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THE DARK SIDE OF MUSIC
Music Torture and the War on Terror
When a song is used for harm instead of happiness
I find Rednex’s 1994 rendition of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” torturous. But I never knew that some songs have actually been used for actual torture — mostly by American military and intelligence agencies on political detainees and prisoners of war.
As a music lover, I find this abhorrent — using a song, a thing created with someone’s heart and soul, to harm another human.
Music has been used to deter “loiterers” and as a form of torture throughout history. In 1989, the US military subjected Panama’s former dictator, Manual Noriega, to a blaring playlist of heavy metal while he was hiding out in the Vatican Embassy. He surrendered ten days later.
Music torture (or sound disorientation) was used in Nazi concentration camps, but it hit peak popularity in the early 2000s during the “War on Terror.”
Remember that time George W Bush was looking for weapons of mass distraction? Well, some seemingly innocuous popular songs went beyond distraction when they were played to detainees in Iraq, Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan.
The songs were played for days on end at full volume until the hapless recipient lost the ability to think and reason.
It was pitch black, and no lights on in the rooms for most of the time … They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb … There was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this nonstop, over and over.
Binyam Mohamed, former Guantánamo Bay detainee
Effects of music torture include:
- Anxiety and stress
- Diminished intellectual capacity
- Disorientation
- Hearing loss
- Hypertension
- Loss of sense of self
- Memory loss
- Nausea
- Physical and psychological distress
- Sleep deprivation
And then it was time for questioning.
Some prisoners went mad.
I can bear being…
