Heavy metal is healing teens on the Blackfeet Nation

https://www.hcn.org/issues/57-11/heavy-metal-is-healing-teens-on-the-blackfeet-nation/

by cdrnsf • 7 months ago

118 61 7 months ago

hcn.org

platevoltage4• 7 months ago

“Your homework tonight, and I’ll remind you of this later, go listen to the song ‘43% Burnt.’”

Why weren't my teachers this cool? I would have assigned the entire album though.

jaggederest• 7 months ago

When I was in school, before the turn of the century, we were reading Johnny Got His Gun in English class and discovered that Metallica's One is about a very similar situation (though not apparently originally inspired by Johnny Got His Gun), so we got to play it in class and do a report on the two. Received some minor kudos from the class and a reasonable grade from the teacher.

It got slightly awkward as I believe that was just before the Columbine shooting, and after that metal had a more negative reputation for a while.

rsingel• 7 months ago

The video for that song uses excerpts from the movie version of Johnny Got His Gun. I don't know if the songwriting was inspired by it but the video certainly was. Because the video relied so much on the excerpts the band ended up buying the rights to the movie just to not pay royalties.

Hilariously, I won a writing prize about this connection as a teenager in 1989. Fun to see you had a similar experience

PunchyHamster2• 7 months ago

I'd imagine it could backfire as anything school or parents recommend is automatically less cool

platevoltage4• 7 months ago

If all you knew was Slipknot and a teacher hands you a Dillinger Escape Plan song, you would have the opposite reaction.

foxglacier• 7 months ago

Because it's not regular class. It's an extra-curricular club. If you joined the heavy metal club, you might have had similar activities.

ErroneousBosh2• 7 months ago

I knew someone from the local goth scene where I used to live, who was a German teacher. Part of the assigned homework was to listen to Rammstein ;-)

lawgimenez2• 7 months ago

I remember hearing for the first time Dillinger Escape Plan's Calculating Infinity over 20 years ago, life changing record indeed.

platevoltage4• 7 months ago

I had the absolute privilege of seeing them live during that era.

lawgimenez2• 7 months ago

Man I envy you, I live in Southeast Asia and there were only like 50 of us who's into hardcore in my whole country. This was late 90s I think.

kroaton• 7 months ago

I saw their penultimate-ever concert (with Greg Puciato on vocals) in Prague, and it was a religious experience. By far the best concert I’ve ever seen.

megamix3• 7 months ago

Why no one talks about the real issue (root cause) of why they feel this way? And where’s Sitting Bull

PunchyHamster2• 7 months ago

plenty of talking about that. Not all that much doing.

eucyclos• 7 months ago

Talking about why one feels a particular way requires trust in the interlocutor, so I'm not surprised outsiders don't hear anyone taking about it. As for insiders, is it a given they aren't?

rdtsc• 7 months ago

And where’s Sitting Bull

Gentle correction: you meant Crowfoot, or maybe John Two Guns White Calf? Because Sitting Bull, was a Lakota chief.

megamix3• 7 months ago

Excuse my ignorance, I was sincerely trying to understand the background, and had little knowledge about the different chiefs. I wanted to point to the fact “remember your roots”. Thanks!

hexo• 7 months ago

OK lets play some UNO card:

Why no one talks about the pop "music" sounding like a human tragedy? Listening to that whining all day everyday is sickening. And yet (presumably) majority of people do that. Why no one talks about what is wrong with them?

megamix3• 7 months ago

That’s a good point too

belZaah• 7 months ago

A moshpit is the only consensual form of non-sexual violence outside of sports.

leipert• 7 months ago

I dunno. There is always this one, little overweight, sweaty guy without a shirt. Makes it a little bit sexual, doesn’t it?

haddr• 7 months ago

There are also some medieval reenactment groups who do some real battles (with rules of course) and that is totally about fighting with each other. Something like a fight club but set in medieval context.

razakel• 7 months ago

The Royal Armouries in Leeds, England has that. Well worth a visit if you're in the area.

pdpi2• 7 months ago

Not surprised.

The imagery and the aggression involved in the music can make it seem daunting and somehow damaging, but the metal community is surprisingly chill and friendly, and, sometimes, just so damned silly.

E.g. here's Slipknot's singer live in concert singing the SpongeBob Squarepants theme song, because the audience really wanted him to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5OLtoY70AI

Or, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Devin Townsend signing this thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z1isK2MYWI is not the same Devin singing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsd4ZkFVOHY

Insanity• 7 months ago

If you want some more humorous metal, check out the band “NanoWar of Steel”. It’s great.

