Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence

Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series

by Bruce Johnson, Martin Cloonan

Written against the academically dominant but simplistic romanticization of popular music as a positive force, this book focuses on the 'dark side' of the subject. It is a pioneering examination of the ways in which popular music has been deployed in association with violence, ranging from what appears to be an incidental relationship, to one in which music is explicitly applied as an instrument of violence. A preliminary overview of the physiological and cognitive foundations of sounding/hearing which are distinctive within the sensorium, discloses in particular their potential for organic and psychic violence. The study then elaborates working definitions of key terms (including the vexed idea of the 'popular') for the purposes of this investigation, and provides a historical survey of examples of the nexus between music and violence, from (pre)Biblical times to the late nineteenth century. The second half of the book concentrates on the modern era, marked in this case by the emergence of technologies by which music can be electronically augmented, generated, and disseminated, beginning with the advent of sound recording from the 1870s, and proceeding to audio-internet and other contemporary audio-technologies. Johnson and Cloonan argue that these technologies have transformed the potential of music to mediate cultural confrontations from the local to the global, particularly through violence. The authors present a taxonomy of case histories in the connection between popular music and violence, through increasingly intense forms of that relationship, culminating in the topical examples of music and torture, including those in Bosnia, Darfur, and by US forces in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay. This, however, is not simply a succession of data, but an argumentative synthesis. Thus, the final section debates the implications of this nexus both for popular music studies itself, and also in cultural policy and regulation, the ethics of citizenship, and arguments about human rights.

Genres: Music

254 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2008

About the author

Bruce Johnson is Docent and Visiting Professor, Cultural History, University of Turku (Finland); Adjunct Professor, Contemporary Music Studies, Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia); Honorary Professor, Department of Music, University of Glasgow (Scotland, UK).

Reviews

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Metal presents itself as inherently violent, but seems most often to be used cathartically. There is not a trace of violence that can be reasonably located in 'White Christmas' or Whitney Huston's 'I will always love you', yet they became 'torture' for unwilling listeners, and other music innocuous in itself has provoked murder. It is not the music, it's the user, not the musician, but the fan."

This statement summarizes perfectly my beliefs and is also the conclusion of this study; it is not the music that incites to violence, it's the wrongness in the listeners' heads.

Of course, the study is more comprehensive than that. It starts from the origin, meaning sound/noise, what it is, how it is used and affects us. Music can be used as a weapon or an instrument of torture, willingly or not. There are a lot of documented cases in which it is used as such (in torturing prisoners), by inconsiderate neighbours, playing it loudly at night, and even in shops - very interesting all of them.

"Music is not just an aesthetic or moral terrain, nor just a form of knowledge supplementary to visual modes. It is sound, part of the larger soundscape that constitutes our world, and when it inflicts violence it does so not only by virtue of what it means, but what it then is: noise."

A good part of the study is dedicated to lyrics, only to conclude that they are not to blame in cases of harm inflicting on oneself or others:

"One of the tactics of moral panic is not simply to isolate the perpetrators by demonization, but the offending music as well. This decontextualization makes it much easier to see the music as part of the monstrous other. However, lyrics about, or even featuring a persona contemplating suicide, are not necessarily incitements when taken in context with the rest of the lyric and the nature of the music itself, any more than a line taken out of Shakespeare can be taken to reflect the intent of the play or the playwright. Nor, as Hamm and Ferrell point out, does this decontextualization tell us much about the vast majority of fan responses to what is regarded as incitement. Walser cites the case of a Metallica fan who thanked the band for a song about suicide that dissuaded him from the option."

Black metal and gangsta rap are considered the most violent, mainly because of their lyrics. However, the study concludes that they are not.

In my case, I rarely listen to lyrics. May them be as peaceful/violent as they can, if I don't like like the sound of the song, I don't even listen to it. I listen to metal for accords, drums and bass guitars, mainly. For example, you almost can say that Tool does not have lyrics in relation to the length of their songs, but how beautiful their songs are! On the other hand, Meshuggah's lyrics are almost incomprehensible when listened to, but damn, Tomas Haake is the God of drums, seconded very closely by Danny Carey. And this is just one example, there are many, many more.

Overall, it's a very thoroughly documented study, if a bit hard to read on occasion, due to it's academic language. But it opens one's eyes about bias, hypocrisy, false morals and ignorance, in relation to music.

"Not everyone who listens to 'hate music' commits murder. Not everyone who commits murder listens to 'hate music', and the murderer who owns a Marilyn Manson Cd may well own others as well which are not violent. Purely in themselves they do not enable us to foresee who will commit crimes and who will not. If Vikernes became violent, it was not simply because he was a heavy metaller, but also for other banal reasons."

"Music is enjoyed more for what is arouses than for what it expresses." Go to a rock/metal concert, and you'll understand what I mean.


(PS: I have learned about this book from Michael Spitzer's The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth)