Heavy metal is healing teens on the Blackfeet Nation

The imagery and the aggression involved in the music can make it seem daunting and somehow damaging, but the metal community is surprisingly chill and friendly, and, sometimes, just so damned silly.

E.g. here's Slipknot's singer live in concert singing the SpongeBob Squarepants theme song, because the audience really wanted him to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5OLtoY70AI

Or, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Devin Townsend signing this thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z1isK2MYWI is not the same Devin singing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsd4ZkFVOHY

  - What Makes Metalheads Happy? A Phenomenological Analysis of Flow Experiences in Metal Musicians [0]
  - Extreme metal music and anger processing [1]
  - The effects of heavy metal music on arousal and anger [2]

[1]: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/arti...

[2]: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-05014-002

I always thought about metal shows and festivals as a "safe space", where people can really be themselves, because you don't have to suffer judgmental remarks about what you wear, what you look like or what you listen to. And most people there get this and feel this as well, which is why the community feels so welcoming and chill. Plus as someone else posted here, it's also all a bit silly and I think most people get that as well.

The music is a front for how they feel about society but individually, they are all just big softies. I know a couple heavy metal bands and they would agree that once the early 20s was out of their system, they just want to bring people together.

When I was a teenager and my parents weren't home, there was a knock at the door and it was an ancient-looking old man. He said he was a medicine man of the Blackfoot tribe. He didn't go into details but he said that since the tribe's numbers had dwindled they had voted to move to a different reservation. The problem was that the reservation they were going to was on land that used to belong to a tribe that was one of their ancient enemies and that he could not allow his tribe's medicine bag to end up there. He had heard that my parents were friends with the (? shawnee ? pawnee) and we had let them build a sweat lodge on our land that before he and his tribe left to go live with the tribe that was taking them in, he wanted to leave the medicine pouch somewhere it could stay on traditional Blackfoot lands. So anyway, he gave it to me and I got to hold it. The leather was old and cracked, the feathers were brittle, and the decorations were old shells and antique beads. I kept it for a while and used it in a couple of sweat lodge ceremonies with my friends before I finally told my dad about it and let him keep it.

the cool people are elsewhere

Metal can provide this, especially live concerts and the fandom is pretty stable: You meet the same people again and again in your tiny very noisy social bubble.

The whole 6-7 or „chicken jerky“ madness felt very similar to classical group formation dynamics: Be part of it by knowing the secret rites and separate yourself from outsiders that don’t.

The sad thing about those TikTok movements as opposed to metal is: The feeling to belong is an illusion. There isn’t real group just a set of strangers that share a fleeting experience that rarely creates something lasting, a „one-night stand“ like experience if you will.

Why weren't my teachers this cool? I would have assigned the entire album though.

The Hu ↑

  Helps if you have speakers that wouldn't look out of place at stonehenge.