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The Impact of Violent Music Lyrics on Kids

Words by Joseph Pratt

Published on

FEB 08, 2024

Warning: Reader Discretion Advised

The following content may disturb readers as it contains graphic material that describes domestic violence, murder, violence against children, and suicide.

Picture this: a child with headphones on, lost in the world of aggressive beats and contentious lyrics. Are they destined for delinquency, of just vibing to the beat?

Society has long debated the impact of violent music on young minds.

Researchers have suggested that exposure to violent music lyrics has been linked to emotional and behavioral problems , including aggression, substance abuse, risky sexual behaviors, and suicide.

One study found a relationship between violent song lyrics and an increase in aggressive thoughts and feelings of hostility.

Parents of teens have good reason to be interested in this discussion. They want to know what they can do to encourage their children to make healthy music choices.

Here is what the research says about the impact of violent music on youth.

Murder, Violence, and Suicide—Common Themes

Consider these disturbing lyrics in the hit “Kim,” penned over 20 years ago by rapper Eminem and still popular today.

Murder of a spouse, violence in front of a child, revenge, and suicide are the prevailing themes. Rolling Stone describes it as “Eminem screaming at his ex in an insane stream-of-consciousness hate spew” and characterizes it and the entire album as “loud, wild, dangerous, out of control, grotesque, unsettling”

Though this is just one example, it illustrates how graphic violence in music can be.

Other popular songs depict violence in just as much striking detail. This content normalizes these antisocial, violent behaviors, especially in the developing minds of children.

Such destructive messages impact the listener’s worldview , attitudes, and tolerance for violence and misogyny. These lyrics discourage the growth of empathy, whereas prosocial lyrics seem to be the “key factor” influenced by music with prosocial lyrics.

Who Enjoys Listening to Violent Music?

Personality, self-view, and cognitive abilities influence what kind of music people enjoy.

For instance, those who score lower for agreeableness and conscientiousness are more likely to be fans of violent music genres , such as death metal or gangster rap.When a child within our influence struggles in these ways, decreasing access to violent music and increasing exposure to positive music , regardless of the genre, is a best practice.

Engagement with violent [music content] has been linked with emotional and behavioral problems, including aggressive behaviors and drug and alcohol use. —Dr. William Forde Thompson, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University

How Does Violent Music Affect Youth?

Most research suggests violent lyrics both increase anger and aggressiveness and decrease positive emotions.

Some studies propose the inverse is true—that prosocial lyrics increase empathy and positive mood .

Even so, it is plausible that long-term, regular exposure to violent music desensitizes listeners to violence.

Evidence from other violent media forms supports this explanation.

Many of us adults have jammed out to a song from our younger days, only to realize the innocent lyrics we remember are actually inappropriate. That’s because adults have the development and experience to sift through messaging that a child cannot yet process.

Violent video games have been linked to “increased aggressive behaviors and decreased empathy.”

Music Choice, Friend Groups, and Friends’ Behavior as Warning Signs

A National Center for Biotechnology Information study shows the influence of music choice and friend groups on adolescent misbehavior.

Friend groups are often formed and maintained by a shared preference in music.

This is not a call to ban any specific genre of music; to categorize any genre as responsible for childhood maladies and societal decline oversimplifies the issue. As parents we can create a family culture of sharing playlists and talking with kids about their music choices as a way to identify warning signs.

If we notice a change in mood, behavior, and family connection and a teen seeks friends who engage in damaging behavior, there is cause for concern.

Does Violent Music Cause Violent Behavior?

In short, the answer is maybe .

Exposure to violent content certainly normalizes deviant and illegal acts perpetrated by violent offenders.

It also can poison the emerging worldview of a child and impact their relationships with others.

Over time, this seems to have the potential to harm temperament.

Whether this results in violent behavior depends on individual personality, life circumstances, and predisposition.

Steering children toward upbeat, positive songs is the safest route.

Continued conversations about the music in your home and on your family’s devices will provide a chance for connection.

Though we can’t know everything our kids listen to, we do have control over what types of music they can access through devices we provide.

