Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Laina Dawes on the life of a black female metal fan

Check out this NPR piece about Laina Dawes. I first read about her in Bitch Magazine:

Music writer Laina Dawes is a die-hard Judas Priest fan. She's all about the band's loud and fast guitars, the piercing vocals — and she loves to see the group perform live.
Now, a fact that shouldn't matter: Dawes is a black woman. This, she says, can make things uncomfortable on the metal scene. She says she's been verbally harassed and told she's not welcome.
"There's still a lot of resistance in terms of who should be listening to what genre of music based on their gender and their ethnicity," Dawes says, "which does not make any sense to me."
Dawes writes about the issue in her new book, What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman's Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal.
So, metal's not my thing, I have to say. But I love the cover. And I know a lot of black folks who can relate to this - especially in a town like Austin that tends to attract the "alternative black" set. (I put it in quotes because I'm not sure what it means, but I bet you know what I mean when I say that.)

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