In the Facebook group The Folk Metal Grove its members manifest, explore and celebrate the musical genre called Folk metal. The genre is often described as a fusion of Metal and Folk music. Through a netnographic (Berg, 2015, Campos 2018) approach I have studied how the genre and its music is disseminated, discussed and made meaningful through posts, discussions, memes and the sharing of musical works. Besides a shared love for certain canonized musical groups, the “Grovers” come together in a playful performance and celebration of an idealized past, emically labelled as folkyness. The group can be understood as a living space involving not only the circulation of music but also the development of meaning, collective memory and norms as well as real-life, often intercultural, connections. Earlier research has shown how folk metal in some ways can be seen as accentuating central aspects of heavy metal (Spracklen 2015) – a genre that arguably started as an arena for young white men. But the ways in which folk metal is made meaningful within the Grove rather seems to tap into a will to transgress the sonic and cultural boundaries of metal (Kahn-Harris 2007). It serves, for them, as a space to go beyond metal when it comes to which instruments to play, which languages to sing in, which stories to tell and which emotions to feel. While a few do find in this music a celebration of European heritage, many Grovers use the music to connect with different cultures, musics, languages and histories.
Berg, M. (2015). Netnografi: att forska om och med internet. (1. uppl.) Lund: Studentlitteratur.Campos, R. (2018). ”Musicking on Social Media: Imagined Audiences, Momentary Fans and Civic Agency in the Sharing Utopia” https://www.iaspm.org.uk/andrew-goodwin-memorial-prize
Kahn-Harris, K. (2007). Extreme metal: music and culture on the edge. Oxford: Berg.
Spracklen, K. (2015), “’To Holmgard… and Beyond’: Folk Metal Fantasies and Hegemonic White Masculinities”. Metal Music Studies, 1 (3), pp. 354–377
2021.
Musikforskning idag 2021, Svenska samfundet för musikforskning i samarbete med Stockholms Musikpedagogiska Institut, 15–16 juni 2021