Heavy Metal Music in Argentina

The first collection of essays on Argentine metal music. This is an interdisciplinary study of Argentina’s heavy metal subculture between 1983 and 2002, a period in which metal music withstood the onslaught of military dictatorship and survived the neoliberal policies of bourgeois democracy.
Edited by leading researchers in the field, this collection addresses the music’s rituals, circulations, cultural products, lyrics, and intertexts, allowing readers to rethink the genre’s place within Argentinean politics and economics. Exclusively written by members of the Group for Interdisciplinary Research on Argentinian Heavy Metal (GIIHMA) in a communal approach to scholarship, the book echoes the working-class voices that marked early post-dictatorship metal music in Argentina, exploring heavy metal music as a catalyst for social change and a site for engaging political reflection. This is a fascinating work of scholarship and a groundbreaking contribution to the emerging field of global metal studies.

Emiliano Scaricaciottoli is professor at the University of Buenos Aires. He is the coordinator for the Group for Interdisciplinary Research on Argentinian Heavy Metal (GIIHMA) and has edited two books of essays and another seven productions on rock and metal in Argentina. Nelson Varas-Díaz is professor of social-community psychology at Florida International University. He is coeditor of the journal Metal Music Studies and the director of the documentary film Songs of Injustice: Heavy Metal Music in Latin America. Daniel Nevárez Araújo holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst as well as master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.