Footnoted treatises on the dark side of music are unlikely to sell as well as the cheery pop-science books that tout musicвЂ™s ability to make us smarter, happier, and more productive. We resist evidence suggesting that music can cloud reason, stir rage, cause pain, even kill. To quote the standard platitudes, it has charms to soothe a savage breast it is the food of love it brings us together and sets us free. When music is applied to warlike ends, we tend to believe that it has been turned against its innocent nature. There is also a new translation, by Matthew Amos and Fredrick RГ¶nnbГ¤ck, of Pascal QuignardвЂ™s 1996 book, вЂњThe Hatred of MusicвЂќ (Yale), which explores age-old associations between music and barbarity. On my desk is a bleak stack of books examining torture and harassment, the playlists of Iraq War soldiers and interrogators, musical tactics in American crime-prevention efforts, sonic cruelties inflicted in the Holocaust and other genocides, the musical preferences of Al Qaeda militants and neo-Nazi skinheads. The intersection of music and violence has inspired a spate of academic studies.

Music has accompanied acts of war since trumpets sounded at the walls of Jericho, but in recent decades it has been weaponized as never before-outfitted for the unreal landscape of modern battle. added music to the torture regime known as вЂњenhanced interrogation.вЂќ At GuantГЎnamo, detainees were stripped to their underwear, shackled to chairs, and blinded by strobe lights as heavy metal, rap, and childrenвЂ™s tunes assaulted their ears. And during the occupation of Iraq the C.I.A. When Palestinian militants occupied the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, in 2002, Israeli forces reportedly tried to eject them with heavy metal. During the siege of the Branch Davidian compound, in Waco, Texas, in 1993, the F.B.I. вЂњSince the Noriega incident, youвЂ™ve been seeing an increased use of loudspeakers,вЂќ a psyops spokesman declared. Nonetheless, military and law-enforcement officials became convinced that they had stumbled on a valuable tactic. Noriega, who had received psyВops training at Fort Bragg in the nineteen-sixties, is said to have slept soundly through the clamor. Bush called the campaign вЂњirritating and petty,вЂќ and Powell had it stopped. Bush and General Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took a dim view of it. Illustration by Erik CarterДЄlthough the media delighted in the spectacle, President George H. Music has the power to cloud reason, stir rage, cause pain, even kill.

Shadow of war soundtrack