Streaming platforms offer kids almost unlimited access to popular music—much of it with explicit lyrics and adult themes. Most of these services don’t offer parent controls or rely on inadequate filters .

For these reasons, a safe streaming app is a smart choice for protecting children.

Parents don’t have to worry because songs with profanity, violence, and sexual innuendo aren’t just filtered out, they simply are not included in an app’s library.

For many families, a clean streaming service is the perfect answer. Kids are protected from destructive messages, at least on their personal devices.

Conversations about music choices are still the best way to set boundaries and teach kids about how the content we consume affects us.

Music streaming services today are built for adults, with kids as an afterthought. Gabb Music is different. Completely safe from the start, kids and parents alike can listen freely.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments!

Joseph Pratt

Joseph Pratt is a researcher and writer for Gabb. He grew up in Northwestern Missouri in the small town of Cameron, which he does not get to visit often enough. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in English from Brigham Young University. He is a hopeless dreamer who wants to change the world. This desire attracted him to Gabb in the first place, and he finds immense fulfillment in helping parents empower their children. He currently lives in Orem, Utah, with his wife, Gaby. Learn More

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An interior view of the Crocus City Hall concert venue after a shooting attack and fire, outside Moscow

As a Captive, I Learned that Violence Is What Terrorists Use for Music

I was held prisoner in Syria for two years by a group that included both Al Qaeda and ISIS, though one of the things I learned in my captivity was that there's no real difference between them. Another thing I learned was the purpose of the violence the jihad inflicts on those who live within it. You’re supposed to withdraw yourself from earthly time right now. You’re supposed to live every moment of your life as if the ancient dream—the caliphate, the invulnerability, God’s ongoing, bloody revenge against the infidels—is coming true this instant. Will you sit idly by? If you have the courage and the physical capacity, you are meant to act.

In my view, the outside world must learn what this dream looks like and sounds like. Though the dreamers are all around us, their dreams are as uninterpretable as hieroglyphs. We glimpse them only after it’s too late —on the day after October 7 th , for instance, and now, as we wonder over the lifepaths of the Moscow attackers .

In the early days of the Syrian civil war, when ISIS and al Qaeda still belonged to one big quarrelsome family , there were times when several squads of investigators, to borrow the Syrian euphemism for torturers, would interrogate multiple prisoners in a single room. The din on these occasions was much too overwhelming for anything like an inquiry to occur. I know about everyday practices in those interrogation rooms because in October of 2012, the Syrian al Qaeda faction accused me of spying for the CIA, then locked me into a cell in the basement of what had once been, before the war, the Aleppo eye hospital. In fact, my purpose in coming to Syria had been to write essays about the war’s music, photographers, and artists—and thus to make myself into this conflict’s go-to cultural correspondent. But no matter how I pleaded—and I was desperate for my life—I couldn’t make a single member of this sprawling terrorist family believe a word I said.

One night, after a squad of fighters had inflicted one of their investigations on me, I found myself lying face down at the feet of the hospital’s chief investigator. It was some time in early winter of 2013. I wore a bloody pair of hospital pants. The cement floor was the temperature of a sidewalk, back home, in winter. My hands were cuffed behind my back. Perhaps I had lost consciousness at some point during the proceedings? I’m not sure. Anyway, I remember that it occurred to me, quite suddenly, that a second victim was being interrogated only feet from me. Evidently, this person was hanging by his wrists from a pipe beneath the ceiling. It occurred to me that this person’s feet were bicycling through the air, and that instead of engaging his interrogators, who were shouting at him at the tops of their lungs, he screamed upward, into the ceiling. There is no God but Go, he called out, over and over. I remember that the power in this person’s voice struck me as unnatural. He seemed to scream as if all that remained to him on earth was his voice, as if it were a rope by which he meant to lash himself to the world of the living.

In the midst of this cacophony, the chief investigator knelt down, then pushed his face into mine. He grinned. “Do you hear what that man is saying?” he shouted to me in his idiotic way. “Do you know these words?” Of course, I did know them. They were inscribed on every black flag. They were in the air, over and over, at every prayer. How could I not?

