Killing Me Softly with His Song: An Initial Investigation into the Use of Popular Music as a Tool

of Oppression
Author(s): Martin Cloonan and Bruce Johnson
Source: Popular Music, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 27-39
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853585
Accessed: 21-12-2015 17:00 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Popular Music.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Popular Music (2002)Volume 21/1. Copyrightt) 2002CambridgeUniversityPress,pp. 27-39.

DOI:10.1017/SO261143002002027
Printedin the United Kingdom

Killing
me
softly
with
his
an
initial
investigation into
use
of
popular
music
as
a

song:
the
tool

of

oppression
MARTIN CLOONAN and BRUCE JOHNSON
Abstract
Popular music studies generally celebratethe power of music to empowerthe constructionof individual and social identities, a site of positive self-realisation.But such an approachrisks overlookinga
significant element in the musical transaction.How, for example, did the inhabitantsof lericho feel?
Or President Noriega when musically besieged by US troops in Panama City? Or street kids in
Wollongong,New South Wales, driven out of shopping malls by the strategic broadcastingof Frank
Sinatra recordings?Every time we applaud the deploymentof music as a way of articulatingphysical,
cognitive and cultural territory,we are also applauding the potential or actual displacementor even
destruction of other identities. On occasions that displacementmay well be conducted as an act of
extreme violence: music as pain. This negative side of the territorialismof music, however, receives
little attention in popular music studies, even though it is potentially the dark side of any musical
transaction.In attempting to redressthe balance,this article is a 'trailer'for a joint investigation into
the use of popular music as a weapon. It representsour initial attempts to think through some of the
issues surrounding popular music and its use as a tool of repressionand the deliberateinflicting of
pain.

Introduction
The origins of this research lie in a paper given by Bruce Johnson at the IASPM
1999 conference in Sydney in which he outlined the origins of Western music in
Australia.During the introductionto the talk, Brucedescribedsome of the violence
upon which the prison colony in Australia was established. In particular,he highlighted the routine floggings which were meted out for petty offences and the mechanical, dispassionate way in which such floggings and the suffering of the victims
were logged. Of some significancewas the fact that one of the offences for which
brutalpunishment would be inflicted was the singing of songs, particularlyby Irish
nationalistswho had been sent to the colony for rebelling against Britishrule.
Such dark episodes have their parallelsin much more recenttimes. The edited
collection by Svanibor Pettan (1998), Music, Politics and Warin Croatia,contains
many referencesto the ways in which popular music was used to accompany and
inflict pain in the wars in the former Yugoslavia. We have not, as yet, found any
recorded instances of music being used to accompany the torture of convicts in
Australia,but we are interestedin the ways in which popular music might be used
27
This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

28

Martin Cloonanand BruceJohnson

both as a source of pain and to accompany the inflicting of pain. To sum up, we
have become intrigued by a darkerside of the use of popular music.
As we explored the primaryand secondaryliterature,we were generallyconfirmedin a long-standingimpressionregardinga strong prevailingcurrentin popular music studies. In their efforts to establish popular music as a credible arena
of academic study (something which we wholeheartedly support), popular music
academics have generally tended to underplay the negative impact of popular
music. Some double standardshave been deployed as a consequence,as an eagerness to celebrateany apparentcomplicityof popular music in producing successful
revolutions against repressivepolitical and culturalregimes has been accompanied
by scornful denials of any causal links which suggest that pop might produce acts
of criminalityand terror.There has been a tendency to representpopular music as
a redemptive and emancipatoryforce which opposes conservativeand historically
entrenchedmusic discourses, but to deny or ignore its darkerside.
Whatever else makes up the tapestry of popular music studies, one thread
seems virtually unbroken throughout its weave: that popular music is universally
a 'good thing'. The attempt by popular music academics to give intellectual legitimationto their subjecthas had a tendency to drift into blanketmoral legitimation.
In the context of the whole body of popular music studies, few have seemed prepared to do the dirty on pop. This often represents the outer limits to critical
engagement with larger culturalpolitics, and in many ways produces homologies
with the dubious discursive economies against which the critical disciplines of
popular music studies were originally mobilised. Among other conundrums, this
prompts the question put by Keith Negus (1996, p. 33): Will such studies become
the site of a vacuous celebrationof consumerism?
Thus the origins of the currentarticlelay in these two strands of thinking:on
the one hand, a recognitionthat music has accompanied,and even been the instrument of, appalling acts of inhumanity and repression;on the other, a feeling that
this obvious and unequivocal truth is largely ignored as being inconvenient to a
scholarlycommunity often more concernedwith an almost complacentcelebration
of its topic. And as foreshadowed above, this is not a small matter- every triumph
achieved by music is at someone's expense. Indeed, frequently the purpose of the
triumph is the humiliationand even brutalisationof the defeated.
The rest of the paper sets out some initial thoughts on the use of music as a
tool of oppression.We begin with some remarksabout the use of sound, then sketch
a preliminary taxonomy of music functioning in various ways and to different
degrees as a form of oppression. That oppression may fall anywhere on a continuum between discomfort which is incidental to the intended function of the
music, to the deliberatedeployment of music as an instrumentof pain. Within that
scheme, music may simply accompanythe discomfort/pain or be the primarycause
of it, either physically or psychologically.We then proceed to some of the conceptual approaches which might help to develop our thinking. We conclude with
furtherexamples which serve to highlight the complexitiesof the issues with which
we wish to engage.
The use of sound
Preparingto cross the Rhone as he began his invasion of Italy in 218 BC,Hannibal's
army was confrontedby Gallicwarriorswho 'came surging to the river bank, how-

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Killingme softlywith his song

29

ling and singing as their custom was, shaking their shields above their heads and
brandishingtheir spears' (Livy 1965, p. 67). Hannibaleasily defeated these singing
warriors, but he was less successful with the Romans sixteen years later at the
battle of Zama that ended his campaign.Accordingto Livy, music was a significant
presence in this defeat:
There were... factors which seem trivial to recall, but proved of great importanceat the
time of action.The Romanwar-crywas louder and more terrifyingbecause it was in unison,
whereas the cries from the Carthaginianside were discordant,coming as they did from a
mixed assortmentof peoples with a variety of mother tongues. (ibid.,pp. 661-2)

Thus the use of music, that is the use of particularforms of sound, has historically formed part of the act of war. And of course, the objectof war is to inflict the
utmost pain upon the enemy. Thus the association of (popular) music with the
inflicting of pain has a long historicallineage. One of the best-known stories of the
Old Testamentis how foshua Fit The Battleof Jericho',with the sounding of trumpets, 'and the walls came tumbling down'. In addition, we can see that sound has
been used in related ways in more peaceable times.
Sound and territory
Sound is an ancient markerof physical and psychic territorialidentity. As a familiar
example, a Cockneyis traditionallysomeone born within the sound of Bow Bells. In
an ocularcentricsociety, our willed imaginariesare primarilyvisual (our 'visions',
'perspectives', 'points of view'), yet it is sound which is actually and historically
the more flexible mode of negotiation. With minor variations,our visible presence
is fixed and finite. The horizons of sound are, of course, much more flexible. That
flexibility was illustrated even as this section of the paper was written. It was in
the Finnish city of Joensuuon MidsummerEve, and a mile or two away, beside the
lake, there was a rock concertwhich could not be seen, but it could be heard. As it
was heard it was possible to discern each band defining its own acoustic horizons
and aural textures in different ways. This was most obvious simply in terms of
volume, as successive groups receded and advanced in the soundscape.
Unlike our visible presence,we can constantlyand instantlymodify the radius
and characterof our acoustic presence so that it is a powerful tool for political
negotiation, a way of taking control in defiance of physical space. From the trumpets of Joshua's army at Jerichoto the loudspeakers of US Marines blasting AC/
DC at the besieged General Noriega (see below), sound has been used to flood
spaces with power, to oppress and conquer:both Hitler and F.R.Leavis understood
the relationshipbetween modern demagoguery and the microphone.
One of the defining features of modernity is the rising level of noise, and in
particularits use as a way of situating ourselves in society. It can be a background
in which we may conceal ourselves. In October 1999 it was reported that the BBC
was about to install a noise machine in its financedepartmentto circulatea 'muzak'
of chatter, laughter and general office noise, because workers feel exposed and
oppressed by the ambient silence (SydneyMorningHerald,15 October 1999). More
often, it is sound itself that is used to oppress, to take up public space at the expense
of others.l Sound thus becomes an invasion of personal space. In response to this,
there have been moves to create mobile-phone-free zones on public transport
(Dasey 2000).In Britain,long-distanceVirgin trainsnow incorporatea 'QuietCoach'

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

30

MartinCloonanand BruceJohnson

within which mobile phones are banned and personal stereos discouraged. From
mobile phones to stereos lies the continuumjoining sound with music, and to travel
along that spectrumis to trace sound on its way to being music.

Soundbecomingmusic
Apart from speech itself, music is the most sophisticated form of acculturated
sound. Music is to sound what place is to space. Most human sounds made for
their own sake are on the way to being music and, as such, are potential means of
territorialoppression. In many regions in the era prior to electricalamplification,
recording,and industrial-strengthhi-fi systems, one of the most pervasive ways of
projectingpower through a form of music was public bells: reportedlybanned in
Turkeybecause of their ability to rouse the populace, and regardedby the Chinese
as the highest of all forms of torment (Corbin1999,pp. 195, 305). Parishbells were
recognised as important weapons in everyday confrontationsthat defined larger
historicalprocesses in the rise of modernity (See Corbin 1999,passim).
In nineteenth-centuryFrance,campanarianpracticesdefined points of conflict
between contending classes: the common versus the elite, secular arm versus the
clergy, the urbanversus the rural,and textualversus auditorycultures.While these
bells were often accompanimentsto violence and bloodshed, they might also simply
be acoustic confrontationsover controlover the soundscape either for its own sake,
or where differentregimes of time and space contended for ascendancy.Whatever
the case, the taking control of the bells, at what time, and in what manner,became
such powerful forms of public intimidation,humiliation and defiance, that many
communitiesfound their bells stolen, buried, destroyed, or their bell towers locked.
Let us turn,however, to sounds which may be regardedless ambiguouslyas music.
Music and oppression
The earlierquotation from Livy reminds us that music has always been deployed
to inflame and intimidate. Greek galley oarsmen around 400 BC had a range of
chants,including one for battle (Proctor1992,p. 6). When RichardI arrivedin Sicily
to join the crusades,his 'resoundingtrumpetsand loud horns struckfear and dread
into the souls of the citizens' (ibid.,p. 9). Ships of the Spanish Armada in 1588
carried trumpeters,drummers and fife players whose battle orders were to play
incessantlyto enliven their own men and frightenthe enemy (ibid.,p. 14). Music in
itself could become the site of contestation,as in the battle between seventeenthcentury trade rivals, the Dutch navy and the Portuguese-heldfortressat Macao:
The ships drew off at sunset, but celebratedthe expected victory by blowing trumpetsand
beating drums all night. Not to be outdone by this bravado, Lopo Sarmentode Carvalho
ordered similarmartialrejoicingsto be made on the city's bulwarks.(ibid.,p. 33)

These are fairly schematic models: nation versus nation, tribe versus tribe,
with musical meanings unambiguousand agreed. Meanings,and especiallymusical
ones, however, are often constructedin conflicting ways. When ChristopherColumbus attempted to communicate amicably with the natives of Trinidad, he
ordered his ship's musicians to play. The natives, however, interpretedthis as a
prelude to battle, and replied with volleys of arrows (ibid.,p. 55). One man's meat
continues to be anotherman's poison. In April 2000 it was reportedthat the Israel

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Killingme softlywith his song

31

Symphony Orchestrais still encounteringresistanceto its wish to performWagner:

'Thetime is ripe to distinguishbetween art and ideology', said the orchestra'sdirectorMendi
Rotan. Its secretary-general,Avi Shoshani, however, insists that 50 years on this will still
cause 'agony, sorrow and pain for holocaust survivors'. (SydneyMorningHerald,10 April
2000)

Forat least one holocaust survivor,the distinctionbetween 'art'and 'ideology'

was not tenable, and he fought sonic pain with sonic sabotage. During what was
reportedly 'the first performancein Israel of a work by RichardWagner' (by the
Rishon Letzion Symphony Orchestra),an eighty-year-old Polish survivor of the
death camps in the audience persistently swung a large plastic rattle around his
head until ejected by an usher (Katzenell 2000). These examples are all based on
live music. In the era of the modern mass media, technology has amplified the
projectionof private musical tastes into the public sphere, thus collapsing a distinction that could be much more effectively maintained in a pre-urban,pre-industrial
era. Part of the clamour of modernity is a public sonic brawling, as urban space
becomes a site of acoustic conflict.This is underpinnedby the politics of modernity:
increasinglyportablenoise in increasinglydensely packed spaces.
British MP Robert Key wishes to ban the broadcastingof recorded music in
public places (http://www.robertkey.com/pr/prO01.htm#),and he is supportedby
a 2,500 member lobby group called Pipedown (of whom more below). Pipedown
cite figures which suggest that thirty-fourper cent of a survey group actively dislike
muzak, whereas thirty per cent like it, and that youth are less likely to objectto it
than older people (Herbert2000). It may be that this is to do with generationally
distinct thresholds of acoustic tolerance.In a conversationwith one of the authors
(8 May 2000), the Director of the Australian Acoustic Laboratoriesreported a
measurabledecline in hearing acuity among younger Australians.
However, differing responses to muzak may also depend on exactly what the
muzak is. This is one of the several lines of enquiry suggested by the foregoing,
raising then the question of how to study in more detail the negative functions of
music. This obviously overlaps with a range of issues, including ethics, aesthetics
and physiology, and we returnto this issue later. However, we now wish to sketch
an initial model.

Music and the inflictingof pain:a preliminarytaxonomy

A broad division can be seen to exist between pain which is incidentallycaused by
music (such as loud music played in an adjacentroom or building) and occasions
on which pain is integral to the playing of music. Note, however, that the divide
can easily be breached,as on occasions when car stereos are deliberatelyplayed too
loudly. But let us put more flesh on the bones of these ideas.
Pain as incidental

Examples of the inflicting of pain as incidental to the purpose of music might

include a loud CD player in an adjacentflat or the irritatingsound of a loud walkman on public transport.At the extremes, this could involve being exposed to any
music which the listener finds annoying or even torturous. For example, back in
the 1860s, 'torturous'was exactly the phrase used by a Britishcritic to describe the
music produced by a touring Japanesemusic group (Mihara1998, p. 134).

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

32

Martin Cloonanand BruceJohnson

In the majorityof cases in this category,the primarypurpose of the music is

not to inflict pain, but pain is neverthelessbeing felt. Note, however, the potential
at least to move from this state towards one where pain becomes integral to the
process - so that it is possible to move from a position where the music is incidentally annoying neighboursto one where the whole purpose of the music is to annoy
neighbours. Thus, when residents of Trinidad Crescent in Poole, England, petitioned their local council in 1993 in an effort to prevent their neighbour, Mary
Carruthers,from playing Jim Reeves' recordsat full blast night and day, one of the
residents commented that: 'The way I saw it, they were out to annoy the whole
neighbourhood'(Weale 1993).
In fact, recent years in the UK have seen various attempts to legislate against
so-called 'nuisance'neighboursand the noise which emanates from them. This has
resulted in a number of Acts which cover noise, including the 1990 Environmental
Health Act, the 1996 Noise Act and the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act. Under such
Acts, local authorities can move against perpetratorsof noise, issue abatement
orders, and subsequently seize and confiscate equipment if the abatementorders
are not complied with. This will generallyinvolve a court case which may also lead
to fines and even imprisonment in severe cases. However, some critics have
attackedthese Acts as inadequatebecause they rely on victims gatheringevidence
and reportinga numberof incidents and because anti-noisemeasuresare dispersed
throughouta number of disparateActs, ratherthan being brought together in one
piece of legislation (Symons 2000, p. 2).
Meanwhile,the question of anti-socialneighbourswas an issue in the 2001 UK
general election as the ruling LabourGovernmentwas concernedthat not enough
complaints were coming via existing mechanisms aimed at countering anti-social
behaviour and was contemplatingfurther reforms (Travis2001). The UK government also has a Noise Forum which meets three times a year and discusses,
amongst other things, domestic noise (Gibson 1999, p. 2). Complaintsabout noisy
neighbourshave escalated in recent years (Victor1994) and by 1993 were running
at over 100,000a year in the UK (Vidal 1993, p. 3). Moreover,amplified music is
heavily implicatedin this and around a third of complaintsabout noise concernthe
playing of loud music (Taylor1993).
The rise of sound recordingand amplificationtechnologieshas of course provided a major platform from which 'nuisance noise' has been projected.It is not
simply that amplificationincreasedthe level of noise. In addition,it enabledparticular kinds of noise to be projected,and in a way that violated the sense of the acceptable boundaries between private and public spaces. Complaints about noise are
more often based on the intrusionof the privateinto the public, than about loudness
as such (mobile phones and personal sound systems are not really a phenomenon
of 'loudness').
The development of the use of the microphoneas a performanceaccessoryin
the early 1930s was condemned in some quarters.However, this was not simply
(and not at all at first)because it produced loud music - it was, after all, originally
used purely to bring singers who were too soft up to a level commensuratewith
big bands in large and noisy leisure venues. Rather, it was the characterof the
singing which the microphone now enabled to be disseminated publicly: timbres
and tones that were not regardedas part of the repertoireof approved public singing, but which were associatedwith private and non-musicaldomains, as in 'a low
moaning sound, as of animals in pain. . . the soft singing of a mother to her child',

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Killingme softlywith his song

33

or what came to be called crooning, 'with its nauseatingchromaticslides and verbal

twaddle . . . revolting noises', its 'distortedand often unlovely vowel sounds' (cited
in Johnson 2000, pp. 95-7). The complaint is not that the music is too loud, but
that vocal practicesassociated with private conduct were intruding into the public
sphere.2

As many of the foregoing examples indicate, the terms used to describe these
unwelcome forms of music frequentlyinvoke the idea of pain. Describingthe loud
music which led to her setting up the Campaign for Peace and Quiet (now the
Noise Network), Val Gibson (2000, p. 1) wrote that: 'Enduringthe thump, thump,
thump of the bass beat was like torture'.She also noted that this music was used
deliberatelyto annoy her (Noise Network 2000).In anothercase, Helen Stephensof
Stockton on Tees was sentenced to a week in prison for what was described in
court as the 'psychologicaltorture'of repeatedlyplaying Whitney Houston's 'I Will
Always Love You' at maximum volume (Vidal 1993, p. 2). It is interesting to note
here that the final straw for her neighbours was the repeatedplaying of the song.
Thus what is a key component of many popular music styles, repetition (Potter
1998,p. 38), is also the key to the pain inflicted in many of these cases.
Opponents of noise are not taking matters lying down, as pressure groups
have been set up to combat the growth of nuisance caused by noise. One is the
Noise Network which seeks to restrain advertisements for music players which
urge buyers to 'turn up the music' and which boast of their product's ability to
'annoy the neighbours' (Noise Network 2000). Another is the campaign against
piped music, Pipedown, cited earlier,which campaigns for the restorationof freedom of choice and 'the real value of music', a reflectionof its claim that all music
is devalued when it is used for marketing. Pipedown has a number of celebrity
supportersincluding Simon Rattle,JulianLloyd Webber,Lesley Garrettand George
Melly. It has claimed success in removing piped music from Gatwickand persuading Tescos and Sainsburysnot to introduce it. It also reports a MORIsurvey from
January1997 in which seventeen per cent of people cited piped music as the one
thing which they detested about modern life (Pipedown 2000). Pipedown and the
Noise Network are now part of the United Kingdom Noise Association which met
EnvironmentMinisterMichaelMeacherin September2000 to examine a number of
issues including piped music (www.superscript.co.uk/tnn/).
Such campaigns and noise-relatedincidents are often portrayedin newspaper
and other media reports in somewhat jocular ways, and it has been reported that
complaintsabout noise in the UK have been treatedlightheartedlyby local authorities (Symons 2000, p. 2). But the seriousness of the issue is illustrated by some of
the problems which noise has been held to contributeto: deafness, tinitus, strokes
migraines, peptic ulcers, colitis and hypertension (Vidal 1993, p. 2) as well, of
course, as stress. In fact, noise can be, literally, a deadly serious problem, in which
popular music is implicated. For example, in the mid-199Osdisputes about noise
were held to cause around five deaths a year (Gibson 1999,p. 3; Victor 1994)and a
number of suicides (Symons 2000, p. 3). Not all of these cases involved popular
music, but many did and they stand in marked contrast to the uncritically celebratorytone of many journalisticand academic accounts of popular music. While
such incidents move us towards the darker side of popular music usage, in most
of the cases here the pain caused appears, at least initially, to have been unintentional. This is not always the case.

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

34

Martin Cloonanand BruceJohnson

Painas integralto thepurposeof music

Pain can be integral to the purpose of music in a number of ways including
those of making propaganda, torturing and punishing. Pain can be associated
with propaganda in an attempt to place one's feelings 'Right In The Fuhrer's
Face'. Thus the object of the pain is to boost morale, and the means by which
morale is boosted consists of demeaning the enemy. Pettan (1998, p. 17) reports
that many songs written for, and sung at, the front during the war in Croatia
were deliberately designed to provoke a response from the enemy, which they
often did. Another example is the way in which neo-nazi texts and so-called
hate music seek to demean ethnic minorities. The pain here is the insult to
which the enemy is subjected.
A differentform of propagandisingcan be located in the appropriationof the
term noise by those involved in marginalised music scenes. Thus Public Enemy
urged fans to 'BringThe Noise'; there is also a heavy metal recordcompany called
Noise, a fanzine called Addicted To Noise, a band called Orgy of Noise, and numerous other examples. The point here is that an 'in your face' approachto making or
writing about music is used deliberately to alienate those not sharing the same
musical tastes, as a means of demarcation. The negative term 'noise' is reappropriatedhere and worn as a badge of pride.
This attitude can also incorporate the sonic aggression of those whose car
stereos are played loudly enough to disrupt the soundscape. A certain rebel chic
has been attached to the use of noise in popular music. In the 1970s, American
guitar-heroTed Nugent emphasised his macho image with advertisementsfor his
live show which contained the declaration:'If it's too loud you're too old'. This
lineage can be tracedto more contemporarybands such as Leftfieldwho take great
pride in the loudness of their gigs (Martin2000). Thus there are contexts within
which a certainamount of pain is integral to the very enjoymentof the music and
this has been a cause of concern for the authorities.As has been noted elsewhere
(Cloonan1996,p. 184),the battle to controlpopular music has also involved a battle
to control noise volume at gigs.
While in such instances the pain is only part of the object, there are also
contexts in which the primary purpose of the music is to cause or heighten
pain. At its most extreme, this can involve the use of music as a means of
torture. Amnesty Internationaland Human Rights Watch have both reported
incidents from the wars in the former Yugoslavia where music was used to
accompany torture (cited by Pettan 1998, p.l8). In one prisoner camp, a detainee
reported that Croat prisoners were forced to stand adopting a Serb salute and,
in the words of one prisoner, 'to sing Chetnik songs... We had to wait to
sunrise in such a position; those who sat or collapsed from exhaustion were
taken out and never came back' (cited ibid.).In other instances, Croat prisoners
were forced to repeatedly sing the Yugoslav national anthem, to the accompaniment of beatings. The last verse of the anthem, which speaks of those who
betray the homeland being damned, had to be particularly emphasised (cited
ibid.).
In June 2000 it was reported that a young female member of the Movement
for DemocraticChange in the Midlandsprovince of Zimbabwewas visited by supportersof the rulingZANU-PFpartywho accused her of belonging to a party which
wanted to 'give Zimbabweback to the whites'. As a punishment,the following day,

