Indian Metalheads and Indian music

The first time I heard metal was way back when I was in 7th Std."Am I evil",A diamond head cover by metallica, caught my senses completely, that gigantic riff, incredible solos, and amazing shift in tempos and the outright rebellious lyrics, were something new to a 12 year boy who listens to bollywood and Linkin park, and tries to emulate screamo voices in public places. Then I opened myself to the realms of Metal.

There began my tryst with something called the metalhead scene.I started lisening to Metallica, Iron Maiden,Megadeth and all the others.I found out I had a distaste of Indian bands who emulate their icons without adding any new or any Indian element to it.Bands like Motherjane and Indian ocean, although both of them are not metal, need honourary mentions for their use of beautiful Indian music with western Instruments.
Metal is defined differently for different people. I define it as something which is extensively instrumental and which can be aggressive as well as beautiful at the same time.

In India, with all the bollywood item numbers ringing around in every corner, it is hard to imagine the how forlorn the music has actually got. It has commercialised to such an extent that no one cares about the music anymore.90% themes are love, sex, dil, pyaar...and again love.There is no other facet at all.To think Indian society is not that ahead when it comes to exposure to sexual content, 6 year olds sing "Munni badnaam hui", without knowing what that actually means,is pretty dumb.

Iron Maiden

The metal scene in India is pretty prevalent nowadays.Walk around in a street you will see a bunch of guys wearing "metallica" or surely a "Iron Maiden" T-shirt.Its pretty cool to know that there are guys who have the same taste in music and also a uniform with your fav. band on it!
And yet there are some guys I have met who proclaim-
 "Hey, look at me,I listen to such and such band.Everyone else are posers.This is Real Music.Indian Music sucks."
This,I believe, is a product of reading Youtube troll messages beneath a Metal video.These people do not know anything about Indian music.Yet they proclaim that it stinks.I believe this a by product of western influence and their attitudes towards the metal scenes.What ever they do,we not only embrace it,We copy it.
Indian music is very rich.No, I am not talking about Bollywood,even though some songs may not be as mediocre as the rest. Even though most of them could well be identified by devotional music, yet it is beautiful.Indian classical music is unparalled when it comes to emulating beauty.Listen to any violinist or a sitarist, you will swoon at their mercy.

Metallica

In India, with its rich history and cultural topographies, there is no aggressive music.I am quite bewildered with that since music is the representation of any emotion through a piece of instrument.Although I am aware of some South Indian percussional music which could give any fast double bass metal drummer a run for his money, it is still very secluded to temples and occasions.
The reason i like metal is that it can create windows of beauty and windows of pain in a very narrow platform of aggression.Take any Iron maiden song for that instance.There is an element of beauty in every song. Being a metalhead does not mean that he/she will not listen to anything other than metal.People generally listen to metal for its intensity, but that doesn't mean one can put down Indian classical music without any knowledge of it whatsoever.Being an Indian, and being a music lover, I believe we should be open to all kinds of instrumetals,be it western, eastern, or even northern or southern.
To sum it all,
I am an Indian.I am a metalhead. I like Indian Music.
Peace.
(by G Nithin and we all share the same feeling)