From our own voices: The meaning making of subculture among extreme metal musicians in Indonesia

In the mid-1990s, extreme metal music in Indonesia was defined as a threat to the authoritarian regime’s unquestioned values of harmony and social stability. Consequently, the music had to rely on the local communities in Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Bandung. After the downfall of the military-based authoritarian regime in 1998, the alliance between extreme metal subculture and the state changed moderately. Extreme metal is no longer considered as a ‘folk devil’, nonetheless as a marketable commodity relevant to the new agenda of creative economy policy. This article draws from stories of Indonesian extreme metal musicians to illustrate the relevance of subculture concept in extreme metal music in the contemporary neo-liberal era. Using the life biographies approach, we highlight how extreme metal musicians make and remake the actual and symbolic meanings of their involvement in music subcultures based upon the temporal and spatial situatedness of their lifeworld. We focus on the narratives of two informants who have been continuously devoted to their ways of life as metalheads, not only in relation to ‘musicking’ but also in respect to maintaining ‘subcultural values’ throughout their life biographies. Regarding this, we conducted interviews with Indonesian extreme metal musicians from two major ‘metal’ cities in Indonesia: Jakarta and Bandung. In this article, we argue that as rookies, the meaning of extreme metal subculture is as a space to embody the authenticity, autonomy and community as a manifestation of subcultural values. As aficionado, they reinterpreted the meaning of extreme metal subculture as a space to maintain the values of authenticity, autonomy and community. In short, extreme metal musicians incrementally made and remade the meaning of subculture centred on the particular temporal and spatial contexts in their life biographies. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Dialogues. English language.