“You are in a place that is out of the world. . . ”: Music in the Detention Camps of the “Global War on Terror” is an article by Suzanne G. Cusick from the Journal of the Society for American Music. The full text of the article is currently available online as a taster of the current issue of the journal, but I don’t know for how much longer, so if the subject interests you, hurry on over.
There’s a bit of a leftish cynic in me that thinks that the ghastly practices referred to in this article are just the pointy end of a systemic abuse of music in many Western societies. For weeks before Christmas, Sainsburys filled the air in their shops with loud, nasty christmas shopping music, the same MOR shite day in, day out. It made me feel sick and angry for the 20 minutes or so that I was in there, heaven help the poor staff. One of the reasons I don’t wear trainers anymore is because I can’t stay in a shop that sells them long enough without feeling assaulted by the music which I didn’t ask for, and has nothing to do with shoes. No wonder the staff look so vacuous.
Is it surprising, then, that when Americans think up ideas for abusing inmates of detention camps, they take their cue from the world of retail, where music is already, on a much lower level, being used to stupefy people into turning their pockets out?
