Showing posts with label music and violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music and violence. Show all posts

Monday, August 31, 2009

Music and Violence: A Working Bibliography

The following bibliography reflects my own specific interests in the study of music and violence, particularly the relationships between music, war, and representation. To that end, it includes a fair amount of general literature (especially anthropological in nature) that I have found useful in thinking through these connections. It is almost exclusively a bibliography of scholarship written in English and does not include a number of excellent dissertations published in the last few years that are well worth exploring. If you have suggestions for addition, please contact me at sumera [at] wisc.edu.



Anderson, Paul. 2006. "The World Heard: Casablanca and the Music of War." Critical Inquiry 32(3): 482-515.

Araujo, Samuel, et. al. 2006. "Conflict and Violence as Theoretical Tools in Present-Day Ethnomusicology: Notes on a Dialogic Ethnography of Sound Practices in Rio de Janeiro." Ethnomusicology 50(2):287-313.

Araujo, Samuel and Grupo Musicultura. 2010. "Sound Praxis: Music, Politics, and Violence in Brazil." In John Morgan O'Connell and Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco (eds.), Music and Conflict, Urbana: University of Illinois Press; p. 217-231.

Avorgbedor, Daniel. 1994. "Freedom to sing, License to Insult: The Influence of Hal Performance on Social Violence among the Anlo-Ewe," Oral Tradition 9/1: 83-112.

________. 2001. "Competition and Conflict as a Framework for Understanding Performance Culture among the Urban Anlo-Ewe." Ethnomusicology 45:260-282.

Baer, Ulrich. 2002. Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Baker, Catherine. 2009. "War Memory and Musical Tradition: Commemorating Croatia's Homeland War through Popular Music and Rap in Eastern Slavonia." Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17(1):35-45.

________. 2010. Sounds of the Borderland: Popular Music, War, and Nationalism in Croatia since 1991. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Bannister, Roland. 1996. "Soldier-Musicians in an Australian Army Band: Understanding the Lived Experience of Gender." The Yearbook for Traditional Music 28:131-146.

________. 2002. "How are We to Write our Music History? Perspectives on the Historiography of Military Music." Musicology Australia 25:1-21.

Beckett, Wheeler. 1943. Music in War Plants. Washington D.C.: War Production Board, U.S.A.

Boonzajer Flaes, Robert M. 2000. Brass Unbound: Secret Children of the Colonial Brass Band. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute.

Ceribasic, Naila. 2000. "Defining Women and Men in the Context of War: Images in Croatian Popular Music in the 1990s." In Pirkko Moisala and Beverly Diamond, eds. Music and Gender. Urbana and Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cloonan, Martin and Bruce Johnson. 2002. "Killing Me Soflty with His Song: An Initial Investigation into the Use of Popular Music as a Tool of Oppression." Popular Music 21(1):27-39.

________. 2008. Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.

Cook, Susan C. 1994. " 'Cursed Was She': Gender and Power in American Balladry." In Susan C. Cook and Judy S. Tsou. eds. Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music. Urbana: University of Illinois.

Cusick, Suzanne G. 2006. "Music as Torture/Music as Weapon." Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review. 10:1-18.

________. 2008. “ ‘You Are in a Place That is Out of the World . . .’: Music in the Detention Camps of the ‘Global War on Terror.’ ” Journal of the Society of American Music 2(1):1-26.

Das, Veena and Arthur Klienman. 2000. “Introduction” to Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-18.

________. 2001. “Introduction” to Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-30.

Deaville, James. 2007. “The Sounds of American and Canadian Television News after 9/11: Entoning Horror and Grief, Fear and Anger.” In Jonathon Ritter and J. Martin Daughtry, eds. Music in the Post-9/11 World. London and New York: Routledge, 43-70.

Denisoff, R. Serge and William D. Romanowski. 1989. “The Pentagon’s Top Guns: Movies and Music.” The Journal of American Culture 12:67-78.

