ABSTRACT
The Introduction presents metal, rap, and electro in Tunisia. A first comparison between the three music scenes gives the reader a glimpse of what “the underground” is in the country. By sketching some of the troubles and events happening in the local underground in 2011–2014, the Introduction then poses a question that constitutes the starting point of the research: why did the metal scene decay after the Tunisian revolution, at the same time in which the rap and electro ones began to flourish? The chapter proceeds by summarising the key events in recent Tunisian history and provides some theoretical frameworks to put the regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, and the subsequent popular uprising, under a sociological light. The last part of the Introduction presents the methodology that informed the research. It discusses the ethnographic methods employed, and the ways in which the Tunisian ethos guided the methodological enterprise across the spectrum of informants and social formations gathered under the metal, rap, and electro scenes.
