Last updated on May 10th, 1999
Copyright (C) 1998/1999 by Nada AbiSamra.
https://members.tripod.com/Nadabs/Homepage.htm
|
Lebanese Youth Today. |
Outline
Introduction:
In the beginning, in the world (seventies)
The origins of Hard Rock
The difficulty to give a stiff definition (due to the many different
styles it contains)
I - A music, a culture, a fashion, a violent way of living.
The music and the themes: the different styles: Hard Rock, Heavy
Metal…
The fashion: clothes, hair and the bad attitude.
Life on the edge, the involvement of the teenagers in the music
(Hard Rock,
a philosophy for some listeners).
II – A social phenomenon which conveys a message of rebellion
Hard Rock, the rejection of a certain quota of values in the society.
Hard Rock as an aggressive reaction to the war and post-war crisis.
Hard Rock as the only means of expression for a category of teenagers
today.
Conclusion:
To forbid this music is to say that we do not want to hear what these
teenagers want to say. It encourages them to stay out of the society and
get more and more violent.
All they want is to be respected for what they think.
Introduction
Rock music, as we know it nowadays, spread around the globe in the
early sixties, with bands such as The Beatles or The Rolling Stones that
were to influence others musically. It followed the Rockn'roll wave which
had been a real revolution in modern music. Rockn'roll was a way for the
youth back then to express their rebellion towards the old values of puritanism
in the United States. Rock music really appeared in the midst of the sixties
with the Vietnam war and the first demonstrations of those we call today
the hippies. People say those times are the end of America's "age of innocence"…
Rock became more and more violent, more and more mystical. Songs
like Paint it black
(1969) about the Vietnam war or artists like Jimmy Hendrix were
to announce the reign of a violent style in music: Hard Rock.
It's difficult to know exactly which was the first band to ever
play that style since the
influence of each band is quite different. Anyway some major bands
appeared around 1967, those bands are today considered as part of the Underground
style, though they are Hard
Rock bands, but still they seem to have nothing to do with what
the music we know
nowadays (the music was violent, but the message was peaceful).
Those bands
are Black Sabbath (1968), Led Zeppelin (1968), Deep Purple (1968),
Whitesnake,
Rainbow… In the beginning of the seventies appeared the Heavy Metal
style, influenced
mainly by these bands with bands such as Judas Priest (1974), Iron
Maiden, AC/DC,
Scorpions. It was called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The
eighties were to see
various new styles such as the Speed Metal (Megadeth), the Thrash
Metal (Slayer, Sepultura, Metallica), the Death Metal (Venom, Bathory,
Marduk). In the nineties appeared Doom (Paradise Lost, Moonspell, Theater
of Tragedy, My Dying Bride), and the Black Metal, the satanic metal (Deicide,
Rotting Christ, Cradle of Filth)…
It's very difficult to define all those waves that were to follow
Hard Rock. Each band
developed different styles, different theme, and sometimes it was
very hard to lock them
into specific movement.
Here is the difficulty in dealing with such a topic: it is so vast
it needs accuracy, precision, that which people omit to have nowadays.
But let us go further in our presentation: in a first part, we will
try to show how hard rock is much more than a music but almost a way of
living and in a second part we will deal with it as a social phenomenon
that conveys a message of rebellion.
I- Facts:
A music, a culture, a fashion, a violent way of
living.
Many teenagers adopt something I will call "the hard rock way of
living". These boys and girls are seduced by the violence contained in
the music. They listen to the music to get out their rage, to prove they
exist. In Lebanon today, few are the people who still listen to hard rock
and heavy metal. Those who listen to hard rock are around 40 years old,
and as for the heavy metal only a few bands like Iron Maiden or Scorpions
are still popular among the youth. No, today, the Lebanese youth listen
to Thrash metal (that's why Metallica are coming to Lebanon on the 20th
of June 1999), to Doom, and, unfortunately (because of all the advertisement
made around it by the prohibition of compact discs and all the suicide
and satanic stuff) to Black metal.
The themes developed by hard rock and heavy metal are not definite.
Hard rock themes were mostly social. Heavy metal talked about many things:
Iron Maiden used to take historical, biblical or literature themes (they
made a song called Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, after Coleridge). Speed and Doom Metal mostly spoke about
myths and legends from the past.
