TITLE:
Following the Path of the Prophet from Makka to Medina: Hijra and the Indonesian Death Metal Musicians
AUTHORS:
Kieran Edmond James, Khrisnamurti Khrisnamurti Khrisnamurti
KEYWORDS:
Adorno, Death Metal music, dialectic of enlightenment, Frankfurt School, Hi-jra, Indonesian Islam, Islam and Popular Music, Negative Dialectics, Religious Turn
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.13 No.7,
July
24,
2023
ABSTRACT: This article uses
Horkheimer and Adorno’s dialectic of enlightenment and Adorno’s negative
dialectics to situate Indonesian Death Metal musicians’ abandonment of the
scene (subculture) so as to explore religion. The research method used is
literature search, participant-observation, and semi-structured
interviews with Indonesian Death Metal musicians conducted over the period
2018-2019 for this subproject. Adorno might have seen it as using religious
faith to critique Western liberal-democracy and rationality but, if that is the
case, it requires us to view Western decadence and rationality as opposite
sides of the same coin, with both being integrated, not separate, aspects of
the Western culture infusing the global metal scene. This is what the Islamic
resistance project is all about for those who leave the scene and for the
religious ones who remain. The latter seek meaning beyond or outside of
conventional understandings of metal lyrics and discourses.