“You are in a place that is out of the world. . .”: Music in the Detention Camps of the “Global War on Terror”

Abstract

Based on first-person accounts of interrogators and former detainees as well as unclassified military

Silent Alarm: The Mosquito Youth Deterrent and the Politics of Frequency

“…A devout Muslim, al-Qatani believed that it is sinful to listen to music of any kind. According to Cusick (2008), "His interrogators had taken full advantage of music's peculiar properties as a sensory experience, a site of cultural belief, and a medium of cultural practice to force al-Qatani into a conscious state of sin he was powerless to avoid" (p. 15). Interrogators have subjected detainees to barrages of ultra-patriotic songs, rap, and heavy metal in order to assert control and grotesquely underline American authority.…”

“…This so-called "futility music" is meant to break prisoners, to convince them that there is no point in resisting. Cusick (2008) also describes the experience of an American named Donald Vance who was detained at Camp Cropper in Iraq and was subjected to what he calls "the music program." Vance was subjected to a constant barrage of Queen, Nine Inch Nails, and other Western music blaring from a military sound system.…”

“…The symbolism of music for Vance was transmuted into emotional pain; for al-Qatani, exposure to music became a spiritual form of suffering. The final report of the investigation into detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay found that, because these practices did not seem to cause any lasting physical damage, they could not be classified as torture (Cusick, 2008).…”

“…The army has used sound in a similar fashion to break prisoners specifically because it does not cause lasting physical damage (Cusick, 2008). But an assault does not necessarily need to leave a cut or a welt to cause harm.…”

Resonant Listening

“…There are many modes of auditory engagement that are not primarily musical or aesthetic, from everyday conversation to the use of enforced listening as a weapon (Cusick 2008), from classroom teaching methods to the validation of legal testimony, from the gestures of lovers to the techniques of good managers and the CCTV cameras listening to our every movement. In parallel, contemporary artistic practices have radically expanded the notion of listening and appropriated modes of non-musical listening with varying degrees of success, as in the work of composers like John Cage and Luigi Nono.…”