Defiant Sounds

Heavy Metal Music in the Global South

Edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz, Jeremy Wallach, Esther Clinton and Daniel Nevárez Araújo

Far from its sites of origin in the Global North, metal music thrives in the hands of musicians, fans, and scholars throughout other geographies of the world.

This volume brings together authors working from and/or with the Global South to reflect on the roles of metal music throughout their respective regions. With contributions spanning Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, and Indigenous Nations, the essays position metal music at the epicenter of region-specific experiences of oppression marked by colonialism, ethnic extermination, political persecution, and war. The authors stress how metal music is used to face these oppressive experiences, foster hope, and promote an agenda that seeks to build a better world. It may be that metal’s greatest contribution to human emancipation will be in the years to come, in places its originators never imagined.

Nelson Varas-Díaz is professor of social-community psychology at Florida International University’s Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies.

Jeremy Wallach is professor of popular culture in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University.

Esther Clinton taught in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) for sixteen years on topics ranging from traditional narrative to popular novels to advanced cultural theory. Esther’s tragic, untimely death at age 50 cut short her exploration of these topics, but her many students carry on her legacy.

Daniel Nevárez Araújo is assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto RicoRío Piedras.

Reflects on the social roles of metal music and stresses how it faces oppressive experiences and aims to build a better world.

Lexington Books

March 2023

418 pages

21 illustrations

Part of the Extreme Sounds Studies: Global Socio-Cultural Explorations series

Hardback

978 1 7936 5185 3 eBook

978 1 7936 5186 0

Music • Genres & Styles / Heavy Metal

Queer Opera

By Andrew Sutherland

In Queer Opera, Andrew Sutherland argues that operas often reflect characteristics of the society and epistime in which they are written but that they also do much more than that; operas have agency.

LGBTQ+ social, cultural, and political issues have become an increasingly defining feature of twenty-first century life, and as agency for change, composers have turned to opera to underscore the lived queer experience. Sutherland posits that operas written before the sexual revolution of the mid-twentieth century utilized a codified language both in the libretto and score, communicating with those observers open to a queer reading. He explores the growing trend of local, small-scale, independent opera companies seen around the world towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century and argues that this has emboldened queer artists to reclaim opera as a queer space. He further argues that for several centuries, opera houses have been safe havens for queer composers, librettists, performers, and designers, and yet it is only relatively recently that any serious attempt at queer representation in operatic works has begun to be realized.

In this book, he examines narratives and music of selected operas to walk through queer history in Western societies and shines a light on how many of opera’s well-known characters, based on historical figures who represent pivotal moments in the queer story, are responsible in a variety of ways for the continued struggle for queer acceptance.

Andrew Sutherland is director of music at Methodist Ladies’ College and adjunct lecturer at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

Explores narratives and music of selected operas to argue that composers have turned to opera to underscore lived queer experiences and that they have served as agents for change.

Lexington Books

May 2023

310 pages

30 illustrations

Hardback 978 1 6669 0607 3 eBook 978 1 6669 0608 0

Music • Genres & Styles / Opera

She’s a Badass Women in Rock Shaping Feminism

By Katherine Yeske Taylor

During the rise of second-wave feminism in the ‘60s and ‘70s, political activists were not the only ones at work to usher in a more equitable world. In the music world, female rock performers were pursuing a revolution of their own: rejecting the industry’s manufactured pop personas and the unacknowledged labor they contributed to male-led groups, women took control of their own music, messages, and images. Even while they often used music to critique rampant chauvinism, they made some of their greatest impacts by paving the way for subsequent musicians to simply be true to themselves. In this way, they helped to transform the music business and society more broadly.

In She’s a Badass, rock critic Katherine Yeske Taylor interviews more than a dozen of these influential, fearless women about their experiences in an era when female rockers were not given the same respect and opportunities as their male peers. Each chapter focuses on an individual artist, taking an in-depth look at her most memorable experiences in the music business that helped cement her place on the list of influential artists. From Suzi Quatro (the first female rock star to front her own band, singing and playing bass as well as writing her own songs) through superstar singer-songwriter Jewel, She’s a Badass reveals the incredible talent, determination, and humor these women deployed in order to further the feminist cause while building brilliant musical careers.

Katherine Yeske Taylor began her career as a rock critic in Atlanta in the 1990s, interviewing Georgia musical royalty such as the Indigo Girls, R.E.M., and the Black Crowes while still a teenager. Since then, she has conducted several hundred interviews and contributes regularly to Billboard, Spin, and American Songwriter, among others. She is a longtime New York City resident and is extremely active in the downtown rock scene.

coming soon

Profiles of the female rock performers who took control of their careers and transformed the music industry from the inside.

Backbeat

February 2024

256 pages

20 illustrations

Hardback with dust jacket

978 1 4930 7254 5 eBook

978 1 4930 7255 2

Music • History & Criticism

Darker With The Dawn Nick Cave’s Songs of Love and Death

By Adam Steiner

From his early work with The Birthday Party to the future sounds of Ghosteen, Nick Cave has rewritten the language of rock ‘n’ roll. Darker with the Dawn uncovers the history and deeper meanings behind Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ most well-known songs from “Tupelo”, “The Mercy Seat”, “Red Right Hand”, “Stagger Lee”, “Into My Arms”, to “Higgs Boson Blues” and beyond.

The book explores Nick Cave’s life in music drawing upon his inspirations of the Bible, Greek myth, and literature, as well as his enduring passion for gospel, blues, and progressive rock. Steiner reflects upon Cave’s journey from his childhood in Australia, struggles with drug addiction, his young fascination with the nightmare landscapes of America’s wild west and the southern gothic towards a reckoning with his own sense of Christian spirituality. In a career spanning four decades Cave’s songwriting has moved from the saints and sinners of the traditional murder ballad to piano-based heartbreak songs, deconstructed garage rock and ambient fever dreams delivered through minimalist electronica. Adam Steiner dives into the world of a complex songwriter who, in his universal expressions of love and death, continues to speak to us of the light and shade of humanity.

Adam Steiner is the author of Into The Never: Nine Inch Nails and the Creation of The Downward Spiral and Silhouettes And Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters. He writes about music, street-art culture, architecture, poetry, and transgressive fiction and lives in London, England.

Uncovers the history and deeper meanings behind Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ most well-known songs.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

December 2023

240 pages

Hardback

978 1 5381 6035 0 eBook

978 1 5381 6036 7

Music • Individual Composer & Musician