Item Details

“A Highland Thing”: Heavy Metal and the Construction of Cultural Difference in Madagascar

Issue: Vol 4 No. 1 (2017)

Journal: Journal of World Popular Music

Subject Areas:

DOI: 10.1558/jwpm.30001

Abstract:

Around the mid-1980s, when Madagascar’s socialist “Second Republic” effectively came to an end, a small but significant heavy metal community evolved in the island’s capital, Antananarivo. While interest in this kind of music declined during the 1990s, echoing developments within global popular music, Malagasy metal never ceased to exist and, during the last ten years, enjoyed renewed popularity. This popularity has, however, always been restricted to Madagascar’s central highlands, which rendered Malagasy metal “a highland thing” in the eyes of both highland and coastal populations. It is because of this regionalized perception, I will argue in this article, that Malagasy heavy metal considerably contributes to the maintenance of a fundamental cultural divide that separates Madagascar’s highlands from its coastal populations, thereby undermining political struggles aiming at the creation of a shared national identity.

Author: Markus Verne

View Original Web Page

References :

Allen, Lara. 2004. “Music and Politics in Africa”. Social Dynamics 30/2: 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533950408628682

Askew, Kelly. 2002. Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Astuti, Rita. 1995a. “‘The Vezo are not a kind of people’: Identity, Difference and ‘Ethnicity’ among a Fishing People of Western Madagascar”. American Ethnologist 22/3: 464–82. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1995.22.3.02a00010

—1995b. People of the Sea: Identity and Descent among the Vezo in Madagascar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Banchs, Edward. 2016. Heavy Metal Africa: Life, Passion, and Heavy Metal in the Forgotten Continent. Tarentum, PA: Word Association Publishers.

Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

Bloch, Maurice. 2001. “The Ethnohistory of Madagascar”. Ethnohistory 48/1-2: 293–99. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-48-1-2-293

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1989 [1979]. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cole, Jennifer. 1998. “The Work of Memory in Madagascar”. American Ethnologist 25/4: 610–33. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1998.25.4.610

—2001. Forget Colonialism: Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: Chicago University Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226114736.001.0001

Coplan, David. 2005. “God Rock Africa: Thoughts on Politics in Popular Black Performance in South Africa”. African Studies 64/1: 9–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020180500139015

Dahl, Øyvind. 1999. Meanings in Madagascar: Cases of Intercultural Communication. Westport, CT and London: Bergin & Garvey.

Dubois, Robert. 2002. L’identité malgache: La tradition des ancêtres. Paris: Karthala.

Edkvist, Ingela. 1997. The Performance of Tradition: An Ethnography of hira gasy Popular Theatre in Madagascar. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis/Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology.

Eggert, Karl. 1986. “Mahafaly as Misnomer”. In Madagascar: Society and History, edited by Philip Kottak, Jean-Aimé Rakotoarisoa, Aidan Southall and Pierre Vérin, 321–35. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Emoff, Ron. 2002. Recollecting from the Past. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2002 [1993]. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.

Evers, Sandra. 2002. Constructing History, Culture and Inequality. The Betsileo in the Extreme Southern Highlands of Madagascar. Leiden: Brill.

Freeman, Luke. 2013. “Speech, Silence, and Slave Descent in Highland Madagascar”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 19: 600–17.

Fuhr, Jenny. 2013. Experiencing Rhythm: Contemporary Malagasy Music and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.

Gay, Denis. 2009. Les Bohra de Madagascar: Réligion, commerce, et échanges transnationaux dans la construction de l’identité ethnique. Münster: Lit.

Graeber, David. 2007. Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Greene, Paul D. 2011. “Electronic and Affective Overdrive: Tropes of Transgression in Nepal’s Heavy Metal Scene”. In Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World, edited by J. Wallach, H. M. Berger and P. D. Greene, 109–134. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392835-005

Hecker, Pierre. 2014. Turkish Metal: Music, Meaning, and Morality in a Muslim Society. Farnham: Ashgate.

Kahn-Harris, Keith. 2007. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford and New York: Berg.

Keller, Eva. 2015. Beyond the Lens of Conservation: Malagasy and Swiss Imaginations of One Another. London and New York: Berghahn Books.

Lambek, Michael. 1998. “The Sakalava Poiesis of History: Realizing the Past through Spirit Possession in Madagascar”. American Ethnologist 25/2: 106–27. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1998.25.2.106

—2001. “Reflections on the ‘Ethno-’ in Malagasy Ethnohistory”. Ethnohistory 48/1-2: 301–308. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-48-1-2-301

Larson, Pierre. 1996. “Desperately Seeking ‘the Merina’ (Central Madagascar): Reading Ethnonyms and their Semantic Fields in African Identity Histories”. Journal of Southern African Studies 22: 541–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079608708511

LeVine, Mark. 2009. Headbanging Against Repressive Regimes: Heavy Metal in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and China. Copenhagen: Freemuse.

