their music because feeling is part of the human experience. If someone chooses to follow a religion then they should feel that too. But to say that either is mutually exclusive from thinking is cognitive dissonance.
Cosmo, your talent for musing about metal inspires people to look deeper into the music they grew up banging their heads to. Thinking and feeling can very easily coexist. Illogical fanatics would have us believe otherwise.
This reminds me of Valter's semi-defunct blog, that mixed black metal, sociology/anthropology, post-modern analysis, and the like.
The archives are well worth reading.
I think it's time that Anal Cunt wrote a song called "Huntley Hunt-Hendrix is Gay"
Helm - I'm not sure black metal fans "don't really like it in itself," especially if, as you say, it may not have a coherent self. But I like the point about cognitive dissonance.
My "happy medium" point isn't complex. People tend to under-analyze art (consume it mindlessly like TV) or over-analyze it (see the Internet).
Stew - Touché!
Miska - Actually, if one must have a religion, it is possible and desirable to question it actively. Often that leads to a stronger practice.
Sigivald - Valter's blog is/was the upper limit of the amount of academicspeak I can take, but, yes, it's good.
The black metal of the last 10 years has been arguably more single-stream than the older stuff. Like below you linked 5 black metal bands on some label, I listened to couple of songs from each band and it all sounded pretty much the same to me on the textural and dynamic and production and performance level. These people must have "black metal" on the mind a lot when they make their music.
About your happy medium, at the rate you post about new releases you'll always register most with the consumerist mindset, I'm sorry. If you're uncomfortable with what you're bringing to metal discourse, then reconfigure.
You don't see people writing treatises like "Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya" or "'Remain true to the earth!': Remarks on the Politics of Black Metal" on thrash or doom.
Vide, inter alia, this.
* I'm mostly thankful this is NOT a symposium on the sociology or anthropology of people who listen to Black Metal. (Black Metal: is it a threat to our children?!?)
* Comments such as Pretentious people writing about pretentious music. Imagine that! are just reactionary (and worse, boring) nonsense.
* The metaphysical content of Black Metal makes discussion very different that just the "feel" of jazz
* Here's a disturbing thought: late 1960s grad students having roundtable discussions on hippy music and LSD. What were the positive benefits from that rap session?
Nicola's link is worth parsing, so I'll repost it:
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/092/masciandaro.shtml
Rigoberta - I think a discussion of hippie music now would actually be worthwhile. Deena Weinstein pointed out that heavy metal's long hair came from the hippies; today's indie rock appropriates liberally from the hippie aesthetic. It's interesting that after Altamont, hippie-ness has survived even as the original hippies became today's bankers.
Helm:"... The black metal of the last 10 years has been arguably more single-stream than the older stuff...."
I'll argue against that hypothesis! A difficulty for the theorists re Black Metal is determining what is change, progression, ossification, fluctuation, or departure. And there _are_ boundaries to BM, witness the new sub-sub-genre adjective of "blackened" (e.g., "blackened thrash grind", "black n' roll", etc.).
In the past 10 years there has been an explosion of one-person releases, and also the on-going excavation of the past (LLN, etc.), all of which have changed BM (not just performers but also listeners). It's not something that only gets more (or less) orthodox.
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