Intersecting Rhythms: The Spatial Production of Local Canadian Heavy Metal and Urban Aboriginal Hip Hop in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Abstract

Hip hop and heavy metal are two music cultures that resonate with young people worldwide (Higgins, 2009; Hill and Spracklen, 2010). The complex and paradoxical flows of globalized and technological music have sustained and inspired local communities while exposing them to social, economic, and competitive pressures. The focus on globalizing flows and local-global intersections often leaves invisible the specific and material everyday lives of local artists and fans. Theorists who examine the rise of the city or urban theory often focus on the opportunities, the openness, and the encounters with difference (Merrifield, 2013), and glide past the friction of the worldly encounter (Tsing, 2005) that is filled with desires for the fruits of globalization which overlooks how existing everyday life practices are (re)shaped by globalization.