MUS 214-01 - Topics in Sonic Creativity: Global Heavy Metal

4 credits (Spring)

Heavy metal music has found its way around the world through the activities of humans’ social relationships. Musically, heavy metal is loud, abrasive, and aggressive, but its nuances of social meaning are sensitive to ideas of politics, class, race, and, environment. In this class, we will explore how this ostensible music of exiles contributes to place-making, creative culture sharing, and is used to negotiate modernity through social change. Students will get a chance to partake in the foundations of ethnographic fieldwork and create projects that manifest in different modalities including, article writing, film making, musical composition, podcast interviewing, and festival curating. In studying the subtexts of reasons for people to occupy heavy metal spaces (as audience and active performer) we will uncover what heavy metal’s role is in the world’s many social relationships.

Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Hiranmayena