All their songs are humorous, but for example they have a song with Joachim from Sabaton called Pasadena 1994. It fits the “war metal” style of Sabaton, but instead the song is about football. (https://open.spotify.com/track/65i7HQAWy3ZlSTEyWWFoPN?si=kUm...)

pdpi2• 7 months ago

If we're doing Nanowar of Steel, there's a more seasonally appropriate track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9WWz95ripA

Or, because this is HN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yup8gIXxWDU

jl6• 7 months ago

First he went to Rome to see the pope, now SpongeBob. I’m beginning to like him.

npodbielski4• 7 months ago

IMHO this is about metal heads knowing that each of them is a bit silly, different and strange in their own way. But still able to hang out and have fun doing that. Also I would say that metalheads are generally less aggressive that other people. It may be connected that you are able to just channel that aggression in headbanging during concert :) If we are talking about concerts: knowing the fact that you are not exactly 100% normal and still be able to sign the lyrics with hundreds of other people, this feeling of unity, awareness that you are not alone, it is great. Especially in the current world when useless internet points, in a manner of likes, are to many humans source of feeling about themself. We are after all social creatures. Being accepted is very important to us.

estimator7292• 7 months ago

Pretty much any time weirdos and outcasts get together it's the nicest people you've ever met

somenameforme• 7 months ago

Metal is just a giant community of really nice people pretending to be mean. Bikers are mostly the same as well. By contrast I've found hipsters to mostly be quite mean people pretending to be cordial.

This all somehow reminds me of a roommate I had in college. There were 4 of us and he was a physics major who was incredibly distant, straight laced, and stand-offish to the point of feeling like he was somewhat sociopathic. He always had an mp3 player and headphones on, whose contents we could only speculate about. One day he was gone and left it on his bed, so of course we had to have a listen - mostly tongue in cheek joking about it undoubtedly being some sort of screeching death metal type stuff. Somehow it was rather even more terrifying when it turned out to be endless 50s era happy-go-lucky tunes.

dmd• 7 months ago

Bikers (my dad was one) used to be that. The culture has been almost entirely taken over by MAGA.

ahazred8ta• 7 months ago

There is a surprising amount of Japanese doo-wop https://duckduckgo.com/?q=japanese+doowop&ia=videos&iax=vide...

poppingtonic• 7 months ago

Thank you for the links - I can't stop replaying Love

SAI_Peregrinus• 7 months ago

I always like to mention Epica for these sorts of things. They've got songs with full death metal style growling like Serenade of Self Destruction[1] in the same concert as a performance of Pergolesi's 1736 setting of the hymn Stabat Mater Dolorosa[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hW7EfiBwm0

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhtOORYTGx8

Doxin• 7 months ago

I've never been in a more orderly queue than when I went to a Sabaton concert.

I figure the music is the outlet for aggression, so there's no need to find an outlet in picking fights or things of that nature.

mariusor2• 7 months ago

Metal music offers a sort of catharsis for people that can't scream into the void, but feel a need to. It's not about manifesting violence, but containing it and directing it into a creative outlet.

npodbielski4• 7 months ago

Exactly. you can't shout to your teachers and parents 'Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me' but you can in the concert. :)

ErroneousBosh2• 7 months ago

My small son loves listening to Rage Against The Machine, having heard Guerilla Radio as the intro music to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and always wants it on when we're driving round to granny's house about 25 minutes away.

Spotify plays the same sequence every time, Guerilla Radio first, then Bombtrack, then Bulls on Parade, then Take the Power Back, all of which are the radio edits.

Then Killing in the Name, which is most definitely not the radio edit, but by judicious use of the little pedal and if we don't get stuck behind a tractor too long, we're just pulling up outside and switching off the ignition at juuuuuust the right moment.

Once he's bigger he'd better be sneaking the full version behind my back on headphones when he thinks I don't know. It's nothing he doesn't hear - and worse - from the bigger kids at school.

reactordev3• 7 months ago

Punk rockers would disagree and tell you, “Yes, yes you can.”

krapp• 7 months ago

The problem with catharsis, though, is it can often be mistaken for praxis.

Heavy metal, RATM and the like are just more means of capitalist consumption. They might make you feel like a rebel, but you aren't actually rebelling against anything. In some ways I think the commodification of counterculture has resulted in the neutering of activism in the West, people want to listen to the media and spread the memes but no one but the Nazi scum ever wants to follow through in any way that matters.

IDK, maybe I'm just cynical but once you hear this stuff being played in establishment spaces you start to view it all as a sick joke.

mariusor2• 7 months ago

I avoided speaking before, but RATM is not what I associate with metal music.

