Heavy Metal and Globalization : Reception study on the Metal community in the Global South

Sammanfattning: Heavy Metal is a peculiar music genre, made by fans for fans, which spread throughout the entire planet and became, over its five decades of existence, a global community as well. These aspects of Heavy Metal make it a very interesting phenomenon to study. Heavy Metal has previously been researched with a micro outlook on its local connotations in several different Global South countries, analyzing one at a time. As far as the whole Global Metal community is concerned, to this day, there seems to be no literature that is based on the Global South perspective, but only on the Western one. As it has not been attempted to study Global Metal with a macro outlook and to take a broader perspective on it, this research employs a larger view on the Global South’s point of view on Metal culture. Therefore this study aims at giving possible explanations about the reasons behind Heavy Metal worldwide spread. Results will show how further Heavy Metal reception studies on Global South metalheads should be approached through the lens of the Cosmopolitan paradigm; how the metalheads of the sample tend to indicate Death Metal as the most spread sub-genre and to describe themselves as open minded and tolerant. This research helps showing a slight tendency of metalheads to consider themselves part of a Global community, which is defined more like a family, underlining their inclination towards cosmopolitanism. Finally it will show how there should be a broader study on the sense making of well-known songs to determine whether or not there is a certain degree of similar interpretation across different cultures.