They Hate Us for Our Drum Solos
Professors of “ethnomusicology” have weighed in denouncing the use of music by the U.S. military to harass and torture enemies in combat or in captivity.
“The [Society for Ethnomusicology] is committed to the ethical uses of music to further human understanding and to uphold the highest standards of human rights. The Society is equally committed to drawing critical attention to the abuse of such standards through the unethical uses of music to harm individuals and the societies in which they live. The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.”
Referring to the source document cited by this policy statement, we learn that the exposure to the music (Eminem, Christina Aguilera, and Barney are on the list) was torture not because, or merely because, it was loud and constant. It was torture because it was a forced exposure to American musical hegemony and to lyrics not indigenous to the culture of the prisoners.
“Human Rights Watch posted brief first-person accounts of detainees released from a secret prison in Afghanistan, many of whom asserted that part of their experience included being held in a pitch-black space and forced to listen to music that they described, variously, as “unbearably loud”, “infidel”, or “Western”.”
Now, ponder for a minute the apparently unconscious irony of this protest coming from a class of academics who make their money requiring students from Western backgrounds to listen repeatedly to music from other ethnic and cultural settings.
Suzanne G. Cusick, the author of the piece, has seen the comments on LGF and Free Republic to the effect that people who live in inner cities or in college dorms are frequently subject to aural assault, so so what? She’s having none of it. This is torture for no more reason than that the music comes from America and it is being played to Muslims. And those commenters who said it’s like living with an obnoxious neighbor? They’re just lashing out from their “feminized” chickenhawk natures. Never mind that some of them were women.
“I’ve been thinking that the scene, both as drastically real for interrogators and detainees, and as virtual for filmgoers, press readers, bloggers, and me, bears thinking about as an artifact of the global war on terror, itself an artifact of the US’ newly unabashed effort to project itself as global sovereign. I’m struck, for instance, by the fact that “no touch torture” using music to dissolve others’ subjectivities has been imposed on persons picked up in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Indonesia, Iraq, Mauritania, Pakistan, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, including British and Canadian citizens. Thus, the performative scene in which music is the medium of ubiquitous, irresistable power that touches without touching has been imposed on representatives of the entire Muslim world. Music, then, is not only a component of “no touch torture” but also a component of the US’ symbolic claim to global sovereignty–but in a way that is almost the polar opposite of the Louis Armstrong “good will ambassador” tours of the 1950s. At the same time, however, the US has given the detainees thus treated over to its own soldiers as scapegoats, toward whom their choice of music linked to working-class masculinities can channel their rage at the economic and political forces that make them–like their captives–human beings that the state allows to be killed with impunity. Moreover, because media representations on the one hand and the technologies of “new media” on the other allow the scene to be widely imagined and responded to at home, the US has, perhaps inadvertently, given the same detainees over to a certain swath of the homefront, where they can be scapegoats for a different kind of rage. Believing they cannot be killed with impunity, the homefront bloggers at littegreen footballs and freerepublic do more than express their rage at the feminized position they occupy as non-warriors in an increasingly warrior-worshipping public culture. They create (and occupy) as homophobic, racist and misogynist the subject position of virtuous, justified torture–a subject position identified with, and occupied by, the global national security state that has, in its most recently passed law on the treatment of detainees, declared itself exempt from international law. All the while, the scene–at least as one can currently know it–allows certain kinds of repertoire to stand for the violence of “Western”, “infidel” conquest, leaving repertoire that is more likely to be valued by elites both innocent and intact.”
The audacity of it freezes my brain. But a couple of thoughts bubble up: What other art can also be a form of torture? And one wonders if a more effective form of torture might not be modern “Serious” music, with its deliberate atonality, jarring dissonances, and shocking bursts of screech? It is interesting, as Cusick notes, then bunglingly shoehorns into her anti-American article, that the same music used to torture the Muslims is the music the U.S. soldiers play, loud, for pleasure, over and over, to themselves.
-Miles Lascaux
Ambiance 
Ron said,
May 5, 2009 at 11:26 pm
I think exposing people to Diamanda Galas or Dokken would be less torturous then letting some tenured, blouviating, souffle of an academic “channel their rage at the economic and political forces that make them” and vent their gases into the world.
Nothing defeats intellectuality more than moral surety.
Rod said,
May 5, 2009 at 11:49 pm
One could “torture” my father by playing Rap. One could “torture” many fans of Rap by playing Mozart. Perhaps they should go after Muslims by playing Gregorian chants, or constantly projecting Crusader Rabbit on the wall of their cell. This is silly. While there is certainly some music I find annoying, loud, intermittent noise would work just as well.