Thrash "dealt with" social problems and violence in the society.
Black Metal, as it name
suggests, is the Antichrist metal. Of course, there is also a style
called Christian Metal, but it doesn't seem to be very popular, at least
surely not as popular as Black Metal. Nowadays, in Lebanon, teenagers listen
mostly to Thrash, Doom, and more and more
during the last years to Black Metal. As for the music, it might
seem very simple to
classify the styles, but sometimes, a song can be close to two different
styles, since,
for example, heavy metal is inspired from hard rock (the underground
style)… So the best
thing to do is to refer to the name of the style. Of course, the
heavy metal is noisy, with rapid rifts and solos of guitar and a very high-pitched
voice, which is, sometimes, very close to screaming. Speed metal, which
is inspired from heavy metal, is even quicker than its predecessor with
more solos and more screaming. Thrash is different, it is a very low-pitched
singing, with a heavy rhythm. Doom is the same with some passages inspired
from baroque and gothic classical music (Gregorian chants…).
Finally, Black Metal is very heavy as a music and the most violent
of all. The music (if
this can be called music) is a magma of noises and screams which
is very difficult to
tolerate…
This music proved itself to be a total success, and its influence
grew more and more over
the teens all around the war. We notice it found its public in Lebanon
right after the war, in the climate of violence. But everything that works
today does it thanks to advertisement and, of course, music doesn't escape
this rule, from Michael Jackson to the Beatles… Several products were "born"
from heavy metal music: first, a strong love for the leather clothes, which
are "the" stage disguise of most of the bands, a large scale of skull pendants,
necklaces and ring, of tee-shirts with graves, skulls, bones, crosses,
lightning and the Metallica, Megadeth, Sepultura, Slayer (…) logos. As
we observe the behavior of a heavy metal fan, we will notice his will to
be seen, his wild and violent character, his ability to permanently search
for quarrels and to play "the bad guy". This might be a way to overcome
some problem, like shyness, to transfigure his introversion, to explode
his anger of life… So some of those listeners feel their life is a continual
struggle. It seems social problems (family, school…) forces them to act
like this, and hard rock indirectly encourages them to express their despair
by the means of violence and over reactions
This makes us wonder what's the importance of this music for the
youth today. Is it only
a fashion, a way to dress and a way to act, some sort of role they
play in front of people or a whole way of thinking? Well, it seems, as
we see how the youth defend so fiercely this music, that it's far more
than just a bunch of tunes they listen to two or three times a day… Hard
rock has become a reference in music for the musician, some of the lyrics
are in all students homework. Sometimes, it pushes some of these teenagers
to do "extra work" in order to get more information on the myths and legends
told in songs. Metal bands have become an example, a charismatic model
to follow by the youth who fall under the influence of all those guitarists
and lead singers such as Axl Roses (the leader of Gunsn'roses, or Alice
Cooper). This is connected to the star system process in general nowadays,
which we encounter in cinema as well when actors or actresses have "groupies".
Some of the "addicts" to the metal adopt the same values, the philosophy
of their favorite bands. For example, they cherish the number eleven if
they are fans of Iron Maiden (eleven being the number of chaos, disorder
and lack of spirituality)… These facts show that hard rock is much
more for the youth than "just another kind of music".
But it would really be a crime to end the development of the topic
here. If really Hard
rock is a not a rubbish and repulsive kind of music, then why do
teenagers listen to it?
Why does it stick where there is sorrow, despair, pessimism, where
there is a strong urge
for violence? What made the Lebanese youth quite fond of it? This
we try to analyze in
our second part.
II- Analysis:
Hard rock as a social phenomenon which conveys
a message of rebellion
As we saw in the first part, Hard rock has a strong audience in the
circle of the Lebanese
youth. The first reaction we have when we hear this (and sometimes
notice it ourselves) is: "Why?", when it's not a reaction of total rejection
to the concept of our kids listening to this "brain damaging music"… I
personally believe that the conditions of listening vary according to the
country. As for Lebanon, it is most probable that the war and the post-war
crisis played a very big role in that field. We all know how much war is
destructive, how much it eats us slowly, spreads, makes itself comfortable
like some bloody parasite. It consecrates the reign of violence, an open
and unlimited era of violence. And violence reflects in everything, including
music. Which guides us to heavy metal. The best proof of it is that lots
of the metal songs talk about war like Civil War of Gunsn'roses, Holy Wars
of Megadeth, Disposable Heroes of Metallica or War Pigs of Black Sabbath.
