Wallach, Jeremy

English

University of New Brunswick: Centre for Digital Scholarship Journals

163 Film and Multimedia ReviewsDecolonizing Metal Studies: The Documentary Films of Nelson Varas-Díaz and Puerto Rico Heavy Metal StudiesGonzáles-Sepúlveda, Osvaldo, dir. Nelson Varas-Díaz, Executive Producer; Eliut Rivera-Segarra and Sigrid Mendoza, Associate Producers. 2015. The Distorted Island: Heavy Metal Music and Community in Puerto Rico. Distributed by Puerto Rican Heavy Metal Studies.DVD/CD. 158 minutes. Gonzáles-Sepúlveda, Osvaldo, dir. Nel-son Varas-Díaz, Executive Producer; Eliut Rivera-Segarra, Sigrid Mendoza, Rafael Bracero, Xaymara Díaz, Carlos Vélez, and Andrés Rivera-Amador, Associate Producers. 2017. The Metal Islands: History, Culture and Politics in Carib-bean Heavy Metal Music. Distributed by Puerto Rican Heavy Metal Studies.DVD/CD. 138 minutes.JEREMY WALLACHBowling Green State UniversityWhile other metal scholars tend to make sweeping, ungrounded generalizations regarding the genre’s positive impact, Nelson Varas-Díaz and his research team carefully substantiate their claims with empirical data. Such methodological rigor is of immeasurable value, particularly as their studies concern the Spanish Carib-bean, where metal music culture, while longstanding, is not well known to outsid-ers even within the region. The results have been remarkable: in book chapters and articles, Varas-Díaz and his co-researchers have produced valuable studies of race, gender, religion, community, and postco-loniality in Caribbean metal (Varas-Díaz and Rivera 2014; Varas-Díaz et al 2014a, 2014b; Varas-Díaz and Mendoza 2015; Varas-Díaz et al 2016a, 2016b, 2017). In addition to their writings, they have produced two full-length documentaries based on their work in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic (a third on continental Latin America is nearly com-pleted). These films, The Distorted Island (Gonzáles-Sepúlveda, dir. 2015) and The Metal Islands (Gonzáles-Sepúlveda, dir. 2017) are among the most important films ever produced on metal culture out-side the Anglo-American mainstream.The films, each bundled with a two-CD compilation of local heavy metal bands, consist primarily of interviews interspersed with performance footage, and are in Spanish with English subti-tles. While most of the interviewees are bilingual, and some of the metal musi-cians interviewed do sing in English, conducting all conversation in the every-day spoken language of the region ensures maximal clarity of expression.  The Distorted Island employs a stark black-and-white colour palette and emphasizes dark interior spaces, in marked contrast to the stereotypical bright colours and lush outdoor land-scapes that characterize most cinematic representations of the Caribbean. “In the eyes of the world, Puerto Rico was, and still is, known for salsa, bomba, and plena, a Caribbean paradise of tropical rhythms,” FILM REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS DE FILMS164 MUSICultures 46/1according to the opening narration of The Distorted Island. Yet the nearly two hours that follow present a heavier version of Puerto Rican community that does not conform to such clichés. The film depicts how an indigenous metal culture emerged over many years through the testimony of scene participants: writers, musicians, promoters, deejays, and fans.The Distorted Island begins with a history of the Puerto Rican scene, start-ing with the island’s first major heavy metal band, Cardinal Sin. A number of subsequent early bands in the scene, such as Xacrosaint and Nonpoint Factor, were motivated by Protestant Christianity, and are thus part of the global Christian metal movement (see Moberg 2015). The prominent role of Christian metal in a scene with similarly conspicuous sacrile-gious and pagan factions reveals a great deal about its social dynamics. Indeed, a general ethos of tolerance and inclusive-ness appears to characterize the Puerto Rican scene and is likely responsible for both its longevity and continued vital-ity — a paradigmatic example, in other words, of what Bryan Bardine and Mika Elovaara call “unity in disparity” (2017). The Puerto Rican scene portrayed in the film (many years before the Hur-ricane Maria catastrophe) is healthy and diverse, and the documentary provides a sense of the range of bands the scene had produced. A frequent contributor of screen commentary, Eric Morales is the operatic lead singer for veteran local band Dantesco, a group who records in both Spanish and English and whose compositions extol resistance to coloni-alism and Christianity. Puya’s hybridic sounds are also featured: the most success-ful band from the island since Cardinal Sin, Puya signed with a major label and played Ozzfest in 1999. Its sound is an audacious blend of Afro-Latin percussion and groove metal that deviates from the accepted practice of omitting musical ref-erences to Puerto Rican locality in local metal.Other notable groups include the death metal stalwarts Organic (formerly Organic Infest), who play a distorted piccolo bass instead of a guitar; the mys-terious black metal legends Godless; and the bizarre, Nietzschean shock-rockers Humanist (“Humanist represents that part of the human race that is evil,” explains the guitarist helpfully [Gonzáles-Sepúlveda, dir. 2015]). The inimitable all-women group Matriarch (now dis-banded) and its dizzyingly complex music are discussed briefly as well, and one of the founding members is featured.Damaris Negrón, the late singer of Death Arrangement, is a poignant final subject of the documentary. Her sud-den, untimely death in 2012 shocked the scene. The profound, collective mourning in the aftermath appears to have increased communal solidarity among scene partici-pants.The Metal Islands differs from its pre-decessor not only in scope (three islands rather than one) but in subject matter. The film emphasizes the intrusive role of the state in scene formation processes, especially in Cuba, and examines relations with host societies more critically. From a pedagogical perspective, the film’s pace is faster and it is better suited for classroom use.The film resembles its predecessor: its palette is a mixture of washed-out colour and stark black and white, and it is made up of extended interviews and perfor-165 Film and Multimedia Reviewsmance excerpts. One of the main interview subjects is Maria Gattorno, the proprie-tor of Maria’s Patio, a government-run “Culture House” in Havana that became a haven for rockers and heavy metalers. It was later replaced in 1998 by a controversial “Rock Agency” where groups that passed a formal audition could receive Cuban state support. The film then introduces the Avanzada Metallica, a radio program in the Dominican Republic that ran from 2002 to 2012, that dispelled inaccurate media-fed stereotypes and diversified the national metalhead population along lines of race, gender, and class. Next is a profile of the extraordinary Cuban group Tendencia, a band that plays “mestizo metal” from Pinar del Rio, Cuba’s westernmost prov-ince (imagine a cross between Puya and mid-1990s Sepultura). The Puerto Rican segments of the film, rather than focusing on the state or media, explore the metal scene’s appropriations of island folklore, such as the vejigante, a demon intended to “scare people into church” (Gonzáles-Sepúlveda, dir. 2017). The film ends with a recent event in Puerto Rico featuring Dantesco, Tendencia, the Dominican Republic’s Abaddon, and a promise that trans-Caribbean metal alliances will become more frequent in the future.Taken together, these films further the scholarly conversation on music, culture, and politics in contemporary societies. They demonstrate the important contri-butions of offstage institution-builders — often women — to scenic development and maintenance. Each film contains illu-minating discussions of sociality, language, and politics in metal scenes.Sadly, it is premature to depict the international metal scene as having jetti-soned centre-periphery relations: despite the success of bands such as Sepultura, Nightwish, and Chthonic, and outliers like the Norwegian black metal scene, Anglo-American hegemony still holds sway; moreover, Anglophone metal is still the default (in spite of counter-examples like folk metal and Babymetal). As metal scholars, it behooves us to explore beyond the metal metropoles to grasp the phenom-enon’s full contours, which have provided music, identity, community, and artistic expression to so many in the wider world. The Distorted Island and The Metal Islands capture the local and translocal dimensions of three indigenized metal communities, and for that reason are valuable works of engaged scholarship. Moreover, this reviewer at least hopes that their depic-tion of metal on the Caribbean periphery will alert metalheads in other locales to the compelling music they’ve been missing. REFERENCESBardine, Bryan and Mika Elovaara, eds. 2017. Connecting Metal and Culture: Unity in Disparity. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Moberg, Marcus. 2015. Christian Metal: History, Ideology, Scene. New York: Bloomsbury.Varas-Díaz, Nelson and Eliut Rivera-Segarra. 2014. Heavy metal music in the Caribbean setting: Politics and language at the periphery. In Hardcore, Punk and Other Junk: Aggressive Sounds in Contemporary Music, 73-89. Ed. Eric Abbey and Colin Helb. Lanham, MD: Lexing-ton Press.Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Eliut Rivera-Segarra, Carmen L. Rivera Medina, Sigrid 166 MUSICultures 46/1Mendoza, and Osvaldo González-Sepúlveda. 2014a. Predictors of Communal Formation in a Small Heavy Metal Scene: Puerto Rico as A Case Sample. Metal Music Studies 1 (1): 87-103. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Eliut Rivera-Segarra, Sigrid Mendoza, and Osvaldo González-Sepúlveda. 2014b. On Your Knees and Pray! The Role of Religion in the Development of a Metal Dcene in the Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico. International Journal of Community Music 7 (2): 243-257. Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Eliut Rivera-Segarra, Osvaldo González-Sepúlveda, Sigrid Mendoza, and Eric Morales. 2017. Heavy Metal as a Vehicle For Criti-cal Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean: Challenging Traditional Female Gender Roles Though Music. In Connecting Metal and Cul-ture: Unity in Disparity, 57-80. Ed. Bryan Bardine and Mika Elovaara. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Varas-Díaz, Nelson and Sigrid Men-doza. 2015. Ethnicity, politics and otherness in Caribbean Heavy Metal music: Experiences from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Cuba. In Modern Heavy Metal: Mar-kets, Practices and Culture, 291-299. Ed. Toni-Matti Karjalainen & Kimi Kärki. Helsinki: Aalto University, School of Business, Management Studies.Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Sigrid Mendoza, Eliut Rivera-Segarra, and Osvaldo González-Sepúlveda. 2016a. Meth-odological Strategies and Challenges in Research with Small Heavy Metal Scenes: A Reflection on Entrance, Evolution and Permanence. Metal Music Studies 2 (3): 273-290.Varas-Díaz, Nelson, Sigrid Mendoza, Eliut Rivera-Segarra, and Osvaldo González-Sepúlveda. 2016b. Metal at the Fringe: A Historical Perspec-tive on Puerto Rico’s Underground Metal Scene. In Heavy Metal Studies and Popular Culture, 99-120. Ed. Brenda G. Walter, Gabby Riches, Dave Snell, and Bryan Bardine. New York: Palgrave. 

Decolonizing Metal Studies: The Documentary Films of Nelson Varas-Díaz and Puerto Rico Heavy Metal Studies

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Decolonizing Metal Studies: The Documentary Films of Nelson Varas-Díaz and Puerto Rico Heavy Metal Studies

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