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Killingme softlywith his song

35

300 people frog-marchedher and her husband to a tree, tied them to it and beat
them for five hours with machetes, batons and axe handles. Part of this process
involved the prisonersbeing forced to chant ZANU-PFslogans and to sing its liberThe inflictingof pain
ation songs (www.mdczimbabwe.com/free/ aiO00608txt.htm).
was also central to the US army playing ear-bustingmusic to General Noriega as
their troops blockaded the VaticanEmbassyin PanamaCity in December1989.The
music was selected to be repetitive and loud, although it also included a number
of topical pieces such as 'No Place to Run' and 'You'reno Good'. In this case there
was also an aestheticdimension to the attack,as Noriega was an opera lover (Potter
1998, pp. 37-8).
While it would be possible to cite other examples (as, for example, Endnote 1
below), we also need to think about how to study the use of popular music as a
tool of repression. On the face of it, popular music studies as they relate to music
affect and form would seem to be a point of departure. While these obviously
suggest themselves as constructive lines of enquiry, we feel that there are also
others which would complement the investigation.

Possibilitiesfor studyingmusic as pain

studiesand acousticecology
1. Soundscape
The raw materialsof sonic oppression are the componentsof the public soundscape
and the balances between them. In terms of social function, the music throbbing
from a car radio with its windows down, has at least as much and perhaps more
in common with aircraftor constructionsite noise, as with the same music played
in more traditionallyauthorisedcircumstances.Such music is, literally,trafficnoise,
part of the soundscape of urban modernity. It is not so much that it is music in
particular that is fundamental to its oppressiveness, as that it indiscriminately
floods the public space.
Soundscapestudies also bring to bear the insight that oppressive noise cannot
be reductively equated simply with volume, but is more to do with a overall balance, an 'acoustic ecology'. As noted above, factors other than volume, such as
repetitiveness and the projectionof inappropriate(as in private) sounds can cause
pain. In the complaint that some of the uses of sound devalue music, there is also
an aesthetic component, yet soundscape studies remind us that even something
such as 'ugliness' has to be understood as part of a larger ecology, and it is not
necessarily a socially undesirable sonic oppression: some sounds, such as alarms,
have to be unpleasant.
It thereforeseems useful to bring to bear soundscape methodologies, including phenomenological approaches related to ethnography, rather than an exclusively hermeneuticapproach.3

2. Music therapy
The English warship 'Mary Rose' floundered off Spithead in 1545, and was excavated amid great publicity in 1982.One of the little-noted,but fascinating,recoveries was a number of musical instruments,including a shawm. The fact that this was
found in the surgeon's cabin has been interpretedas a reminderthat music therapy

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

36

Martin Cloonanand Bruce Johnson

has had some kind of formal existence for many centuries (Proctor1992, p. 55).
Fromthe ratherun-clinicalstatementthat music hath charmsto soothe, music therapy has produced insights which may well be instructive in the study of the
relationshipbetween music and psychopathology,including that the experienceof
music can be the very opposite of soothing. On the contrary,as the Gauls facing
Hannibal knew, it can be physiologically arousing:it was found that Herbertvon
Karajanwas physiologicallymore aroused (heartbeat,respiration)when conducting
a slow passage of music than when he was landing his own jet aircraft(Ansdell
1995,p. 5). A parallelarousaleffect is reportedin the extraordinaryresults achieved
by music therapistson comatose patients (ibid.,p. 136).

