Acts of Resistance: Heavy Metal Music in Latin America is a different documentary, about metalheads who use music to generate a change in their communities, which gives a lesson in hope, since it is not only about this genre, but about how to act to change a reality, commented the director of the film, the Puerto Rican Nelson Varas-Díaz.
In his fourth film work, the Florida International University academic addresses how energetic and powerful metal sounds, beyond a thunderous riff or its frenzied speed, have inspired both groups and gangs of the genre to take concrete actions in their countries and work together with communities that experience some kind of injustice.
Filmed in Colombia, Ecuador and Guatemala, Acts of Resistance… will begin its journey through various festivals around the world, starting in Mexico City, as part of Cínica, Mexico’s Music Film Festival, where it will premiere on the 11th of this month at 7:00 p.m., in the open-air forum of the Cineteca Nacional, to later go to Ecuador and Colombia. It will close the year in Kenya.
“In January, the English version of the magazine Metal Hammer –One of the most prestigious of the genre– will release a report on the documentary and it will be available, free of charge on YouTube for a month. It is a way of spreading it in these times ”, commented Varas-Díaz.
The director stated that this will be his last work on Latin American metal, as he has already done The Distorted Island: Heavy Metal Music and Community in Puerto Rico (2015); in The Metal Islands: Culture, History and Politics in Caribbean Heavy Metal Music (2016) focuses on the metal scenes of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but from a cultural perspective. While, Songs of Injustice: Heavy Metal Music in Latin America (2018) talks about the bands that sing about injustices on the continent.
The last one is about people who with metal do something practical, in everyday life, to change the situations of injustice that have been described in the other documentaries. They go from saying to fact with the intention of changing their life and that of the communities to which they belong
, he indicated.
Every time, he adds, there are more collectives or groups of metalheads – not necessarily bands – that are opting for social activism, and although the documentary does not present all cases, it is a small sample of what is happening in the continent, where the historical-social awareness of the followers of this genre has made them active.
Although the Colombian scene is the best known of those portrayed in the documentary, the film did not focus on their bands, albums or concerts, but on how the deathmetaleros de Massacre, probably one of the most famous groups in Latin America, addresses issues as strong as violence in their country.
With a group like that it was possible to have a different conversation. We do not talk with Álex Oquendo (their leader) about their albums, but about what they are doing to rescue the historical memory of their country after the armed conflict, since there are stories of atrocities that their songs translate into lyrics and they seek not to remain in the I forget
, he pointed out.
Varas-Díaz indicated that there is a scene that reveals the essence of his work. When the Ecuadorian band Curare is questioned about whether his lyrics are political, he replies that it is not only that metal has to do with politics, but that it goes beyond to sing about something, is to act on something
.
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First book in English
While, Heavy Metal Music in Latin America. Perspectives from the Distorted South (Lexington Book, 2020) is the first book to be published in English on this genre in Latin America, since much of the literature is published in Spanish, which means that the Anglo-Saxon world has no idea what is happening, academically speaking, he commented Varas-Díaz, who, together with researchers Daniel Nevárez Araujo and Eliut Rivera-Segarra, was in charge of compiling and editing the texts that make up the volume.
Very few Latin American researchers publish their work in English and in journals from the global north, particularly in Europe and the United States, which is where this type of text is most widely known.
, he recounted.
The volume, which has 14 articles by Latin American authors, has an introductory chapter from the editors in which readers are shared how metal is thought and investigated in a region of the world that has suffered so much oppression, very different from how it is experiences in developed countries.
The authors share their vision from a cultural perspective, unlike publications from developed nations, where most of the books focus on the history of gender in the region, leading non-Latin American followers and researchers to believe that that story is the only one that exists.
“One of the things that we disjointed in the book is that there is a vision that metal arises in Europe, filters to the United States and then reaches Latin America, when in reality it arrives simultaneously (to North and Latin America); for example, when Metallica released Kill’em all (1983), when the metal explosion occurred in the United States, in the rest of the American continent there were already records of this genre, “he explained.
Migrant gender
All chapters give a particular focus to metal studies in Latin America, addressing this phenomenon as axis and center, reflecting how the socio-political and socio-cultural phenomena of their respective countries impact this genre.
The axis of many of the texts is that metal in Latin America has served as a way of processing experiences of violence. In the introductory chapter it is stated that this genre has several axes. One is how Latin Americans take music and locally transform its sound, content and visuals; another has to do with purpose, and yet another is about particular oppressive contexts.
There is a text regarding the migration of Latin American musicians who form metal bands in different parts of the world.
For example, the Uruguayan Martín Méndez, bassist of the Swedish Opeth; to the Mexican Marcela Bovio, singer of the Dutch Ayreon, and to the members of La Armada, Dominicans who now live in Chicago, among others.
The book is for sale on Amazon. Varas-Díaz published on his Facebook profile a code with which the volume can be purchased with a 30 percent discount on the publisher’s page until the end of the current month.
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