But growling aside what do you guys think of rock historians classifying metal as music for white males?
There is a lot of truth to it. Its not like women, blacks or other ethnicities are absent from the genre, but they are definitely underrepresented.
Speaking as a black male metalhead, I can assure you that in the USA and in most European countries, the predominant skin color in a typical hard rock concert, and also that women are still pretty rare, either on stage or off.
When I lived in San Antonio- a good city for metal, BTW- I used to attend concerts with my friends. All white. 3, however, were women.*
That group was anomalous- typically the pods of pals showing up to the doors with their tickets were running 80% male. My first arena show there- a disasterous, technical difficulty-riddled outing by Dio/Megadeth/Savatage- was a sea of caucasians and hispanics.
I recall in particular one club I attended regularly in Austin in which I routinely saw one black girl at every show I attended. We never met, but we always gave each other a nod of recognition. I never saw another black face in the audience of that club, though occasionally one would show up on stage- like at the Ice-T/Bodycount/Eye & I show (one of the best I've seen, BTW).
Part of it (for blacks at least) was that the genre didn't speak to black youth and musicians. Songs about Satan, rainbows in the dark, and the like, simply don't resonate within the black community the way they do among the white community.
Artists like Hendrix looked past the lyrical trappings and found a genre that could support lyrics about social issues, urban blight, black alienation...yeah, and drugs, too.
But the black community- and thus, black musicians- still finds more lyrical and social support within more traditional genres such as blues, gospel, jazz and funk.
Its changing...slowly. Hendrix begat Bad Brains, John Butcher and Tony MacAlpine, whom in turn inspired Living Colour, Fishbone, Follow For Now, 24-7 Spyz, Mother's Finest, Eye & I, Eric Gales, and the guys in bands like Lucy Brown, Killswitch Engage, King's X, Straight Line Stitch, Sevendust...
And so many more.
* One, as it turns out, was a freelancer to Kerrang magazine...without a car. As a buddy with a car, I got to go to a lot of concerts for free- including backstage passes to shows by Rik Emmet (of Triumph), LA Guns, Shark Island, Pat Travers, Dirty Looks and many more.
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