Some furtherdirections:music and public order

We believe that soundscape studies and music therapy may be fruitful methods
for taking forward some of the issues which we have raised, and they converge
in our concluding examples of the negative impact of music. The locus here is
public space, and in particular railway stations and shopping malls. Music is
deployed in such spaces for reasons that are neither overtly commercial (i.e. not
to advertise or sell something) nor aesthetic (i.e. not as a focused object of
aesthetic pleasure), although such music draws on both of these as part of its
ends and means. It also involves the use of music in the enforcement of public
order and responsibilityin ways which were highlighted in the reaction to raves
in Britain where new laws were brought in to control raves partly in an effort
to regain control of the acoustic environmentof the English countryside (Cloonan
1996, pp. 206-11).
Attempts to establish control of public spaces through the deployment of
music are more common than we might at first imagine, and national anthems
seem to crop up rather frequently in this connection. One example is the use of
the National Anthem in Beatles concerts during their Australian tour in 1964.
When the crowd became over-enthusiasticat the conclusion of the shows, the
management would play the National Anthem, and the rowdy audience would
dutifully rise to its feet and stand silently, while the Fab Four made their escape
via the stage door (Baker1982, p. 96). In a related example from February2000,
it was reported that, following their embarrassing performance in the African
Cup of Nations, the members of the Ivory Coast Soccer team, the Elephants,
were incarceratedon their returnhome, and requiredto performmilitary training
(BBC2000). In one unconfirmed radio report, their humiliation was climaxed by
requiring them to sing the national anthem before a public gathering. Such a
punishment is not unique: in the Finnish daily, HelsinginSanomat(10 February
2000), it was reported that jay-walkers in the Philippines were being fined on
the spot and forced to sing the national anthem.
Our final example of music and enforcementinvolves the sanitisationof public
spaces. In the late 1990sthere were occasionaland brief reportsin local and provincial newspapers that in the industrial city of Wollongong, south of Sydney, shopping malls found that piping FrankSinatraover the speakers dispersed loitering
gangs of youths. Although barely noted at the time, the idea has recently been
adapted with apparently great success in railway stations notoriously susceptible
to vandalism. Over a six-week period in early 2000, Beethoven,Mozart, Bach and
Brahms were piped onto five Sydney metropolitantrain stations, resulting in an

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Killingme softlywith his song

37

overall seventy-five per cent reduction in vandalism, and completely eliminatingit

at two stations. It is now planned to pipe the same music into railway carriages
themselves (Rogers2000; Sun-Herald[Sydney], 30 April 2000).
Conclusion
Finally,here is a recent example of the convergenceof music, politics and pain, one
which situates this question very much in the mundane realm of the everyday. In
Australia in 2000, the most culturally reactionarygovernment in forty years was
trying to introduce radical tax reform. There was a debate as to whether its multimillion dollar publicity campaign was political propagandathat should be funded
by the party, or a public education project to be funded from the public purse.
For what appears to be the majority,the campaign, its slogans and its music were
profoundly offensive. The music was Joe Cocker'sversion of 'UnchainMy Heart'.
At the end of the commercial,a voice-over informed the television audience that
'This message was spoken and sung by (whichever politician narrated) and Joe
Cocker'.Cocker attempted (unsuccessfully)to have his name removed. As a jingle
for one of the world's most right-wing anglophone governments, the use of his
music in this way caused him 'pain'.
If music is to be deployed to serve the same, often punitive, functions as other
mechanisms of public control, and as a TrojanHorse for policy proclamationand
indoctrination, then there are some interesting and even alarming implications.
These can be prefaced with a question that might at first seem frivolous, until it is
situated in larger issues which have emerged regarding intellectual property, and
the politics of the social constructions of meaning. Did the US marines pay any
royalties when they used music to implement state policy in Panama?4Apart from
copyright considerations,should the public deployment of music as law enforcement then be subject to the same statutory constraints relating to, for example,
rights of entry, invasion of private space, human rights scrutinies,identity disclosures? Music is one of the most invasive expressive forms, and there is legislation to
prevent citizens from imposing it upon one another. What legislation constrains
governments?Who controlsthis function, and by what rights?Where does it stand,
for example under the Westminsterseparation-of-powersprinciple:is it in the jurisdiction of the courts or of the political executive?
If the 'pain' of a Joe Cocker song being appropriatedas a right wing political
message seems somethingmore like 'irritation',and the case seems relativelyinnocuous, it is perhaps precisely this scale which should signal more clearly some of the
broadersocial implicationsof the convergence.Thebulletins from the formerYugoslavia are outrageous examples of state-sanctionedterror,but they are also remote
from the everyday lives of most people. For First World and anglophone cultural
researchers,they are ghastly dramatisationsof a hideous 'other',against which we
may railin justifiableanger . . . and then go backto living lives which are so relatively
tranquilas to appearto requireno outrageor interrogation.Popularmusic studies are
telling us aboutthe positive energieslatentin the mundane,but the mundane as well
as the banalmay also be the locus of evil. Oppressionand inequity frequentlyinvade
a society throughapparentlyunremarkableshifts that seem harmlessat the time. Disempowermentand oppressioncan be brutallyimposed throughstate terror,but they
are quietly naturalised through the channels of everyday life and through means
barelyregisteredat the momentof theirimplementation.And music is one of themost
pervasive experiencesof everyday life.