These songs condemn war and violence. And even when the war with ballistic
weapons ends, the War rages on, under other forms: social and economic
crisis, and, last but not least, a mental war, a mental crisis with a strong
feeling of emptiness. This "structure" is the most favorable to hard rock.
It totally fits the theme developed by the music and the songs. So
it is useless to prevent teenagers from being attracted to violence when
they live in a climate of chaos and disorder. No music reflects the aching
of the society better than hard rock.
Among all these overreactions, there ought to be something positive.
A Black Sabbath song called Children of the grave, the lyrics say:
"Revolution in their minds, the children start to march against the world they have to live in. Oh, the hate that's in their heart. They are tired of being pushed around and told just what to do. They'll fight the world until they've won and love comes flowing through. Children of tomorrow live in the tears that fall today, will the sunrise of tomorrow bring in peace in any way, must the world live in the shadow of atomic fear, can they win the fight for peace or will they disappear? So you children of the world listen to what I say, if you want a better place to live in spread the words today, show the world that love is still alive you must be brave, or your children of today are children of the grave".
This text might well be the best summary of Hard rock: a music that
expresses the fear, the anguish of young generations in their daily confrontations
with the world's sad realities. Hard Rock is a fight for freedom against
determinism ("they're tired of being pushed around and told just what to
do"), a continuous battle for peace and against war ("must the world live
in the shadow of atomic fear"). It is also the worry of building a better
place to live in and the rejection of all the values of the "old world"
("The children start to march against the war they have to live in"/ "If
you want a better place to live in spread the words
today"), and finally the anxiety of failing and disappearing in
the wilderness of today's
world. Here, and for the first time, we reach the message of love
intrinsic to Hard rock and covered by hatred and anger. For the first
time, we can analyze Hard rock and discover its idealistic (and pessimistic)
rebellion against the unevenness of society…
Finally, hard rock remains the only means of communication with
a bunch of young boys and girls who lock themselves in their suffering
and refuse to communicate with family, friends… They find in the songs
messages against AIDS, against suicide (True Belief,
by Paradise Lost, Fade to black, by Metallica), against drugs (Master
of puppets, by
Metallica)… Of course, there are many bands that convey very immoral
messages such as the satanic bands that spend most of their time insulting
religion. But there is always a
good side and a bad side in every single thing. Should it be a sufficient
reason to condemn the whole thing, especially if the consequences they
may have on the concerned people might be irrevocable?
Conclusion
There's a question that remains, as we reach the end of the presentation.
A question
which I dare to find silly. A question that has been proved by the
means of statistics to
be non-scientific. It's about the relationship between hard rock
and suicide.
If there were a link in some cases between hard rock and suicide
by coincidence, other
cases proved that there wasn't any link between the two. Anyway,
logically, and now that we have tried to give a final definition to Hard
Rock and its "philosophy", we find that
both of those problems grow on the same field: despair, anger, hatred,
solitude. And
sometimes they meet each other.
Finally, the last note will be about the interdiction of hard rock
discs in Lebanon after
the suicide of the son of a general in the army about five years
ago.
First, if it intended to "save" people from the "evil" of hard rock,
then it was a total
failure, since it encouraged the teenagers to listen more and more
to this music and
mostly to very immoral groups (which were brought by black market)
that couldn't be
found earlier in Lebanon. Then, it was followed by the arbitrary
arrestation of many of
live performers of and listeners to this music, which is an attempt
to the freedom of
expression, of human right. It was followed by many trials of teenagers
that were wrongfully accused of Satanism and convicted to months of prison.
And, of course, it encouraged the teenagers to stay out of the society
and get more and more violent. Actually, it didn't solve anything. It just
killed the chance to communicate with those boys and girls who wanted to
say something to us. For what they want to say is very important…
References
The History of rock through the 20th Century
Black Sabbath's disc, Master of Reality, 1971
Dr. Jean Aboussouan's interviews and articles about hard rock