“Good,” said the interrogator, screaming at me though his face was practically touching mine. “This noise you are hearing. This is our music.”

Read More: Islamist Terrorism Is Not Done With Us, Warns Former al Qaeda Hostage Theo Padnos

Over the following days lying alone on the floor of my cell, I contemplated this remark. Having known the interrogator for about three months by this point, I felt I had a handle on his character. He was an impish, boastful brute. Also, a bit of a showman. He loved to swish about the interrogation room in his black velvet cape, to speechify, and to promise me that one day, when the spirit moved him, as it surely would, he himself would kill me. For him, the interrogations were quite obviously performances. He often invited little crowds of fellow fighters to observe from the shadows. Now he ordered his squad of underlings to inflict pain, now he ordered them to hold off. Often, he shrieked at them. All of these underlings were Aleppo teenagers. Every once in a while, he commanded, by means of a glance, a teenager to stir his beloved maté tea.

In those days, before I had any inkling of how a terrorist organization functions, I assumed that because this man only presided over a ring of teenagers, and because I remained alive despite his threats, he was a mere flunky in the al Qaeda hierarchy.

Over time, however, I came to understand what real power in the jihad is. It is derived from the obvious sources, to be sure—cold bloodedness, access to ready cash, fluent command of the sacred literature. But it also comes from the ability to entrance audiences. The natural born leaders conjure fantasies to life in an instant, then hold people and places under their spell indefinitely. This particular commander , who called himself Kawa, after a mythical Kurdish warrior, was poor. He rode around on a humble Chinese motorcycle, as no actual authority in the jihad would do. Yet he certainly had a knack for summoning an Islamic fantasy to life—for him it was a caliphate—with a few softly uttered phrases. Over the minds of the many teenagers who hung around in the eye hospital basement, he certainly exercised sovereign control.

Down there, over time, I learned that music really does help the fantasy come to life.

Allegedly, Muslims of the kind who make jihads despise music. It is thought to derange the senses and to distance the listener from God. But the Koran is music. The call to prayer is music, and praying itself is a musical experience since it involves collective recitation of an explicitly musical text, and then, at the end, when the imam conveys the community’s wishes to God, a few minutes of call and response and, well, singing. Of course, in a jihad, there are also hymns. They play in the background in every conveyance, office, and corridor. In the evenings in the eye hospital basement, the fighters often gathered in the prayer room to sing the al Qaeda hymns in full throated unison. Sample lyric: “bin Laden is our leader/ we destroyed the trade towers, with civil airplanes we did it/ reduced them to dust.”

I have no doubt if he is still alive, as I hope he is not, Kawa would say of the film the ISIS fighters made of their Crocus City Hall attack just what he said of his own violence: this is our music . How happy the fighters are, he would say, what unity of purpose they exhibit, and how boldly they make the ancient dream live. There is no difference between the dream the Moscow attackers inflicted on the Crocus City Hall and the one with which Kawa bludgeoned his hospital prisoners, almost all of whom were Syrian Muslims, by the way. The dream is of invulnerability before the enemies of Islam, of simple families living in harmony with the Koran, while every day, in some far flung corner of the globe, the soldiers of the caliphate bring another one of the infidel’s capitals to its knees.

In the Syrian jihad, the authorities made this dream live through singing, prayer, and hour after hour of recitation, as one would expect. Mostly, however, they made it live through violence. When the walls of an interrogation room rang with screams, or when a roomful of young men were watching some atrocity occur on a video screen, and, now and then, when twenty-five young men ran out into the hospital parking lot to fire their Kalashnikovs at the stars, the emotion of the occasion went straight to everyone’s brain stems. I knew roughly what was happening then because it was happening to me, too.

When violence of this order is on every screen, lies behind every door, and hides, just beneath the surface, in the eyes of everyone you meet, you stop being yourself. That person dies. Under such circumstances, in my opinion, you’re grateful for the life you have, but because you expect to leave it soon, you do everything you can to relinquish your attachments to the here and now. You say goodbye. Over time, your thoughts are bound to turn to the future. I don’t see how they could not. Perhaps, you hope, life, of some kind, will somehow continue. Perhaps you will be surrounded by love at last? So the hymns tell you. The jihad is a loveless place, I’m sorry to say. Everyone dreams of being in love. So maybe it will come? Who can say that it will not? Certainly, new life—and with it, new power—will come to some. So the hymns say.

