Andrei Mihai
I find it very interesting that heavy metal, a genre traditionally thought of as being ‘dirty’ and rough is attracting more and more scholars around it. Recently, it’s been finding more and more space in Universities, and now, a full course was dedicated to heavy metal, at the Leeds Metropolitan University.
“There are also some academics who think heavy metal is a great evil, and we still see some papers written that claim metal fans are more likely to be criminals and so on,” the professor added. “This is just bad science, but every time someone publishes these crude generalizations the press picks up the story. This journal is the journal of the International Society For Metal Music Studies. This learned society is partly for academics who have a professional interest in metal, but also those in the industry who want to be a part of Metal Music Studies, including musicians and journalists, and fans.”
Professor of Leisure Studies Dr. Karl Spracklen gave a rather brief speech about the course, explaining that it will focus on black metal, but will mention all notable types of heavy metal.
“Heavy metal is an important part of modern culture and everyday life, so studying heavy metal enables us to understand both of those things,” Spracklen told Cvlt Nation (via Blabbermouth). “For me, the interesting thing about heavy metal is the tension between metal’s strong sense of being part of a non-mainstream subculture, and metal’s place in the industry of modern pop and rock music. That’s because I’m essentially a sociologist.
But I’m still curious how this will go; apparently, it will be more sociology than music, but just because it’s academic and it’s taught in college… that doesn’t really mean anything. Of course, personally, I absolutely love the idea, but will it be actually useful? What will this course bring in addition to say, reading Wikipedia articles and listening to music? Spracklen explains:
“Other heavy metal scholars might be interested in the way the music is constructed, or the meaning behind song lyrics, or the history of the scene, or the use of heavy metal as a philosophy or ideology of life. Heavy metal is just a subject field, a lens, through which we can think about problems in other academic disciplines.”
I think this has a lot of potential, but it’s also pretty risk to venture in such a field, especially when considering possible animosity drawn from other teachers.
“There are also some academics who think heavy metal is a great evil, and we still see some papers written that claim metal fans are more likely to be criminals and so on,” the professor added. “This is just bad science, but every time someone publishes these crude generalizations the press picks up the story. This journal is the journal of the International Society For Metal Music Studies. This learned society is partly for academics who have a professional interest in metal, but also those in the industry who want to be a part of Metal Music Studies, including musicians and journalists, and fans.”
Oh well, it’s a great initiative, I’d really like to wish everybody involved ‘Good luck’!
