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Recent work within popular music studies, cultural studies and sociology has shown the possibilities of global, reciprocal networks of music making and discussion. However, implicitly or explicitly, notions of musical "export" and "import" from one place to another remain hard to shift. It remains difficult to envisage a truly global musical practice without "cores" and "peripheries", and harder still to find the analytical tools to deal with such a practice.
One area where such a practice may exist is within the global Extreme Metal scene. Within this musical space, varieties of Extreme Metal such as Death Metal and Black (Satanic) Metal are produced, consumed and discussed. Extensive and well-established networks of intra-scenic communication through fanzines, the internet, recordings and tours renders any notion of "import" and "export" of weak explanatory value. The scene polices its constantly shifting boundaries through the discursive classification of music, rendering musical texts outside and within the scene. Yet regional and national scenes also exist quasi-autonomously within this global scene with some scenes having more "capital" than others in influencing the trajectory of the global one. There are also areas of the world where Extreme Metal is barely present, such as in Africa and the Islamic Middle East. Any notion of a global music scene is thus problematic, due to the quasi-autonomy of local scenes and the varying degrees of capital possessed by local scenes and scene members.
A case study that illuminates the potential paradoxes of the global Extreme Metal scene is that of the Brazilian Death Metal band Sepultura. Their first recordings in 1985/6 made no attempt to musically or lyrically signify "Brazilianness", although their early career took place entirely within Brazil. However, by the 1996 album "Roots" the situation had been reversed - the album was full of articulations of Brazilianness within an Extreme Metal style, yet they were based in the USA and recorded outside Brazil for a non-Brazilian record company.
Such paradoxical careers can best be understood within a carefully formulated model of "scenes", drawing on the work of such authors as Pierre Bourdieu and Will Straw. This "scenic" model of music treats all musical production, consumption and discussion as taking place within one or a multiplicity of scenes with their own scenic infrastructures, scenes existing quasi-autonomously within and beside each other in an interdependent relationship. Sepultura existed within Brazilian and global scenes but it was only in their later career that they began to musically signify their multiple location. Through the scenic model, the analysis of texts and of social practices come together through the location of texts and members within their scenic contexts. By using the model to analyse the career and texts of Sepultura it can be shown how music and musical practice can be simultaneously global and local, place-bound and placeless, culturally imperialistic and globally empowered.