For whatever it’s worth, in Syria, I found that many of the younger terrorists I came to know were adept at slipping into the dream when they were inside the hospital, and adept at slipping out of it, in the evenings, when they went home to mom and dad. Outside, in the streets, as these young men often told me themselves, they looked and spoke like everyone else. Inside, they were like zombies. They talked, automatically, of their longing for glorious death. Even when they were by themselves, they sang the hymns they were meant to sing. When the order came to torture, they threw themselves at their “work,” to borrow their word. Afterwards, I’m pretty sure, they had only the vaguest notion of why they did what they had done.

The jihad needn’t be as impenetrable as all that. In fact, summonses to the dreams are audible in a thousand war hymns to be heard right now on YouTube. They’re visible in the many videos people who sympathize with the jihad produce. Often these videos seem innocuous enough because they consist mostly of a cappella singing and shots of young men thumbing through the Koran in a forest. To believers across the world, however, and to those who would like to believe, they give direct documentary evidence: the dream is real, the videos say. To make it live in London or Paris or wherever you happen to be, all you really have to do is to believe.

The organizers of the Paris Olympics are surely aware that as ISIS was planning out its 2015 attack on a Paris concert venue , it was also preparing to blow up the spectators at a soccer game in the Stade de France, just north of Paris. Is the outside world aware that the leaders of the international jihad feel about sporting events in the west roughly as they feel about rock concerts? These are soporifics, they believe, with which we drug ourselves by the millions. Meanwhile, every hour, somewhere on earth, our airplanes slaughter Muslim families. Are the authorities in Paris aware that their counterparts in the jihad mean to wake us from our stupor?

The news itself is a problem. When the violence in Gaza is spliced up, set to music, then sent out over the social networks, this material is powerful enough to do to a certain class of vulnerable young men—roughly what screaming in an underground room in Aleppo does. It entrances. It horrifies. It reveals the enemy for who he really is. It has a way of bringing all those who feel they’ll never have much hope into a dangerous kind of alignment. Are the Paris authorities aware of this? I hope so. The Olympic opening ceremony is set to occur along the banks of the Seine on what will surely be a balmy but tense Friday night this coming July.

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When Music Is Violence

By Alex Ross

Music has the power to cloud reason stir rage cause pain even kill.

In December, 1989, the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was expelled from power by American forces. To escape capture, he took refuge in the Papal Nunciatura in Panama City. When an American general arrived to confer with the papal nuncio, the U.S. Army blared music from loudspeakers to prevent journalists from eavesdropping. Members of a psychological-operations unit then decided that non-stop music might aggravate Noriega into surrendering. They made requests for songs on the local armed-forces radio station, and directed the din at Noriega’s window. The dictator was thought to prefer opera, and so hard rock dominated the playlist. The songs conveyed threatening, sometimes mocking messages: Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.”

Although the media delighted in the spectacle, President George H. W. Bush and General Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took a dim view of it. Bush called the campaign “irritating and petty,” and Powell had it stopped. Noriega, who had received psyops training at Fort Bragg in the nineteen-sixties, is said to have slept soundly through the clamor. Nonetheless, military and law-enforcement officials became convinced that they had stumbled on a valuable tactic. “Since the Noriega incident, you’ve been seeing an increased use of loudspeakers,” a psyops spokesman declared. During the siege of the Branch Davidian compound, in Waco, Texas, in 1993, the F.B.I. blasted music and noise day and night. When Palestinian militants occupied the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, in 2002, Israeli forces reportedly tried to eject them with heavy metal. And during the occupation of Iraq the C.I.A. added music to the torture regime known as “enhanced interrogation.” At Guantánamo, detainees were stripped to their underwear, shackled to chairs, and blinded by strobe lights as heavy metal, rap, and children’s tunes assaulted their ears. Music has accompanied acts of war since trumpets sounded at the walls of Jericho, but in recent decades it has been weaponized as never before—outfitted for the unreal landscape of modern battle.

