Why Scenes Stifle Music (or, Let’s Hear More Christian Black Metal)
For as long as there have been different styles of music, there have been people looking out for the purity of that style. Some genres attract these types of people more than others - generally, the more inaccessible the music, the more “pure” the fans will generally want to keep it. Unfortunately these scenes that arise around certain genres carry a lot more baggage than the genre itself, and limits the innovation that comes through synthesis.
For example, let’s look at the scenes behind black metal, and contemporary Christian music. I choose these because I’m somewhat familiar with both, and they contrast in certain ways that illustrate things about all kinds of scenes. Now Christian music, in its most general sense, is simply music that deals lyrically with Christian themes. It makes no stylistic assumptions. However, the average person thinking of Christian music will probably associate the term with mediocre vanilla pop/rock with cliche lyrics. Similarly, the average person will probably associate black metal with corpsepaint, pentagrams, and blasphemy.
The key here is that none of these associations are inherent to the genre. Christian music is a lyrical description, and is not necessarily confined to vanilla pop/rock. Black metal is a style, and doesn’t inherently necessitate any particular lyrical themes. In the case of these two themes, there’s no overlap between the two criteria - but you almost never see Christian black metal. Why is this?
What keeps these two ideas apart is the scenes that have arisen around each. Though black metal is far more diverse than it is usually allowed to be, the expectations from within about what sort of lyrical themes it will have fuel the fears from without about those same lyrical themes, and vice versa. Christians dislike the lyrical themes that the scene has forced into black metal, and generalize that to the entire style. Similarly the black metal scene has some deal of antipathy towards pop in general, and because of its association with Christian music, they reject Christian black metal as an infection. This actually pertains to nearly all genres of heavier music to a lesser extent, as much of it has arisen out of certain countercultural lyrical expectations.
These assumptions about other genres really stifle a lot of musical creativity. Sure there are fusions all the time, but there’s really a dearth of less obvious combinations because of this. Black metal doesn’t have to be about paganism and misanthropy any more than Christian music has to be mediocre pop. Let’s hear more aggressive post-rock, or more big-band metal. Why not have symphonic hip-hop (the occasional synthesized string section doesn’t count) or celtic country-western? The scenes will probably reject it, at least initially, but I think the necessity of their approval is very often overrated.
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