A INFLUÊNCIA DAS CULTURAS AFRICANA E INDÍGENA NA MUSICALIDADE E CONSTRUÇÃO SOCIOCULTURAL DO HEAVY METAL BRASILEIRO

Abstract

Amalgamated from influences of blues, classical music, and notably rock and roll, heavy metal emerged in the early 1970s and has generally always been considered a subversive musical style, typically distant from the interests of American and British elites, to pinpoint its geographical origin. Much of this stems from the fact that some bands in this music-cultural style absorbed the aura of the punk rock movement that began around 1975 and adopted a clearly confrontational and provocative stance. Thus, heavy metal became a countercultural movement in stark opposition to the peace and love ideology espoused by hippies, culminating in the violent and inhospitable aesthetics stemming from confronting socioeconomic reality. In Brazil, heavy metal arrived nearly 10 years late and also under the guise of contesting the establishment; indeed, like abroad, it was severely criticized and even persecuted by the corporate media. In this context, the central objective of this exploratory work, which employed a systematic bibliographic review methodology, is to characterize and analyze, synergistically, how the incorporation and revival of typically Brazilian cultural elements of indigenous and African origin occurred in the composition process of Brazilian heavy metal. Furthermore, it also examines related cross-cutting themes such as religion, folklore, literature, and historical facts that trace back to the cultural multiplicity that has shaped and continues to shape the music-cultural formation of the Brazilian people.The completion of this work led to the conclusion that typically Brazilian cultural elements of indigenous and African origin were effectively incorporated into the composition processes of Brazilian heavy metal, resulting in something akin to musical anthropophagy in response to influences from the United States and the United Kingdom. Moreover, it was possible to deduce that this facilitated the emergence of a cultural movement that is no longer foreign but rather avant-garde, Brazilian, and naturally contesting the modus vivendi inherent to the status quo propagated by the national bourgeois elite.