The intersection of music and violence has inspired a spate of academic studies. On my desk is a bleak stack of books examining torture and harassment, the playlists of Iraq War soldiers and interrogators, musical tactics in American crime-prevention efforts, sonic cruelties inflicted in the Holocaust and other genocides, the musical preferences of Al Qaeda militants and neo-Nazi skinheads. There is also a new translation, by Matthew Amos and Fredrick Rönnbäck, of Pascal Quignard’s 1996 book, “The Hatred of Music” (Yale), which explores age-old associations between music and barbarity.

When music is applied to warlike ends, we tend to believe that it has been turned against its innocent nature. To quote the standard platitudes, it has charms to soothe a savage breast; it is the food of love; it brings us together and sets us free. We resist evidence suggesting that music can cloud reason, stir rage, cause pain, even kill. Footnoted treatises on the dark side of music are unlikely to sell as well as the cheery pop-science books that tout music’s ability to make us smarter, happier, and more productive. Yet they probably bring us closer to the true function of music in the evolution of human civilization.

A striking passage in J. Martin Daughtry’s “Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq” (Oxford) evokes the sound of the battlefield in the most recent Iraq war:

The growl of the Humvee engine. The thump-thump-thump of the approaching helicopter. The drone of the generator. Human voices shouting, crying, asking questions in a foreign tongue. “ Allahu akbar! ”: the call to prayer. “ Down on the ground! ”: the shouted command. The dadadadadada of automatic weapon fire. The shhhhhhhhhhhhh of the rocket in flight. The fffft of the bullet displacing air. The sharp k-k-k-k-r-boom of the mortar. The rolling BOOM of the I.E.D.

Daughtry underscores something crucial about the nature of sound and, by extension, of music: we listen not only with our ears but also with our body. We flinch against loud sounds before the conscious brain begins to try to understand them. It is therefore a mistake to place “music” and “violence” in separate categories; as Daughtry writes, sound itself can be a form of violence. Detonating shells set off supersonic blast waves that slow down and become sound waves; such waves have been linked to traumatic brain injury, once known as shell shock. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are often triggered by sonic signals; New York residents experienced this after September 11th, when a popped tire would make everyone jump.

Sound is all the more potent because it is inescapable: it saturates a space and can pass through walls. Quignard—a novelist and essayist of an oblique, aphoristic bent—writes:

All sound is the invisible in the form of a piercer of envelopes. Whether it be bodies, rooms, apartments, castles, fortified cities. Immaterial, it breaks all barriers. . . . Hearing is not like seeing. What is seen can be abolished by the eyelids, can be stopped by partitions or curtains, can be rendered immediately inaccessible by walls. What is heard knows neither eyelids, nor partitions, neither curtains, nor walls. . . . Sound rushes in. It violates.

The fact that ears have no lids—earplugs notwithstanding—explains why reactions to undesirable sounds can be extreme. We are confronting faceless intruders; we are being touched by invisible hands.

Technological advances, especially in loudspeaker design, have increased sound’s invasive powers. Juliette Volcler, in “Extremely Loud: Sound As a Weapon” (New Press), details attempts to manufacture sonic devices that might debilitate enemy forces or disperse crowds. Long-range acoustic devices, nicknamed “sound cannons,” send out shrill, pulsating tones of up to a hundred and forty-nine decibels—enough to cause permanent hearing damage. Police units unleashed these devices at an Occupy Wall Street rally in 2011 and in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, among other settings. A commercial device called the Mosquito discourages young people from loitering; it emits sounds in the 17.5-to-18.5-kilohertz range, which, in general, only those under the age of twenty-five can hear. Further Army research into low- and high-frequency weapons, which developers hoped would “liquefy the bowels,” apparently failed to yield results, although conspiracy theories proliferate on the Internet.

