I was recently invited by the music department of UC Riverside to give a distinguished lecture as part of their Florence Bayz lecture/concert series. The talk I gave, on December 6, 2023, drew on two chapters of my ongoing book project, titled Heaviness in Metal Music, which is currently under contract with Oxford University Press. I’m posting the abstract below for anyone who is interested in getting a preview of what I’m working on!

The parts of this talk that were about headbanging are an expanded version of one of my first conference papers, and I’ve got an article version of this chapter in the works that I hope to be able to announce soon.

“Headbanging and Heaviness in Metal Music, and their Origins in ‘White Blues’ (Mis)Understandings of Blackness”

Abstract

Metal’s roots in the blues are often invoked at the beginning of genre histories, but this invocation often seems to isolate Blackness in a separated past. I argue, however, that heavy metal’s initial and present conditions are shaped by White (mis)understandings of Blackness, with continuing legacies including two central aesthetic practices, heaviness and headbanging.

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