Heavy metal mosh pits mimic ancient rainforest tribes
Anthropologists discover concert culture mirrors 40,000-year-old Papua New Guinea rituals
HEAVY metal fans have evolved to communicate with each other like remote tribes in Papua New Guinea, a study by UCL anthropologists has found.
They have rules for behaviour in the front-of-stage “mosh pit” that are passed down by “elders”, there are giftsharing rituals at concerts and dark cathartic music, which mirror rites among Papuan tribes that have changed little in 40,000 years.
Lindsay Bishop, a researcher, has spent 10 years studying heavy metal, the loud, pounding style of music that has grown from early followers of the band Black Sabbath in Birmingham into a worldwide culture with millions of fans in almost every country. Ms Bishop said her research demonstrated how fundamental were some tenets of our humanity: “It recognises this completely alien culture of mosh pits, heavy metal music and rituals links into this indigenous clan living in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea.”
Heavy metal was also no longer the stereotype of “angry white males” but culturally inclusive, she said. A third of its followers were female, with allwomen groups of fans such as the Botswana Queens. Involvement in the scene was transgenerational, with fathers and grandfathers passing on the etiquette of the “mosh pit”.
Older generations teach the etiquette while newcomers learn that “moshing” is not a fight but a way to release tension and often create lasting bonds with people, said Ms Bishop.
Unwritten rules dictate that the mosh pit is voluntary with no one pres- sured to join. Communication is unspoken due to the noise, and individuals are expected to tap a fellow fan on the shoulder and point skywards if they need to be crowd-surfed to safety.
Those who fall should be picked up, while a band will stop playing if they see someone down and no one helping, said Ms Bishop. If someone accidentally injures a fellow fan, they are expected to take them to the bar.
Within the pit, there were conventions such as “the circle” where fans spiral into a central point, and “the wall of death”, where they part like armies in a scene from The Lord of the
Rings, before crashing back together. Ms Bishop said the pit drew in fans by offering a shared etiquette, camaraderie, compassion and catharsis, traditions of behaviour similar to Papuan tribal communities. The way fans col- lected band paraphernalia like drum sticks or plectrums thrown from the stage, dated tour T-shirts and gig memorabilia had parallels with Malangan culture in which shared objects and sculptures remembered past events.
It was music designed to encourage community and which had spawned 51 different sub-genres by Ms Bishop’s count. They ranged from doom metal (funeral like music where a single song can last 45 minutes) and Viking metal based on sea shanties, to black metal, power metal and speed metal.
There was even a strong classical music influence in some genres, drawing in a middle-class audience that contrasted with heavy metal’s perceived working-class roots.
In Russia, for example, it was common for older metal gig-goers to take sheet music to concerts as they would to the opera, she said.