Humans react with particular revulsion to musical signals that are not of their choice or to their liking. Many neuroscientific theories about how music acts on the brain—such as Steven Pinker’s notion that music is “auditory cheesecake,” a biologically useless pleasure—ignore how personal tastes affect our processing of musical information. A genre that enrages one person may have a placebo effect on another. A 2006 study by the psychologist Laura Mitchell, testing how music-therapy sessions can alleviate pain, found that a suffering person was better served by his or her “preferred music” than by a piece that was assumed to have innately calming qualities. In other words, music therapy for a heavy-metal fan should involve heavy metal, not Enya.

Lily Hirsch’s “Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment” (Michigan) explores how divergences in taste can be exploited for purposes of social control. In 1985, the managers of a number of 7-Eleven stores in British Columbia began playing classical and easy-listening music in their parking lots to drive away loitering teen-agers. The idea was that young people would find such a soundtrack insufferably uncool. The 7-Eleven company then applied this practice across North America, and it soon spread to other commercial spaces. To the chagrin of many classical-music fans, especially the lonely younger ones, it seems to work. This is an inversion of the concept of Muzak, which was invented to give a pleasant sonic veneer to public settings. Here instrumental music becomes a repellent.

To Hirsch, it’s no coincidence that 7-Eleven perfected its technique of musical cleansing while American forces were experimenting with musical harassment. Both reflect a strategy of “deterrence through music,” capitalizing on rage against the unwanted. The spread of portable digital technology, from CDs to the iPod and on to smartphones, means that it is easier than ever to impose music on a space and turn the psychological screws. The logical next step might be a Spotify algorithm that can discover what combination of songs is most likely to drive a given subject insane.

When Primo Levi arrived in Auschwitz, in 1944, he struggled to make sense not only of what he saw but of what he heard. As prisoners returned to the camp from a day of hard labor, they marched to bouncy popular music: in particular, the polka “Rosamunde,” which was an international hit at the time. (In America, it was called the “Beer Barrel Polka”; the Andrews Sisters, among others, sang it.) Levi’s first reaction was to laugh. He thought that he was witnessing a “colossal farce in Teutonic taste.” He later grasped that the grotesque juxtaposition of light music and horror was designed to destroy the spirit as surely as the crematoriums destroyed the body. The merry strains of “Rosamunde,” which also emanated from loudspeakers during mass shootings of Jews at Majdanek, mocked the suffering that the camps inflicted.

The Nazis were pioneers of musical sadism, although loudspeakers were apparently deployed more to drown out the screams of victims than to torture them. Jonathan Pieslak, in his 2009 book, “Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War,” finds a telling cinematic precedent in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film “Foreign Correspondent,” where Nazi spies torment a diplomat with bright lights and swing music. To some extent, sonically enhanced interrogation may have been a Hollywood fantasy that migrated into reality—just as other aspects of the American torture regime took inspiration from TV shows like “24.” Similarly, in the 2004 battle of Fallujah, speakers mounted on Humvees bombarded the Iraqis with Metallica and AC/DC, mimicking the Wagner scene in “Apocalypse Now,” in which a helicopter squadron blasts “The Ride of the Valkyries” as it lays waste to a Vietnamese village.

Jane Mayer, a staff writer at this magazine, and other journalists have shown that the idea of punishing someone with music also emerged from Cold War-era research into the concept of “no-touch torture”—leaving no marks on victims’ bodies. Researchers of the period demonstrated that sensory deprivation and manipulation, including extended bouts of noise, could bring about the disintegration of a subject’s personality. Beginning in the nineteen-fifties, programs that trained American soldiers and intelligence operatives to withstand torture had a musical component; at one point, the playlist reportedly included the industrial band Throbbing Gristle and the avant-garde vocalist Diamanda Galás. The concept spread to military and police units in other countries, where it was applied not to trainees but to prisoners. In Israel, Palestinian detainees were tied to kindergarten chairs, cuffed, hooded, and immersed in modernist classical music. In Pinochet’s Chile, interrogators employed, among other selections, the soundtrack to “A Clockwork Orange,” whose notorious aversion-therapy sequence, scored to Beethoven, may have encouraged similar real-life experiments.

“Im a gigantic starfish endowed with the gift of speech not a miracle worker.”