Elder, J.D. 1964. “Color, Music, and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music.” Ethnomusicology 8(2):128-136.

Farmer, Henry George. 1950. Military Music. New York: Chanticleer Press.

Feldman, Allen. 2000. “Violence and Vision: The Prosthetics and Aesthetics of Terror.” In Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds. Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 46-78.

George, Kenneth M. 1996. Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapters 4, 6, 7.

________. 2004. “Violence, Culture, and the Indonesian Public Sphere: Reworking the Geertzian Legacy.” In Neil Whitehead, ed. Violence. Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press: 25-54.

Gilbert, Shirli. 2005. Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gilman, Lisa. 2010.
"An American Soldier’s iPod: Layers of Identity and Situated Listening in Iraq." Music and Politics 4(2). Available online.

Gussow, Adam. 2002. Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition. Chacago: The University of Chicago Press.

Hill, Errol. 1989. “Calypso and War.” Black American Literature Forum 23(1):61-88.

Hinton, Alex. 2004. “The Poetics of Genocidal Practice: Violence under the Khmer Rouge.” In Neil Whitehead, ed. Violence. Sante Fe, NM; Oxford: School of American Research Press: 157-184.

Hutson, C. Kirk. 1996. " 'Whackety Whack, Don’t Talk Back': The Glorification of Violence Against Females and the Subjugation of Women in Nineteenth-Century Southern Folk Music." Journal of Women’s History 8:114-42.

James, David. 1989. “The Vietnam War and American Music.” Social Text 23:122-143.

Jenkins, Jennifer. 2001. “ ‘Say it with Firecrackers’: Defining the ‘War Musical’ of the 1940s.” American Music 19(3):315-339.

Jones, John Bush. 2006. The Songs that Fought the War. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press.

Kartomi, Margaret. 2010. "Toward a Methodology of War and Peace Studies in Ethnomusicology: The Case of Aceh, 1976–2009." Ethnomusicology 54(3):452-483.

Kateb, George. 2000. "Aestheticism and Morality: Their Cooperation and Hostility." Political Theory 28(1):5-37.

Kelly, Bruce and Mark Sneel, eds. 2004. Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press.

Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock. 1997. “Introduction” to Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds. Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press, ix-xxvii.

Kleinman, Arthur and Joan Kleinman. 1997. “The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times.” in Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds. Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-24.

Lewis, Jeff. 2005. Language Wars: The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence. London: Pluto Press.

Longinovic, Tomislav. 2000. “Music Wars: Blood and Song at the End of Yugoslavia.” In Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. Music and The Racial Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 622-643.

Magrini, Tullia. 2000. "Manhood and Music in Western Crete: Contemplating Death." Ethnomusicology 44(3):429-459.

Massad, Joseph. 2003. “Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music.” Journal of Palestine Studies 32:21-38.

McDonald, David. 2009. "Poetics and the Performance of Violence in Israel/Palestine." Ethnomusicology 53:1(58-85).

McDowell, John Holmes. Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico's Costa Chica. Urbana and Chicago: Unviersty of Illinois Press.

________. 2007. “Corridos of 9/11: Mexican Ballads as Commemorative Practice.” In Jonathon Ritter and J. Martin Daughtry, eds. Music in the Post-9/11 World. London and New York: Routledge, 225-254.

McNeill, William H. 1995. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridg, MA: Harvard University Press.

Meintjes, Louise. 2004. “Shoot the Sergeant, Shatter the Mountain: The Production of Masculinity in Zulu Ngoma Song and Dance in post-Apartheid South Africa.” Ethnomusicological Forum 13(2):173-201.

Miller, Terry and Sean Williams. 1999. "Culture, Politics, and War." In
Bruno Nettl, Ruth M Stone, James Porter, Timothy Rice, eds. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 4: Southeast Asia. London and New York: Routledgs, 87-94.

Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Soderlind. 1998. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Los Angeles: Feral House.

Nordstrom, Carolyn and JoAnn Martin. 1992. “The Culture of Conflict: Field Reality and Theory.” In Carolyn Nordstrom and JoAnn Martin, eds. The Paths to Domination, Resistance, and Terror. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 3-17.

Ochoa, Ana María, ed. 2006. "Dossier: Música silencios y silenciamientos: música violencia y experiencia cotidiana/Dossier: Music, silences, silencings: music, violence and quotidian experience." Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review. 10 (December). Available online.

O'Connell, John Morgan and Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, eds. 2010. Music and Conflict. University of Illinois Press.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 2002. “The Field of Meaning, Images, and Aesthetics.” In her Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 27-60.

Pettan, Svanibor. ed. 1998. Music, Politics, and War: Views from Croatia. Zagreb, Croatia: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research.

Pieslak, Jonathon. 2007. “Sound Targets: Music and the War in Iraq.” Journal of Musicological Research 26:123-149.

________. 2009.
Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Radford, Katy. 2001. “Drum Rolls and Gender Roles in Protestant Marching Bands in Belfast.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10(2):37-59.

Pilzer, Joshua. 2003. "Sŏdosori (Northwestern Korean Lyric Song) on the Demilitarized Zone: A Study in Music and Teleological Judgment" Ethnomusicology: 68-92.

Riches, David, ed. 1986. The Anthropology of Violence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Ritter, Jonathon. 2002. “Siren Songs: Ritual and Revolution in the Peruvian Andes.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11:9-42.

________. 2007. “Terror in an Andean Key: Peasant Cosmopolitans Interpret 9/11.” In Jonathon Ritter and J. Martin Daughtry, eds. Music in the Post-9/11 World. London and New York: Routledge, 177-208.

Ritter, Jonathon and J. Martin Daughtry, eds. 2007. Music in the Post-9/11 World. London and New York: Routledge.

Robben, Antonius C. G. M. and Carolyn Nordstrom. 1995. “The Anthropology and Ethnography of Violence and Sociopolitical Conflict.” In Antonious C. G. M. Robben and Carolyn Nordstrom, eds. Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-25.

Russolo, Luigi. 1986. The Art of Noises. New York: Pendragon Press.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Philippe Bourgois. 2004. Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology. Blackwell Readers in Anthropology.

Smith, Kathleen E.R. 2003. God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War. Leington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press.

Stewart, Pamela and Andrew Strathern. 2002. Violence: Theory and Ethnography. London: Continuum. Chapters 1-3.

Stokes, Martin. 1994. “Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music.” In Martin Stokes, ed. Ethnicity, Identity and Music: the Musical Construction of Place, ed. Martin Stokes. Oxford: Berg, 1-28.

Strathern, Andrew and Pamela Stewart. 2006. “Introduction: Terror, the Imagination, and Cosmology.” In Andrew Strathern, Pamela Stewart, and Neil Whitehead, eds. Terror & Violence. London: Pluto Press, 1-39.

Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo and Antonius C. G. M. Robben. 2000. “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Violence and Trauma.” In Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, eds. Culture under Siege: Collective Violence and Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-43.

Sweeny, Regina. 2001. Singing our Way to Victory: French Cultural Politics and Music During the Great War. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Taussig, Michale. 1987. Colonialism, Shamanism, and the Wild Man: A Study of Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tompkins, Dave. 2010. How to Wreck a Nice Beach. Melville Publishing House.

Urbain, Oliver, ed. 2008. Music and Conflict Transformation: Harmonies and Dissonances in Geopolitics. I. B. Tauris.

Van Alphen, Ernst. 1999. "Symptoms of Discursivity: Experience, Memory, and Trauma." In Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer, eds. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. 24-38.

van Ordern, Kate. 2005. Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Virilio, Paul. 1989. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. London and New York: Verso.

