For those of you in the New York area, I wanted to draw your attention to an event at the City University of New York Tomorrow:
From Combat to Healing: The Music of War
The relationship between music and war—both to rally the troops and defeat the enemy—goes back centuries, even millennia. The Biblical tale of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho is perhaps the most famous example. Graduate Center music professor Jonathan Pieslak, the author of Sound Targets and a participant in the program, has examined how U.S. soldiers roused themselves for battle by playing heavy-metal rock and hip-hop anthems. He has also explored the healing quality of music for wounded and grieving soldiers. Earlier this month Pieslak addressed both themes in an article for the military journal Army, “From Combat to Healing: The Music of War.”
Excerpts:
• “At the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003… the music that accompanied [soldiers] into Baghdad—and later Fallujah—was primarily metal and rap: Metallica, Mudvayne, Eminem and DMX…. The relentless power of the metal sound and the overtly violent lyrics of gangsta rap may make these genres obvious choices for pre-mission listening, but how can we interpret what is going on here? Can we understand soldiers’ interactions with music as less intense ways of listening when compared with our own? Or do they represent fundamentally different listening experiences?”
• “Music’s power to motivate soldiers for combat can be contrasted with its equally powerful ability to help soldiers relax. Music can play an important role as a calming tool and a way to transport soldiers ‘home’ with memories of loved ones. An Afghanistan war veteran… spoke to me about this power. ‘Music can help you escape the terror and terrible things you may see,’ he said. ‘Makes you think and see things back home, or bring smells of a Christmas morning from home to you in a hellhole. Music can take you through a time warp and, even though only for a second, can make you forget the hell around you.’ Since I began studying the relationship between music and war in 2004, my research has also suggested that music may have considerable potential in soldier treatment. The emerging field of music therapy shows promising work regarding music in response to trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”
• “With more soldiers returning from the battlefield and making the transition to military life at home and even back to civilian life, music holds great potential to be an acceptable way to grieve, release psychological burdens and express emotions. As much as music has been an important part of war throughout the centuries, my hope is that it will come to occupy just as important a place in the process of soldiers’ healing.”
Program information:
This special evening of performances and discussion explores the role of music in combat and in soldiers’ other experiences in Iraq.
Participants feature:
Alex Ross, New Yorker music critic
Jonathan Pieslak, author of Sound Targets
Colby Buzzell, former Army SPC and best-selling author of My War: Killing Time in Iraq
Jason Sagebiel, guitarist, composer, and former Marine sergeant
Wednesday, February 24, 7 pm
Elebash Recital Hall – CUNY Graduate Center – 365 Fifth Avenue
Tickets $25, $10 students
20% off with discount code CANDC
online at SmartTix
or 212-868-4444
no surcharge!
I think this should be a really interesting lecture. For those of you interested in reading more on the subject, Pieslak’s book can be purchased by clicking here.
While I find Pieslak’s research to be extremely important to the narrative on music and war, I can’t help but think about the flipside to the healing, therapeutic and and inspirational elements of music during wartime, namely, music for the sake of torture and interrogation. Last year it came out that the US Defense Department had been using an interrogation method known as the “futility” technique, which included the playing of loud music to detainees at Guantanamo Bay in order to rupture their eardrums and deprive them of sleep for days on end.
Several musicians, including the bands REM, Rage Against the Machine and Nine Inch Nails filed a lawsuit against the government, demanding full access to the interrogation reports in which their music was used. The lawsuit was part of a a formal protest of the use of music used in conjunction with torture that took place at the prison and other facilities. “Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured – from water boarding to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts – playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums,” said Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, a band which is celebrated for its anti-war political philosophy.
“Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney’s idea of America, but it’s not mine,” he continued. “The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me.”
While music has systematically been used as a weapon of war for decades, the idea that music has been used as instrument of torture confronts us with a very warped perspective on contemporary musicality in the United States. What does our government’s use of music in the “war on terror” tell us about the music that we listen to on a day to day basis and about the state of the music industry as a whole? What does it mean when protest music, which is such a powerful element of democratic and social justice movements is used to bolster the very actions that it was made to combat? As I contemplate these thoughts I leave you with Testify, by Rage Against the Machine.