Randy said,
May 6, 2009 at 10:09 am
Next time, I recommend a loop of Bach’s Mass in B Minor followed by various versions of Ave Maria, with an occasional insertion of Handel’s Messiah.
Ron said,
May 6, 2009 at 10:13 am
Maybe “Jesus built my hot rod” from Ministry after the Bach…or would that be ‘religious’ intolerance?
GN said,
May 6, 2009 at 11:42 am
Hmmm …. surgically attaching buds from an Ipod ….. and then playing the theme from Moulin Rouge ….. or 99 bottles of beer on the Wall ….
GN said,
May 6, 2009 at 11:44 am
Does Michael Reynolds sing after a few glasses of wine … just a thought
Ron said,
May 6, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Hey! I need a “stimulus package”! I’ll sing goddamn Parsifal at ’em for a federal bailout! And if they don’t crack… I’ll sing again!
Just call me The Warbling War Criminal!
Ron said,
May 6, 2009 at 1:25 pm
There’s no interest,
Like vested interest ,
There’s no interest I know!
Everything about is appalling,
And I admit a bailout would be freeing,
While others call it ‘stealing’,
That extra ‘traunche’ right now!
Anon said,
May 6, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Why not replace torture by music with torturing some of these guys (assuming, for the sake of argument, that we are going to torture them) my forcing them to listen to lectures by these professors. [In translation, of course, so they could understand the philosophical position of the professors.] Now that would be really nasty!
mileslascaux said,
May 6, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Frankly, I think having to listen to and read all that clunky Chomskyite academic prose would be pretty painful in itself. The paragraph quoted is my exhibit A of why I abandoned academe after 4 years and never went back, no matter what it cost me in career advancement, authority, or prestige.
Icepick said,
May 6, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Gibby Haynes rules!
For those who want to hear all the lyrics…
And finally, for the purists….
Icepick said,
May 6, 2009 at 8:16 pm
And I guess I should have linked to this version as well, for those who prefer more violence than that average Ministry video. An added bonus: SCHOOL BUS RACING!
mileslascaux said,
May 6, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Why am I suddenly thinking of Wendy O. Williams?
Icepick said,
May 6, 2009 at 8:52 pm
You’re probably thinking of this. The Warning at the start means that this one goes up way past 11 on the silly meter.
Icepick said,
May 6, 2009 at 9:05 pm
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention The Plasmatics legendary performance on Tom Snyder’s Tommorow show. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find an uneditted clip on YouTube, but this should suffice. And here’s an interview snippet with on of Tom’s production staff, on “explosion effects” and “chain saw effects”.
For some real fun, go to YouTube and search on Tom Snyder. He had some great stuff through the years.
Icepick said,
May 6, 2009 at 9:10 pm
And since I’m just spamming the Hell out of this, here’s the best PSA ever! (Ignore everything until Wendy O. appears.)
mileslascaux said,
May 6, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Yup. That’s the one. “Professional Conceptual Artists.” Now I have another thing to aspire to see in my obituary.
Rod said,
May 6, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Just loop the Disney “Small World” theme. That would bring them to their knees. Alternatively, set up small work groups, setting up the Shiites as overseers over the Sunnis and vice versa. That approached worked for a long time in Detroit. Rod
Ron said,
May 7, 2009 at 12:43 am
Doesn’t “It’s a small world after all” violate the Geneva Convention?
amba said,
May 7, 2009 at 9:12 am
Using music to “dissolve others’ subjectivities.” That’s the phrase that jumped out at me. Like we’re in a constant kind of ray-gun no-touch war to turn one another’s sensitive conceptual structures to jelly. We all have the right to be inviolable monads. Any attempt to attempt, persuade, seduce, or even entertain (much less intimidate or dominate) is an act of violence. By this standard, rap is rape, but I suppose the good professors would call it self-defense against the overwhelming hegemony of colonialism — a kind of admirable terrorism.
The other thing that has to crack you up about this is that by this standard, adolescent children torture their parents. And vice versa. Playing Journey could be reported to the authorities as child abuse.
Ron said,
May 7, 2009 at 10:15 am
Isn’t it odd that educators, whose very job it is to change and shape minds take this approach? For whom the school bell tolls…
GN said,
May 8, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Just a thought … if sub-woofers were available during Vietnam …. never mind
reader_iam said,
May 11, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Remember Muzak?
reader_iam said,
May 11, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Great post, Miles.