So
recently I had the honor of calling Leslie the director of Terra
Pesada a film on death metal in Mozambique. She needs funds, so check
out her site and donate HERE
And
here's the interview;
Can
you introduce yourself and your movie?
My
name is Leslie Bornstein. I'm the director of "Terra Pesada,"
a documentary on heavy metal music in Mozambique.
Can
you tell us about Terra Pesada itself?
When
people think of Africa they think of rural Africa. They think of
women and children, not young guys in the city. "Terra Pesada"
is an urban African story. These kids have grown up listening to the
same satellite radio we hear. So metal's not that much of a stretch.
They're secondary school and university students in Maputo, the
capital, and are some of the 4% of Mozambicans to have access to the
internet, which is how they first found metal. Facebook almost
singlehandedly changed their lives. There's internet in Maputo and in
a couple of the other major cities--notably Beira, where there is
also metal--but there's very little access in the rest of the
country.
They
all have Facebook pages, and that's how most of them first heard
metal. It's not a cultural thing. The reason you don't hear more
metal coming from Africa, and India and China, for that matter, is
because so few people in these countries have internet access. They
don't know metal exists! Because when kids hear metal, they like it,
they want to play it! Facebook changed their lives.
Metal
in Mozambique started with the rich kids. The internet came to
Mozambique around 1999, so the kids whose families had electricity
and could afford internet and instruments and amps were the first to
play metal and start bands. Then it spread to the poorer kids. They
were introduced to it by friends at school, mostly through Facebook.
Their instruments are castoffs or bought used, and the electricity
isn't always so reliable in the zones where many of them live.
How
did you originally get into African Death Metal?
I had
been sick for 10 years. I was put on a new antiviral in December
2009. Within a few weeks I knew something had changed, so I contacted
friends in different places seeing if I could come visit. Actually I
had wanted to go to Paris because it's a city I like, but I just
didn't have the money and no longer knew anybody there I could stay
with. A friend was working for a Danish organization in Mozambique
and said she had a huge house and I could have my own bedroom and
bathroom.
I had
been a journalist in Central America during Iran-Contra and wrote on
sports and politics for Sports Illustrated--baseball in Nicaragua and
hang gliding in Guatemala--and was a stringer for NBC radio. Then I
went to film school. So when I went to Mozambique of course I brought
a camera and a microphone. I like metal so I went looking for it, not
to film, but I just wanted to hear some music I liked. I'm not a huge
world music fan, so when I saw a flyer that said Evil Angels, I knew
there was metal. It was in a township about an hour outside of
Maputo, but still officially part of the city. I couldn't find
anybody who would go with me, but I knew if I didn't go I'd want to
shoot myself. And the thing about metal is it's so accepting. It's so
comfortable for me. I've never felt out of place at a metal concert.
And this was no different. As soon as I walked in and heard the
music, I was just immediately at home. Afterward I talked to the kids
and asked if I could follow them around with a camera. I recently
came back from my fourth trip filming in Mozambique.
The
remarkable thing about this movie is that it shows the enduring power
of metal across socioeconomic boundaries. Was it a goal of your film,
to show this?
I
think it does show that there is a metal audience all over the world.
Right now I've had viewers in 98 countries. Fewer countries in Africa
have seen it only because most of these places don't have internet,
or only wealthier people in the capital cities would have internet.
It's
interesting because Mozambique is pretty much a cultural wasteland.
There's very little to do there. It's understandable because
basically it was run as a prison for 500 years. The Portuguese didn't
educate anybody. When the English colonized somewhere at least they
educated people. When the Mozambicans got freedom there were maybe
half a dozen people with some kind of education. There was nothing
left. So if you think of it in those terms and the country being only
20 years old…. So it was kind of surprising that there was metal.
What was even more surprising is that it's so good. Some of these
kids are so talented! You don't really get that much of a sense of it
from what I've got up right now because the clips are so short, but
there's some real talent there. I can listen to them play all day.
I've seen some other shows in Mozambique, but I wasn't that
impressed. The metal is of a much higher quality. (I hear there's a
great guitarist, and that he had been a metal guitarist before he
started playing more commercial music.)
What
is the main difference between the African death metal scene and the
European and American one?
Well,
first of all, it's almost nonexistent in Africa. There are just so
few bands, it's not even a scene. You go to a show and the crowd is
almost totally made up of the musicians from other metal bands or
aspiring metal musicians. It's the same people. It doesn't matter
where the show is in Maputo, it's always the same people.
What's
sort of neat, though, in a way, though to me it's godawful to listen
to, is that usually at the shows there will be some band that has
just started and isn't very good, or even a band that's been around
and isn't very good, or there will be somebody with no talent playing
acoustic. I want to hear metal and want all the bands to be metal.
But no matter how bad some of these opening bands or musicians are,
the metal kids are so supportive. I don't even bother filming these
bands. I can't stand it; sometimes I leave. But the metal kids are so
supportive.
