Worshippers of the sugarcane fields: Agrarian politics, symbolic inversion and black metal in Indonesia

Abstract

The inverted cross as a symbol in black metal music has long associated the genre with the mysterious and transgressive aura of the occult. Although the inverted cross can be construed as simultaneously sinister and frivolous, the idea of social inversion carries broader implications. Drawing from interpretations of social and symbolic inversion from multiple disciplines, this article examines how social order is contested and negotiated in Indonesia through the musical idiom of black metal. Indonesia currently has the world’s largest Muslim population and is one of Asia’s fastest growing economies; its transition to democracy since 1998 has been touted as an example of how Islam, capitalism and democracy can successfully coexist. And yet democratization and the expanded influence of capitalism have had uneven (or deleterious) results in halting the country’s increasing wealth gap. Using the Indonesian black metal act Bvrtan as a case study, I describe how their song lyrics, sampled sounds and visual artwork convey the exigencies of the Indonesian agrarian class in a shifting political landscape. Furthermore, I argue that Bvrtan use black metal as a space of social inversion in a way that simultaneously upholds the virtues and values of agricultural workers while depicting a dystopian world where they are further marginalized in the ongoing project of constructing a modern Indonesia.