Well if I thought the video of the Israel soldiers dancing in Hebron was tricky to respond to, this one really takes the cake:
I get the concept: by dancing in the ruins of concentration camps we prove that we have survived etc. I'm not someone who generally takes a po-faced view of these things. Still, for me this just doesn't come off. It's not moving, it's not funny, it's not transgressive, it's not fun - so what is it? I'm going to have to leave that as a rhetorical question...
During my time doing research on the Israeli metal scene in 1998 I heard an interesting story: Apparently an Israeli metal fan was doing his military service in an undercover unit in Hebron. Every day he was woken up early by the call to prayer from a nearby minaret. So he snuk into the mosque and replaced the tape of the call to prayer with one of Sepultura's 'Beneath the Remains' and the next morning Hebron was awoken by death metal.
Now this story was never corroborated so it's possible that it's some kind of urban myth. But, assuming it is true, it raises some thought-provoking questions about the politics of metal. On the one hand, the story highlights the oppressive nature of the occupation - the ability of Israeli soldiers to create mayhem at will. You can hear echoes in this story of how music has been used in military oppression and torture in the Iraq war and indeed other wars. On the other hand, you can read the story as a kind of nihilistic form of resistance at the insanity of the religion-stoked war between Israelis and Palestinians. Let's not forget that the militant settlers of Hebron, whom the IDF is protecting, are hardly metal fans. Israeli conscripts do not stop being metal fans once they join up and the story provides a hint of the complex ways in which a love of metal can both reinforce a kind of imperialism and stoke a kind of disorder that undermines military discipline in potentially subversive ways. As ever, metal is an ambivalent presence within 'real world' politics.
This story has been on my mind again due to the viral circulation of this video, made by an IDF unit in Hebron:
Unlike the Sepultura story, this prank does not appear to disturb the daily lives of Palestinians in Hebron. The dance seems to have taken place on a back street and the music itself looks like it's been overdubbed. But there's a similar kind of politics at work: the gap between the relative freedom of the IDF to 'play' in Hebron versus the lack of freedom of Palestinian residents is still stark. Again, the IDF soldiers seem to inhabit another world, not only from the Palestinians, but from the religious Jewish settlers in Hebron. The incongruity of Ke$ha's music in this context is even greater than Sepultura's (at least death metal is a sound with resonances of conflict) and perhaps this, together with the image of soldiers performing a choreographed dance while fully armed, gives the video a kind of whimsical quality that is sort of endearing.
Are some contexts too 'serious' for pranks to be appropriate? Can the pranks be read as cynical comments by soldiers stuck between two sets of fundamentalists? Does the lack of freedom of the Palestinians to engage in such pranks neccessarily mean that no one else should either?
I'm not sure what the answers are to these questions. What I do know is that they are worth taking seriously. As ever, popular music opens doors on the complexity of the political.
I was priveliged to have an article of mine translated for a Hungarian journal called Replika in a themed issue called‘Extreme
Scenes.’ Music, Genres and Online Communities'. The title of my article 'Unspectacular Subculture?: Transgression and Mundanity in the Global Extreme Metal Scene' (which first appeared in a collection I co-edited called 'After Subculture') was translated as: 'Nem látványos szubkultúra? Határátlépés és hétköznapiság a globális extrém metal színtéren'. Here's the first paragraph:
A szubkultúrakutatás CCCS-féle modellje1 szerint a szubkultúrát „látványossága” defi niálja, ugyanakkor éppen e tulajdonsága okozza a kényszerű vesztét is, hiszen ezáltal folyamatosan ki van téve a médiaipar és az állam kitüntetett fi gyelmének. A CCCS kortárs kritikusai helyesen értelmezték újra a „normális”, „nem látványos” ifj úsági kultúra értékeit, és azt is kimutatták, hogy még maguk a látványos stílus termelői is híján lehetnek a látványos szubkultúra iránti egyértelmű elköteleződésnek. A látványos szubkultúra azonban továbbra is legalább annyira érdekli a kutatókat, mint a médiát és az államot. Bármennyire nem szeretnénk használni a „szubkultúra” szót olyan terek leírására, amelyekben látványos gyakorlatok jönnek létre, és bármennyit is változtak ezek a terek az 1970-es évek óta, a CCCS egy olyan kutatási témát határolt be, amely továbbra is nagy érdeklődést vált ki. Mindezen túl, az elhatárolás ezen gyakorlata azt jelenti, hogy a szubkultúra „kísértete” még akkor is ott marad a látványos ifj úsági kulturális termelésről szóló kutatásokban, ha azok más elemzési keretet és kifejezéseket használnak e terek leírására.
Now I'm fully aware of the dangers of exoticism, but even so isn't there something fabulously evil-looking about this paragraph? I love languages where the rules of pronounciation are so foreign to me that even written in roman letters they appear utterly alien (Gaelic is another example). I have no idea at all how to pronounce these words and it's only my knowing what the article is about that gives me a clue as to the meaning of some of them ('szubkultúrakutatás' is presumably 'subcultural'). There's a real frisson to being distanced from ones own words in this way and I feel priveliged to have been chosen for translation.