In
really poor places, and Mozambique is one of the poorest, you would
think that people would join together and have some sense of
community, but there's not! It's like every man for himself. If they
think someone else might get ahead, people will destroy themselves if
necessary to prevent someone else from having even small success. If
they see someone getting ahead, they will do all to push him down.
Anything that sticks up gets cut down. People will do anything to
tear you down. So when the townspeople saw I was paying attention to
the metal kids, they were just so nasty. If they saw I gave a kid
something, someone would destroy it. But the metal kids definitely
have a sense of community.
A
friend told me she had given a CD player or something to one of the
girls at work, and the girl said, "I can't take this home.”
When my friend asked why, the girl said if someone sees it, they will
destroy it. It's really ugly. It's a strange culture. The fact that
the metal kids are such a community and share so readily with each
other is really interesting to me.
I had
been in Mozambique for less than two weeks when I found metal. I knew
so many aid workers who had been working there for years and didn't
know there was metal there. Granted, none of them like metal. A
journalist, a really famous journalist--she was the first foreign
journalist to be kicked out of Zimbabwe for telling the truth--and
she's been living in Maputo for 20 years, and she never knew there
was metal there. She had never been to the zones that I hung out in
regularly. Neither had any of the aid workers. And here these people
were writing policy for the country and they didn't even know the
people! The only Mozambicans they know are the ones who are their
servants or coworkers, but they didn't really hang out with anybody.
Or they only hang out with the wealthy, successful Mozambicans. Which
I guess makes sense, but it's their job to at least know these kids
exist!
Shooting
in Mozambique is next to impossible. You never see tourists on the
streets with cameras. I was constantly harassed. People screaming I
couldn't shoot there, wherever it was, demanding money. Not for
shooting them. I wasn't shooting them! Every once in a while when I
showed my press credentials, someone would say O.K. and leave me
alone. If I was with the metal kids, which I almost always was, some
of them could tolerate the abuse and harassment, some of them
couldn't. As we were walking with the camera, people who lived in the
dirt were telling the kids, “I'm going to cast a spell on you, and
you're going to die in a horrible accident,” and at least one of
these kids would believe it and get scared! I'd say, “These people
have no power! If they had power, they'd fix their own lives. They
can't hurt you!” He'd say, “You don't understand. This is
Africa.”
What
you have to understand about these kids is that they were born right
around the time of the peace agreement and are the first generation
to have the opportunity of a real education. Many of their parents
are illiterate, and most of their grandparents still live in the
rural areas. Most of the boys study IT (information technology). They
can fix anything, and they're not afraid to take anything apart to
see how it works. They build their own computers. I watched them use
their phones as internet modems. One night I was in my apartment
alone and I couldn't get online, then I remembered how the boys did
it and was able to get online using my phone as a modem. They've got
one foot in the 21st century and then there's part of
them that still believes the old ways.
One
of them is having a very hard time. He told me he wasn't sure if the
reason he was having a hard time--this was a boy I thought of as one
of the brightest and most sophisticated--but he didn't know if he was
having a hard time because his brother had gone to a witch to cast a
spell on him or because when he was born his grandfather didn't do
the proper rites. These were the only two options he could see. When
I first met him we were talking and he asked me if I believed in god.
He wore a cross and I didn't know if the cross was because he went to
Catholic school, because he was religious, or because it was a metal
cross. I was brought up with god being like Santa Claus or the Easter
Bunny, that's what my parents told me. At any rate I didn't want to
answer him but he kept pushing. I eventually told him, and he said he
was relieved because he didn't believe in god either. Yet, now he's
convinced his troubles are because of these spirits. There's a part
of these kids that's still in their grandparents' world.
It's
not true of all of them, though. One of the girls, Erica, is getting
her masters in psychology, and she's very skeptical and level-headed,
and very smart. Another is now going to school in Iceland, another in
Sweden. Most of the metal girls come from families that are better
off and more educated than most of the boys. The original metal bands
were boys, though. Monace joined them pretty early on, not long after
she first picked up a guitar.
What
was your motivation to make a movie about death metal in Mozambique.
Just to share these stories?
I
left Sports Illustrated to go to film school. I wanted to make films,
particularly documentaries. Though for years I'd go to see
documentaries and talk to directors and hear how many years they
spent working on something, and I'm thinking to myself, “No fucking
way can I spend that much of my life on one thing,” but as soon as
I met these kids and started filming them, I thought I could do this
for the rest of my life. I've always wanted to switch from journalism
to film.
It
actually started when I was in Nicaragua and we would be covering
some atrocity. The photographers would just give the courier their
film and then go out and have fun while the reporters had to go back
to their rooms alone to write. That was when I thought I'd rather be
a photographer. I had brought a camera to Central America and loved
to take pictures, but I was there as a writer.
I've
come across other stories that I thought were interesting, but
nothing before was compelling to me. These kids were compelling to
me.
What's
the plan going forward from here?
