The Impact Of Heavy Metal And Hip Hop Music And Youth Identity

‘Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and life to everything… Without music, life would be an error’ - Plato

The aim of this study is to critically evaluate the impact of heavy metal and hip hop music on youth identity. The youth reference in here are those residing in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Music, one of the most popular and universal expression and consumed by people all over the world especially the youngsters. Music is a huge industry in the contemporary human civilization. Music itself comes with variation of genre and styles. For instance, jazz, rock, heavy metal, hip hop, reggae and probably hundreds in listed. Come from the roots of art, music is used largely for so many purposed according to the genre.

As music played around in every single day no matter where it is, music transform from just leisure to the function. As mention earlier, music can forms a subculture and also important in education. On the other hand, music also is universal where it fluid to every continent on earth. This means that, music is shared in and around the entire world. Therefore, most youngsters or youth used music as a medium to express themselves. A very popular example is Heavy metal and Hip hop music. These music genres do not originate from Malaysia, but Heavy metal and Hip hop genres played and idolised widely among Malaysian youth. What is more, the followers of these music genres have their own way of life called identity. For example, they wore black attire and have particular ideology as their identity and main interest in music is heavy metal genre. Whereas the Hip hop followers are more likely to be seen with headphones dangling on their necks, wearing heavy accessories, designer caps, wearing losses trousers and shirt. All of these often translate into symbolic or expression of

During this time, the lyrics of Heavy Metal music are more towards a story about masculinity and machismo. But then, it evolved and the lyrics vary from politics to the life aspects. However, Heavy Metal lyrics indeed, rarely talk about love. Among the early metal band are Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. As the genre of music emerged, there is many more bands who play Heavy Metal later such as Metallica and Megadeth. These latest bands bring this music to a higher level and more extreme traits, and the musicians performed with aggressive styles. Heavy Metal music is characterized by loud distorted guitars, bass, drum and vigorous