Kuadrumana

The phrase “Islamic heavy metal” may sound oxymoronic
to American ears. The images of Islamic
culture portrayed in the mainstream media generally
do not include head banging, but as the
Islamic Heavy Metal showcase at SXSW Music will prove,
there is much more to life in Islamic countries than what we
often see on the nightly news.


Mark LeVine, one of the organizers of the Islamic Heavy
Metal showcase and author of the book, Heavy Metal Islam,
argues that metal actually belongs in Beirut more than it
does in Hoboken. A professor of Middle Eastern studies at
University of California-Irvine and a guitarist himself, LeVine
spent five years traveling through the Middle East and North
Africa, researching and rocking. “I think the center of metal
right now is in the Middle East,” says LeVine. “It’s where
metal makes sense, sonically, emotionally, thematically. Talk
about ‘Napalm Death,’ they’ve had napalm dropped on their
countries. They understand the anger.”


The numbers support his point; bands such as Morocco’s
Lazywall or Lebanon’s The Kordz play to tens of thousands of
fans at festivals. As can be seen through LeVine’s book, plus
the recent documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad (featuring
the Iraqi band Acrassicauda) and an upcoming EMI Records
compilation called Flowers in the Desert, more western attention
has turned to this rarely examined segment of Islamic
culture.


Still, even the biggest of these bands does not live a rock
and roll fantasy. Playing heavy metal music (or any “western”
pop music) is not easy. For one thing, as Moe Hamzeh of
the Kordz explained, there is no culture of support: “In the
Middle East, there is no music industry for anything outside
of pure Arabic music. You will get no support from media,
from sponsors, from government ... They almost consider you
like an alien.”


Nor is money the only concern. The Iranian government
will not permit public performances of this kind, meaning
Iranian metal/punk bands like Yellowdogs and Kuadrumana play either
in private homes or on college campuses, and even then, they risk
beatings at the hands of the morality police. When asked to explain
his greatest dream as a musician, Arash Rahbery of the Iranian band
TarantisT says simply: “To tour in my country.” Other governments
are more permissive, but even in Lebanon and Morocco, the threat of
police crackdown is never far away.


As a result of the constant cloud of turmoil and official censorship,
these artists have overcome obstacles that would be unfathomable to
many of their American and European counterparts. “It’s one thing to
suffer for your art, and it’s another to suffer,” says LeVine. “Getting your
studio bombed out of existence is different than having to work a day
job at Best Buy.”


Still, it is precisely these harrowing circumstances that have helped
to feed one of the world’s most fertile heavy metal scenes. “When the
nightly mortar attack and machine gun fire is happening, and you’re
10 years old, the only thing that will drown that out is hard rock,”
explains LeVine. “As Reda Zine from Morocco said, ‘We play metal
because our lives are heavy metal.’ ”


However, neither Hamzeh nor Rahbary considers his band to be
political, although as Hamzeh points out, there is really no such thing as
being apolitical in Lebanon or Iran, and any band playing loud, aggressive
music with lyrics about death tends to sound more subversive in
Tehran or Beirut than it would in Milwaukee. But their motivation
comes from the fact that playing this music is what they love, and when
they were young and heard Black Sabbath, Metallica or Iron Maiden,
that music spoke to them, just as it has spoken to other angry, frustrated
kids all over the world. - SXSW Magazine