I
really need to raise money. So far the film has been entirely
self-funded through rapidly depleting savings and on credit cards. I
need to raise money so that I can hire translators and editors to
work on the film. Portuguese-speaking editors and good sound people.
An editor who can look at the footage with a more objective eye than
I have. You try editing in a language you don't understand! I also
need someone to investigate what grant money I'm eligible for, and
someone who knows how to write grants. I love shooting alone--in
fact, I think it would have been more difficult to shoot there with a
crew--but postproduction is another matter. You really need a team.
"Terra Pesada" has sponsorship from the New York Foundation
for the Arts, which is cachet but no money. It does put me under
their 501(c )3 nonprofit umbrella, making all donations to the film
tax-deductible, at least in the U.S. (Donations can be made directly
through the website terrapesada.com.)
I'm
thinking of going to Iceland in a few weeks. Monace, the only female
metal guitarist in Mozambique, is going to school in Iceland this
year. She started a new band there and recently contacted me, saying,
“It's only a short hop. Why don't you come over and film me and my
band in Iceland?” I'd like to because that would give her story a
nice ending. Most filmmakers have some idea of what they want to film
before starting to shoot. They usually try to raise money first based
on the idea and go in with a crew. I found this totally by accident.
But once I met these kids, I knew I wanted to film them and
immediately started shooting. There was no preproduction. I just
jumped in. When I came back to New York after my first trip to
Mozambique, I thought I would be able to raise money, that people
would fall in love with the kids as I had and that because of Obama
people in the U.S. had some interest in Africa. I didn't realize this
would be such a hard sell. Most documentaries on music usually end
with a great concert. This film doesn't tie up so neatly. It's
chaotic, like life. The music is what holds it together. There are
several individual stories, and over the course of filming, their
lives and the story changed in unexpected ways.
When
I would come back to New York--I made four trips to Mozambique--I
would look at the footage and see what I thought I needed to make a
more complete, more interesting story. I would go back to Mozambique
with something in mind, but then something always happened that threw
me completely off-course and changed the direction of the story.
Mozambique
has the world's fifth-highest rate of people living with HIV/AIDS. I
told the kids I needed to meet someone either in their family or a
very close friend who had AIDS. Statistics are meaningless without
faces. Nobody knew anybody! Yet the rate where they live is almost
25%. Finally on the fourth trip one of the boys told me his father
had died of AIDS and that he would talk about it on film. But when we
actually filmed, he just said his father passed away, and didn't
mention AIDS at all. I asked him about it, and he said his family
told him not to say anything and he had to respect that. I thought,
well that's kind of stupid because I can just do a voiceover saying,
“His father died of AIDS.”
I
also wanted to film a family member who had been in the wars. More
than a million people were killed and over 5 million were displaced.
I knew they had relatives who had fought in the wars, but when I
asked if they would introduce me to someone, it was like no one knew
anybody. There were things no one wanted to talk about. There are
many interesting things I don't have on film. They really tried to
control what I could film. Between trips they'd email me telling me
they would introduce me to family members with HIV/AIDS, family
members who had fought in the wars, but when I got back to
Mozambique, they had changed their minds. They'd tell me they'd be
willing to show me what I wanted to see, or tell me they would talk
about something, and then I'd have the camera and it would be totally
different. Yet we communicate regularly. I still think of them as
good friends.
I
would love as a result of this film for some of these bands,
particularly OVNI and Damning Cloudiness, to get a record deal and
have the opportunity to tour. They're good enough to play on any
stage.
The
ultimate goal of the project is to set up a scholarship fund to pay
for the continuing educations of the musicians, whatever they'd like
to pursue, and to give them instruments and amps. I'd also like to
give equipment to several of the schools and rehearsal spaces.
To
move towards the end, what are some African bands that my readers and
I would like to check out?
I
only know the Mozambican bands. I've Googled African metal and
listened to bands from other countries in Africa, which you could do
too, but I like the Mozambican metal sound the best. Of course I'm
partial. You can find some clips on YouTube including some of the
Mozambican bands. Though be warned. These clips are not of great
quality.
There's
no recording industry in Mozambique, so you're not going to be able
to find CDs. Several of the bands record on their computers. Probably
the best place to hear some of the bands is Monace's site, where you
can hear some of the bands that she recorded:
https://soundcloud.com/monace.
Of
the bands that are on the terrapesada.com website, only OVNI and
Damning Cloudiness are still playing together, though both have
slight changes in personnel. Lost Grave is on hiatus; Silent Spirits
and Darkest Place have disbanded. The last time I was in Mozambique I
filmed Damning Cloudiness performing metal in Xangana, their tribal
language, the first language for many of the boys. I'm not sure when
I'll be adding that to the site. I have so much work to do. There are
also several new bands.
Damning
Cloudiness recently played at the Franco-Moçambican Cultural Center
in what was billed as a battle of the bands. They were the only metal
band invited. I hear they were great and should have won, but that
FMCC would never give that honor to a metal band. Like metal kids all
over, Mozambican metal kids cherish their outsider status.