I didn't want to gatekeep what others view it as, but "trve" metal music is still made in basements and garages by people with that are as far from capitalist consumption as you can get. Look at Encyclopedia Metallum, there are tens of new releases every day, and most of them barely get listeners - even when released on free/public places like Bandcamp. You can't reduce an entire subculture to its mainstream offshoots.

harvey9• 7 months ago

In the words of the great warrior poet Sandi Thom:

When the head of state didn't play guitar,

Not everybody drove a car,

When music really mattered and when radio was king,

When accountants didn't have control

And the media couldn't buy your soul

And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything

dvlsg• 7 months ago

There's plenty of smaller metal and hardcore bands with a DIY and community first mentality that often barely break even to travel and play shows.

ahmedfromtunis• 7 months ago

Apparently there are multiple studies that show a link between listening to heavy metal and being 'happier' and/or 'less angry':

  - What Makes Metalheads Happy? A Phenomenological Analysis of Flow Experiences in Metal Musicians [0]
  - Extreme metal music and anger processing [1]
  - The effects of heavy metal music on arousal and anger [2]

[0]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321893408_What_Make...

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/arti...

[2] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-05014-002

niemandhier• 7 months ago

I often have the feeling that kids today lack the experience of being part of something.

Metal can provide this, especially live concerts and the fandom is pretty stable: You meet the same people again and again in your tiny very noisy social bubble.

The whole 6-7 or „chicken jerky“ madness felt very similar to classical group formation dynamics: Be part of it by knowing the secret rites and separate yourself from outsiders that don’t.

The sad thing about those TikTok movements as opposed to metal is: The feeling to belong is an illusion. There isn’t real group just a set of strangers that share a fleeting experience that rarely creates something lasting, a „one-night stand“ like experience if you will.

noufalibrahim• 7 months ago

I think you've nailed it and it's kind of depressing in a way since there were a lot of things kids were part of just a few decades ago. The local football group, the bunch that gathered together to watch a TV show at one guys house that would air at 7:30 pm on a weekend, the circle of cousins kids would hang out with during a stretch of holidays, the circle of people who they'd meet regularly during a congregational prayers, etc. etc.

These things are as missing as they're necessary in kids' lives and (non-mainstream?) music gives people some semblance of community that has a stabilizing effect.

The Discord "communities" don't have the same effect unless the group actually meets in person regularly.

metalman• 7 months ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8dCGIm6yc

The Hu ↑

  Helps if you have speakers that wouldn't look out of place at stonehenge.

pezezin• 7 months ago

Thank you for the link, I didn't know them and they sound pretty awesome.

waihtis• 7 months ago

I'm willing to bet both metal and combat sports share some same primitive release mechanism that helps curb bad emotions.

dvratil• 7 months ago

I always enjoyed being a metal head, the music is the main reason of course (I like it), but the community is a very big aspect of it too.

I always thought about metal shows and festivals as a "safe space", where people can really be themselves, because you don't have to suffer judgmental remarks about what you wear, what you look like or what you listen to. And most people there get this and feel this as well, which is why the community feels so welcoming and chill. Plus as someone else posted here, it's also all a bit silly and I think most people get that as well.

reactordev3• 7 months ago

Metal heads are the nicest people.

The music is a front for how they feel about society but individually, they are all just big softies. I know a couple heavy metal bands and they would agree that once the early 20s was out of their system, they just want to bring people together.

grindermaster• 7 months ago

in grind we crust

skirge• 7 months ago

and good for ADHD. At 110% speed.

flanked-evergl• 7 months ago

doubt

dustractor• 7 months ago

I'm glad to hear that the Blackfoot tribe is still going strong. I'm a nobody white guy but I've always felt a special connection with them. Here's why:

When I was a teenager and my parents weren't home, there was a knock at the door and it was an ancient-looking old man. He said he was a medicine man of the Blackfoot tribe. He didn't go into details but he said that since the tribe's numbers had dwindled they had voted to move to a different reservation. The problem was that the reservation they were going to was on land that used to belong to a tribe that was one of their ancient enemies and that he could not allow his tribe's medicine bag to end up there. He had heard that my parents were friends with the (? shawnee ? pawnee) and we had let them build a sweat lodge on our land that before he and his tribe left to go live with the tribe that was taking them in, he wanted to leave the medicine pouch somewhere it could stay on traditional Blackfoot lands. So anyway, he gave it to me and I got to hold it. The leather was old and cracked, the feathers were brittle, and the decorations were old shells and antique beads. I kept it for a while and used it in a couple of sweat lodge ceremonies with my friends before I finally told my dad about it and let him keep it.

bentt• 7 months ago

HN should relate to metal because it’s just nerds who have taken a different path. You could say computer nerds are intellectual nerds, and metalheads are emotional nerds who love the music made by music nerds.

the cool people are elsewhere

Heavy metal is healing teens on the Blackfeet Nation

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