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

38

Martin Cloonanand BruceJohnson

Endnotes
1. Control of public soundscape has been a
while in 1986the Paraguayantalk stationRadio
common concernof authoritarianregimes,and
Nanduti, which had reportedon opposition to
the Indexon Censorship
has reporteda number
the country'sdictator,Stroessner,was made to
broadcast only music and 'non-controversial'
of incidents relating to this. In the Old Town
news (Indexon Censorship,
15/7, p. 43). We are
Square in Prague in December 1987, police
played Christmassongs through loudspeakers
gratefulto VanessaBastianand Dave Laingfor
in order to disrupt a meeting of antithese examples.
governmentprotesters(Indexon Censorship,
17/ 2. Thisdevelopmentand its associateddebatesare
2, p. 38). In 1980s'LatinAmerica,radio stations
examined at length in Johnson (2000, pp. 81105).
critical of authoritarianregimes found themselves orderedto change to music formats.For 3. See, for example,Stockfelt(1994,esp. p. 32).
example, in Guatemala in 1983, the military 4. Not according to AC/DC guitarist, Angus
Young,as quoted in Simmons(2000,p. 84). We
regime imposed a censorshipsystem in which
are gratefulto one of our students,SimonJolly,
radiostationswere orderedto play only martial
for this reference.
music (Indexon Censorship,
12/5, p. 43). Mean-

References
Andsell, G. 1995. Music for Life:Aspects of CreativeMusic Therapywith Adult Clients (London)
Baker, G.A. 1982. The Beatles Down Under: The 1964 Australia S New Zealand Tour (Glebe, NSW)
BBC. 2000. Homepage, 9 February 2000
Cloonan, M. 1996. Banned! Censorshipof Popular Music in Britain: 1967-1992 (Aldershot)
Corbin, A. 1999. Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th-Century French Countryside, translated by
Martin Thom (Great Britain)
Dasey, D. 2000. 'How phones drive you loco', Sun Herald (Sydney), 25 May
Gibson, V. 1999. 'Campaigning against noise: getting into action', Hearing RehabilitationQuarterly,24/1
Herbert, S. 2000. 'Music putting minds out of key', Sydney Morning Herald, 8 April
Johnson, B. 2000. The InaudibleMusic (Sydney)
Katzenell, J. 2000. 'Wagner concert rattled by protest', Sun-Herald (Sydney), 20 October, p. 57.
Livy. 1965. The War With Hannibal, translated by A. de Selincourt (Harmondsworth)
Martin, P. 2000. 'They bang the eardrums', NME, 27 May, pp. 20-1
Mihara, A. 1998. 'Was it torture or tune: First Japanese music in western theatre', in Popular Music:
InterculturalInterpretations,ed. T. Mitsui (Kanazawa), pp. 13442
Negus, K. 1996. Popular Music in Theory(Cambridge)
Noise Network. 2000. www.superscript.co.uk/tnn/indexl.html
Pettan, S. (ed.) 1998. Music, Politics and War:Views From Croatia (Zagreb)
Pipedown. 2000. www.btinternet.com pipedwon/index.htm
Potter, R.A. 1998. 'Noise, performance and the politics of sound', in Mapping The Beat, ed. T. Swiss, J.
Sloop and A. Herman (Oxford), pp. 31-46
Proctor, D. 1992. Music of The Sea (London)
Rogers, M. 2000. 'How Beethoven stopped vandals at rail stations', Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 20
April
Simmons, S. 2000. 'We're a two guitar band with three or four chords', Mojo, 85, pp. 72-84
Stockfelt, O. 1994. 'Cars, buildings and soundscapes', in Soundscapes:Essays on Vroom and Moo, ed. H.
Jarviluoma (Tampere and Seinajoki), pp. 19-38
Symons, D. 2000. ConfrontingNoise in the UK (Chatham)
Taylor, D. 1993. 'Law to muffle noise, but only on the streets', Observer(UK), 13 June
Travis, A. 2001. 'More clout for police in tackling murderers and drunken yobs', Guardian (UK), 20
January, p. 10
Victor, P. 1994. 'Neighbourhood noise: 17 people have died from it', Independenton Sunday (UK), 18
December, p. 19
Vidal, P. 1993. 'A pain in the ears (anag)', Guardian(UK), 8 September, part 2, pp. 2-3
Weale, S. 1993. fim Reeves ravers silenced', Guardian(UK), 21 May

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Killingme softlywith his song

Mediareportswith no byline
'Turndown the silence, please', Sydney Morning Herald, 15 October1999
'Oi Maamme,Filippinit',Helsingen Sanomat (Finland),10 February2000
'Wagnercauses discord',Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 2000 (syndicatedfrom New YorkTimes)
'Beethoven,Mozartand Bachdeter rail vandals', Sun-Herald (Sydney),30 April 2000

This content downloaded from 200.16.89.152 on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:00:57 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

39