Headbanger Anthropologist

These days I’m happy to go to work with my daughter Alisa, since she’s passing her working practice at my workplace, at Unity. Every kiddo in Finland should pass a week or two of working practice with a real job in 8 and 9 grades. We are lucky to unite necessary and positive experiences.

We go to lunch together and talk about stuff, especially about music. Probably, I’m still 15 in some parts of me inside. Anyway, we share a lot of musical tastes. Hence, we talked about heavy metal a lot. Genres. Artists. History of that whole thing.

This reminded me of this absolutely great, deep, and honest documentary about the roots of metal music in the world! It’s called - Metal: A Headbanger's Journey.

Made up, researched, filmed, and produced by Sam Dunn, a Canadian student by that time, metalhead, and musician. He studied anthropology at university and decided to do research about metal music as his thesis! Imagine the level of education freedom and acceptance! I cannot imagine any kind of selection of anything in my high-degree education. But here we go, back in the 800th - 90th a Canadian student could do a modern controversial musical research (probably he even got some money for that, since he traveled and visited a number of famous musicians)… That just cannot settle down in my head.

Why do I think it is worse to mention at all? Because this is not just a list of videos, interviews, and cool phrases. It is the research! He started from the deep roots - classical music, Vagner. He interviewed other researchers and critics in the same area. He outlines a direct comparison between Bach's symphony and Eddy Van Halen music. When I hear that, I cannot say where Bach ends and Van Halen starts. Think about it.

This film is not just for some fun - it’s for a deep understanding of what is going on in the musical field, and how it evolved from origins to what’s now. About the very sense of it.

Some say, that all those so-called musicians are just stupid lucky bastards, singing about all that crap, violence, and killing. I want all such people to take a look at Dee Snider, Twisted Sister frontman. He looks weird, he makes an ugly impression, to be honest. But he is smart. And he says smart things. Back in days, his song was banned in the US for calls for violence. Dee stands for himself in the court and has enough courage to tell the judge that music is a projective material, every listener can project his own experiences into the music. If someone experiences grief for a friend’s surgery - it can be found there. But if dear judge experiences desire to express violence - she will also find it in the music… 

It’s more about actual people, rather than music itself. Take a look if it’s close to you, it’s worse it.