> I so disagree. You can totally dance to metal. First, there's headbanging and moshing which are absolutely kinds of dance, as is air-guitar playing (a kind of... interpretive dance; I guess?).

I completely agree with you here. I used to dance to metal bands frequently when we were allowed to go out and dance.

Well, you got balls. My old friends would have tarred and feathered anyone who dared shake their body to the beat, unless it was from the neck up, or from the waist down.

They were good kids deep down. Don't judge them too harshly.

But I'm a blithering idiot and a senile old fool even. I wonder what will happen when I'm actually old and losing my mind.

Because I forgot the African metal scene:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_heavy_metal

African heavy metal refers to the heavy metal music scene in Africa, particularly in East African countries such as Kenya and Uganda, and Southern African countries including Namibia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

I spent some time digging through youtube videos of those folks, when I discovered them. Crazy, crazy people who go around in full leather attire in Kenya! I remember interviews with some who had found a very Christian like message of love and brother/sisterhood in metal, gods know where. Or maybe they're in a more pure, young phase of metal, like I was in high school, when I felt a connection with every other metalhead in the entire world (which went away after I actually met a few near at home ha ha).

The fans in that scene I believe go out and dance-dance, not just headbang and mosh, if they do that at all. I vaguely remember a video in a night club with people dancing and a black metal band (see what I did there) playing on stage. I'll see if I can dig it out.

Anyway, yeah, black people can totally dig metal en masse. There is no incompatibility. It's just the culture in some places in the world that stops it, I guess, places where black folk are not the majority. But where they are, they have no reason not to embrace metal.

Edit: also, that supports what I said above, that metal is the true music of the people. Take that, pop.

Edit 2: Actually, the scene I had seen before, with the black-leather clad fans, is the one in Botswana not Kenya. Here's some pics:

https://acidcow.com/pics/55608-the-heavy-metal-subculture-of...

I don't know why looking at those pictures fills me with such joy.

Thanks for sharing. I had no idea about the African heavy metal scene. Some very cool pictures. It's nice to see people who look a bit more like me enjoying metal.

I am not the biggest heavy metal fan I have to admit. There is some metal I absolutely love and then a lot that I can't stand.

Last year, bored during lockdown, I was reading a Rolling Stone 100 greatest metal albums article and decided I would try to listen to every album in the list and write a short review of what I thought of it. It was a long, and sometimes tough, journey but I managed to make it. I definitely had a better idea of what I do and don't like in metal after that lol

I have been going to blues, rock, and metal gigs around London (plus some festivals) for about 20 years now and it's fairly rare to see anything other than white faces.

Obviously, when I said "you can't dance to metal", I was referring to dancing as traditionally pursued by those populations. They probably don't want to switch from the dancing they are used to to headbanging and moshing.

I get it, but I think the only reason why you don't see people dancing-dancing to metal, rather than heabanging and moshing, is tradition, not the music itself. The music itself has eminently danceable components, particularly oodles of rythm.

To give a few examples, I can imagine, in my head, wild rock 'n' roll dancing, of the kind you'd see young folks of the '60s dancing to Great Balls of Fire and the like, but this time under the sweet sounds of Motorhead or ACDC and it doesn't look out of place at all.

Anyway, I don't think modern dance is much closer to traditional dances either.