'Heavy Metal Islam': Rock, Resistance, And The Struggle For The Soul Of Islam
July 16, 2008Steve Appleford of the Los Angeles Times reports: True believers are essential to rock 'n' roll. That's especially true in heavy metal, a sound fueled not just by raw aggression and noise, but by youthful feelings of frustration and rage, railing loudly against rules and authority. The greater the repression, the heavier the metal.
By that measure, any metal to emerge from the most restrictive regimes across the Middle East and North Africa should be the hardest rock of all, feeding off real poverty and oppression largely unknown to American rock fans. It is a landscape of war, dictatorship and uncertain democracy, where songs of horror and intolerance are reality-based, not fantasy. As one metalhead in Morocco told author Mark LeVine, "We play heavy metal because our lives are heavy metal."
LeVine is one of the truest believers of all, a passionate adherent of Afrobeat visionary Fela Kuti's declaration: "Music is the weapon of the future." A professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine and sometime musician, LeVine documents some vibrant, if marginalized, hard rock scenes across the region in "Heavy Metal Islam", and comes away convinced of the "revolutionary potential of a bunch of kids."
Read the entire article from the Los Angeles Times.
A recent segment of the "Talk of the Nation" talk radio program based in the United States, produced by National Public Radio (NPR),focused on "Heavy Metal Islam" and featured an interview with Mark LeVine. Check it out at this location.
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