Mallet, Julien. 2009. Le tsapiky, une jeune musique de Madagascar: Ancêtres, cassettes et bals-poussière. Paris: Kathala.

Mauro, Didier. 2003. “Rocking in Madagascar: Aspects sociologiques du rock’n roll malgache”. Madagascar magazine 31: 54–57.

Meinhof, Ulrike. 2005. “Initiating a Public: Malagasy Music and Live Audiences in Differentiated Cultural Contexts”. In Audiences and Publics: When Cultural Engagement Matters for the Public Sphere, edited by S. Livingstone, 115–38. Bristol-Portland, OR: Intellect.

—2011. “Songs by Dama Mahaleo”. Special issue: Indian Oceans. Wasafiri 66: 63–71.

Meinhof, Ulrike and Zafimahaleo Rasolofondraosolo. 2005. “Malagasy Song-writer Musicians in Transnational Settings”. Moving Worlds 5/1: 144–58.

Metzer, David. 2012. “The Power Ballad”. Popular Music 31: 437–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143012000347

Raison-Jourde, Francoise. 1991. Bible et pouvoir à Madagascar au XIXe siècle: Invention d’une identité chrétienne et construction de l’état (1780–1880). Paris: Kathala.

Raison-Jourde, Francoise and Solofo Randrianja, eds. 2002. La nation malgache au défi de l’ethnicité. Paris: Kathala.

Rakotomalala, Mireille Mialy. 2003. Madagascar: La musique dans l’histoire. Fontenais-Sur-Bois: Anako Èditions.

Randrianary, Victor. 2001. Madagascar: Les chants d’une île. Paris: Cité de la Musique.

Randrianja, Solofo, ed. 2004. Madagascar: Ethnies et ethnicité. Dakar: CODESRIA.

Randrianja, Solofo and Stephen Ellis. 2009. Madagascar: A Short History. London: Hurst & Company.

Rice, Timothy. 2010. “Disciplining Ethnomusicology: A Call for a New Approach”. Ethnomusicology 54/2: 318–25. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.54.2.0318

Roca Alvarez, Albert. 1995. “Ethnicity and Nation in Madagascar”. In Cultures of Madagascar: Ebb and Flow of Influences, edited by S. Evers and M. Spindler, 67–83. Leiden: International Institute of Asian Studies.

Schmidhofer, August. 1998. “Zur Geschichte der Musik am Merina-Hofe vor 1828”. In Österreichische Musik—Musik in Österreich. Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte Mitteleuropas. Theophil Antonicek zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by E. T. Hilscher, 327–36. Tutzing: Hans Schneider.

Scott, Niall. 2011. “Heavy Metal and the Deafening Threat of the Apolitical”. Popular Music History 6/1-2: 224–39.

Sharp, Lesley. 1996. The Possessed and the Dispossessed: Spirits, Identity, and Power in a Madagascar Migrant Town. Berkeley: University of California Press.

—2001. “Youth, Land, and Liberty in Coastal Madagascar”. Ethnohistory 48/1-2: 205–36. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-48-1-2-205

—2002. The Sacrificed Generation: Youth, History, and the Colonized Mind in Madagascar. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sodikoff, Genese. 2012. Forest and Labor in Madagascar: From Colonial Concession to Global Biosphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Späth, Mareike. 2013. “Madagascar’s Independence Jubilee: A Nation’s Holiday in Times of Crisis”. Nations and Nationalism 19/2: 257–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12019

Späth, Mareike and Helihanta Rajaonarison. 2013. “National Days between Commemoration and Celebration: Remembering 1947 and 1960 in Madagascar”. Anthropology Southern Africa 36/1-2: 47–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580144.2013.10887023

Turino, Thomas. 2000. Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226816968.001.0001

Verne, Markus. 2012. “Heavy Conditions: Power Metal in Madagascar”. In Heavy Metal Generations, edited by A. Brown and K. Fellesz, 37–47. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.

—2013. “The Limits of Contextualism: Malagasy Heavy Metal, ‘Satanic’ Aesthetics, and the Anthropological Study of Popular Music”. Déjà Lu Translations: 1–20. http://www.wcaanet.org/dejalu/translations.shtml (accessed 28 October 2015).

Wallach, Jeremy. 2008. Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997–2001. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

—2011. “Unleashed in the East: Metal Music, Masculinity and ‘Malayness’ in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore”. In Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World, edited by J. Wallach, H. M. Berger and P. D. Greene, 86–105. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392835-004

Wallach, Jeremy, Harris M. Berger and Paul D. Greene, eds. 2011. Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Walser, Robert. 1993. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Weinstein, Deena. 2000 [1991]. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. Boulder, CO: Da Capo.