Heavy Metal In Africa...Black Africa!?

I had come across this article maybe a year ago and had since lost it but recently I found it again. It's the best article I've come across that perfectly describes the fledgling metal scene in Black Africa. What I mean by Black Africa is Sub-Saharan (I don't like that word but it is what it is) and not South Africa. I mean, Africa where there are black Africans. This article especially hit home since although I was born in America, my father is West African and my mother is Black American. I knew the few readers I had would find this article interesting. Here is the link to the whole article (which I suggest you read, its very interesting. There are two pics as well) but I will post two paragraphs in this blog that stuck out to me:

http://kkahnharris.typepad.com/weblog/2007/09/metal-in-africa.html

[...The third thing that struck me was the attitude among the metal heads in Gaberone toward race. It is often assumed that “whiteness” plays an important role in heavy metal subcultures. In Botswana this is, however, not the case, since all metalheads (at least the ones I encountered) are black. And as if this was not enough, all the metal fans I talked to thought that it was strange that I, a white man, liked heavy metal...
Gaborone, I believe that these observations all have one thing in common: they bring to the fore a mismatch between, on the one hand, the theoretical framework through which heavy metal is understood, and, on the other hand, the heterogeneous character of the contemporary, globalized heavy metal culture. Why did I find the metal scene in Gabarone strange? Because my understanding of heavy metal was ethnocentric - i.e. based on the idea that European and/or North American heavy metal represents 'normality', while african metal is characterized as an exotic 'deviation' from this norm.]

I have some subjects to tap into on this subject. I think first, we need to break down Africa as a whole. Most people are extremely ignorant of the continent, the countries, the culture, etc. And I can't blame them when all you see of Africa is mostly the poor desolate wasteland that its always portrayed as. Simply not true. I know because I've been there to visit family-hell my cousin there listens to the Coors and I saw a versace store while there. But if all you see is the stereotypical portrayal of Africa-how is the metal industry going to believe that there is any sort of market for that music there of all places? This leads me to one of the points I bolded:

Do we think of music as ethnocentric?

Meaning that we associate different types of music with different types of groups, races, minorities, etc. What was the most interesting aspect of the article was that the black metal heads thought HE was strange to enjoy metal.

How interesting, eh?

This again only makes me think of one of my past posts on subculture adaptation and how black people will always be viewed as a whole and never individuals with their own tastes, mindsets, and ways of life. We are a race but we are separate as people and just because someone can know one or two or perhaps even 20 black people does not mean they all are into the same things. I want to delve more into the article in later post but first I want to know what you think of it.