Whitehead, Neil. 2004. “Introduction: Cultures, Conflicts, and the Poetics of Violent Practice.” In Neil Whitehead, ed. Violence. Sante Fe, NM; Oxford: School of American Research Press. 3-24.

________. 2004. “On the Poetics of Violence.” In Neil Whitehead, ed. Violence. Sante Fe, NM; Oxford: School of American Research Press: 55-79.

________. 2006. “Afterward: The Taste of Death.” In Andrew Strathern, Pamela Stewart, and Neil Whitehead, eds. Terror & Violence. London: Pluto Press, 231-238.

Yudice, George. 2003. The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Conference Papers and Invited Talks

  • "Audiovisual Nodes of Musical Destruction." Institute for Advanced Studies Music and Sound Studies Collaborative. University of Minnesota Twin Cities. (February 24, 2014). Minneapolis, MN. 
  • "Music and Representation at the Violent Edge of Empire." Music, Race, Empire Research Circle. University of Wisconsin-Madison. (January 31, 2011). Madison, WI.
  • "Ethnomusicology and Human Rights." Invited panel respondent to "Cross-Disciplinary Conversations I. Sustained Engagement: Anthropology, Community Collaboration and Human Rights." Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting. (November 11-14, 2010). Los Angeles, CA.
  • "Music, Aesthetics, and the Technologies of Online War." American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. (December 2-6, 2009). Philadelphia, PA.
  • "Music, Aesthetics, and the Technologies of Online War." Midwest Chapter, Society for Ethnomusicology. (May 15–16, 2009). Minneapolis, MN. [Winner of JaFran Jones Award for best student paper].
  • "Pitfalls in the Study of Music and Violence." Roundtable Participant. Society for Ethnomusicology. (October 25-28, 2008). Middletown, CT.
  • "Banal Militarism and Online Musical Culture." Society for Ethnomusicology. (October 25-28, 2007). Columbus, OH.
  • "Toward an Ethnomusicology of Violence." National Graduate Conference for Ethnomusicology: New Directions in Music. (July 7-9, 2006). Cambridge, U.K.
  • "Teenage Kicks: The Meanings of John Peel." Merging Methodologies 3. Of Global Concern: Communications and Media Research. (February 11, 2006). Madison, WI.
  • "Max Roach's Politics of Sound." Improvising America: KU Interdisciplinary Jazz Studies Colloquium. (March 3, 2005). Lawrence, KS.
  • "Lone Voices: Solo Improvisation and Vocality". 2004 Guelph Jazz Colloquium. (September 8, 2004). Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Monday, March 09, 2009

American Anthropological Association Conference Panel

I'm honored to have been asked to participate in a panel at the AAA meeting in December 2009. The panel, "Virtual War and Magical Death: Technologies and Imaginaries for Killing and Terror" is co-organized by Neil Whitehead, Sverker Finnstrom, and Koen Stroeken. Participants, presentation schedule, and paper titles include:

Robertson Allen, "Virtual Citizen-Soldiers: U.S. Army Video Game Designers go to Basic Combat Training"
Matthew Sumera, "Music, Aesthetics, and the Technologies of Online War"
R. Brian Ferguson, "Anthropology as We Know It--A Casualty of War?"
Sverker Finnstrom, "Humanitarian death? The Lord's Resistance Army (Uganda) and international interventions as magical terror"
Roberto Gonzales, " 'Forecasting' Insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan"
Jeff Sluka, "Cyber-War in the Tribal Zone: Airstrikes, Drones, and Civilian Casualties in the ‘War on Terrorism’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan"
Antonius Robben, "Chaos and the Techno-Imaginary of Combat"
Victoria Stanford, "Propaganda, Gangs and Social Cleansing in Guatemala"
Koen Stroeken, "Why kill for magic?"
Neil Whitehead, "Torture-Scape: HTS as Human Terror System - Deploying Ethnography and Torture"