I have always had a soft spot for Hungarian. The sound of the language and the way it reads feel totally unique and it has nothing in common with its neighbours. It has a very distant relationship to Finnish and various Siberian languages but it is effectively a language apart. Hungarian's mystery, is redolent of a Magyar heritage of horsemen and nobility that cannot help but evoke powerful (if cliched) images. It's all terribly metal and this was brought home again when I witnessed the thrilling performance of Attilla Csihar at the recent Sunn0))) gig in London. His impossibly deep voice, used as a source of sub-bass drones that compete with the guitars of O'Malley and Anderson; his use of strange costumes; his esoteric English and Hungarian lyrics - all these endow him and his music with a wieghty, almost scary charisma. How can a track entitled 'Big Church [Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért]' (off 'Monoliths and Dimensions') fail to thrill?
If I have any Hungarian readers they may feel patronised by this post. In my defence though, I'd point out how incredibly bland it can be speaking English. It's a language I love but it's also the world's Esperanto and it has no sense of esoteric power. I do speak Hebrew though and it's letters and sounds do seem to have an aura that I find in Hungarian and other languages. Sometimes though, it is thrilling to gaze at the words of an unfamiliar foreign language.
The 'Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium' has just been held in New York. The theory part seems pretty heavy duty, but undoubtedly playful. As a simple-minded sociologist I wasn't there but lots of the papers are available on the site as audio or texts for download. Enjoy!
My personal website kahn-harris.org has been revamped and has a lot more up to date links to my various publications.
I've self-published a collection of my journalism, reviews, essays and music criticism. It can be downloaded here or you can buy a copy at the same location.
Viz is definitely a slightly-guilty pleasure for me. God help me I've been reading it since 1986. At it's best it's irreverant, has an uncanny way with everyday speech and is vulgar without being brainless. Still, particularly in recent years, there's way too much stuff that's simply purile. Issue 191 though contains a strip that's absolutely on target. 'Thoughtful Bully' features a playground bully who justifies himself via the language of edgy, transgressive art. It absolutely nails people like me who make all kinds of excuses for dodgy art. I am duly humbled:
At the Cologne metal and gender conference a few weeks back I was interviewed for an interesting sounding documentary on music and violence for the German radio station WD3. The documentary was called Appetite for Destruction - Der Sound der Gewalt and you can download a recording I made of it here:
On 9 November 2009 - the same day as the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - I presented a lecture and workshop in Berlin. The presentation was part of a project held at the gallery arttransponder called 'Beneath the Remains' .
For my talk I used a neat piece of presentation software called Prezi. I've since updated the presentation to include sections of written text (that I wrote for the exhibition catalogue) to make a kind of audio-visual essay. You can view it here and I've also embedded in this blog post below:
I'm not sure if anyone in Berlin reads this blog, but here's some info on a metal-related workshop I am presenting in Berlin next Monday 9th November 2009 at 5pm. It's part of a really interesting art project called Beneath The Remains taking place at arttransponder:
arttransponder
is inviting you to the workshopJourney
Into the Known
9th November 2009, 5pm
In this presentation and workshop, Keith Kahn-Harris, author of ‘Extreme Metal:
Music and Culture on the Edge’ asks: ‘How do we mourn the death of the
unknown?’
In the first half Dr Kahn-Harris will put on a
multimedia presentation arguing that the history of metal scenes since 1989 are
a symptom of a wider process of the ‘unknown becoming known’ whose apotheosis
was the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989.
In the second half of the workshop, participants will be asked to try and
capture and mourn their first exposure to a subculture, scene or previously
secret world. Using art, writing or other creative mediums participants will
produce a collective ‘scrapbook’ of poignant and nostalgic moments in the death
of the unknown. The event will take place in English. There is a
limited number of places available for this event, so please register at [email protected]. Alternatively you can call the arttransponder art
space office on 49(0)30 – 30642400, Thursday between 12 a.m.- 5 p.m. and Friday
/ Saturday between 2 p.m.- 7 p.m. within the framework
of the exhibition of BENEATH
THE REMAINS- Translations ofEstrangement and the Politics of Survival
Exhibition / Lecture / Public Art Projects / Workshop / Experiment in Ambient
Hearing
16th October - 14th November 2009 Artists:
Eduard Constantin (RO) l Cristina David (RO) l Andreea Faciu (RO/DE) l Vincent
Faciu (RO/DE) l Tatjana Fell (DE) l Bogdan Ghiu (RO) l Keith Kahn Harris (GB) l
Dumitru Oboroc (MD) l Ondrej Svadlena (CZ) l Tim Wolff (DE) A project curated by
Vlad Morariu l (RO)
I was priveliged to attend the Heavy Metal and Gender conference in Cologne last week. It was a great occasion and Florian Heesch did a great job organising it. It was great meeting up with old and new eggheadbanger friends - it feels that a community of serious, committed metal scholars is starting to emerge.
Ill health and lack of time prevents me recording my thoughts on the conference in more detail but one thing I've been thinking a lot about is my relationship to the metal scene. Would I still describe it as 'ambivalent'? I still have real difficulties with certain aspects of metal - the persistent sexism for one thing. The beercentricism of metal culture also bores me (although I would drink more regularly if my health was better).
I can't deny that I am much more comfortable with the hipster-end of the metal continuum and I sometimes cling to Sunn0))) like a drowning man to a liferaft. Sometimes I feel like an apologetic metaller. Maybe I'm a self-hating Jew and a self-hating metaller?
Yet at the same time, the emerging eggheadbanger community is beginning to convince me that perhaps metal is important, perhaps it has lessons for all.
Recent Comments