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In America, musical torture received authorization in a September, 2003, memo by General Ricardo Sanchez. “Yelling, Loud Music, and Light Control” could be used “to create fear, disorient detainee and prolong capture shock,” provided that volume was “controlled to prevent injury.” Such practices had already been publicly exposed in a short article in Newsweek that May. The item noted that interrogations often featured the cloying theme of “Barney & Friends,” in which a purple dinosaur sings, “I love you / You love me / We’re a happy family.” The article’s author, Adam Piore, later recalled that his editors couched the item in joking terms, adding a sardonic kicker: “In search of comment from Barney’s people, Hit Entertainment, Newsweek endured five minutes of Barney while on hold. Yes, it broke us, too.” Repeating a pattern from the Noriega and Waco incidents, the media made a game of proposing ideal torture songs.

The hilarity subsided when the public learned more of what was going on at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Mosul, and Guantánamo. Here are some entries from the interrogation log of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “twentieth hijacker,” who was refused admittance to the United States in August, 2001:

1315: Corpsman checked vitals—O.K. Christina Aguilera music played. Interrogators ridiculed detainee by developing creative stories to fill in gaps in detainee’s cover story. 0400: Detainee was told to stand and loud music was played to keep detainee awake. Was told he can go to sleep when he tells the truth.

1115: Interrogation team entered the booth. Loud music was played that included songs in Arabic. Detainee complained that it was a violation of Islam to listen to Arabic music.

0345: Detainee offered food and water—refused. Detainee asked for music to be turned off. Detainee was asked if he can find the verse in the Koran that prohibits music.

1800: A variety of musical selections was played to agitate the detainee.

Aguilera seems to have been chosen because female singers were thought to offend Islamist detainees. Interrogation playlists also leaned on heavy-metal and rap numbers, which, as in the Noriega case, delivered messages of intimidation and destruction. Songs in regular rotation included Eminem’s “Kim” (“Sit down, bitch / If you move again I’ll beat the shit out of you”) and Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” (“Let the bodies hit the floor”).

Does such coerced listening qualify as torture? The N.Y.U.-based musicologist Suzanne Cusick, one of the first scholars to think deeply about music in the Iraq War, addressed the question in a 2008 paper for The Journal of the Society for American Music. During the Bush Administration, the U.S. government held that techniques inducing psychological rather than physical pain did not amount to torture, as international conventions have defined it. Cusick, however, makes clear that the loud-music tactic displays a chilling degree of casual sadism: the choice of songs seems designed to amuse the captors as much as to nauseate the captives. Few detainees probably understood the English lyrics aimed at them.

No official policy dictated the prison playlists; interrogators improvised them on-site, making use of whatever music they had on hand. Pieslak, who interviewed a number of Iraq veterans, observes that soldiers played many of the same songs for their own benefit, particularly when they were psyching themselves up for a dangerous mission. They, too, favored the most anarchic corners of heavy metal and gangsta rap. Thus, certain songs served both to whip soldiers into a lethal frenzy and to annihilate the spirit of “enemy combatants.” You couldn’t ask for a clearer demonstration of the non-universality of music, of its capacity to sow discord.

The soldiers told Pieslak that they used music to strip themselves of empathy. One said that he and his comrades sought out a “predator kind of music.” Another, after admitting with some embarrassment that Eminem’s “Go to Sleep” (“Die, motherfucker, die”) was a “theme song” for his unit, said, “You’ve got to become inhuman to do inhuman things.” The most unsettling choice was Slayer’s “Angel of Death,” which imagines the inner world of Josef Mengele: “Auschwitz, the meaning of pain / The way that I want you to die.” Such songs are far removed from uplifting wartime propaganda like “Over There,” the patriotic 1917 tune by George M. Cohan. The image of soldiers prepping for a mission by listening to Metallica’s “One”—“Landmine has taken my sight . . . Left me with life in hell”—suggests the degree to which they, too, felt trapped in a malevolent machine.

As Hirsch and other scholars point out, the idea of music as inherently good took hold only in the past few centuries. Philosophers of prior eras tended to view the art as an ambiguous, unreliable entity that had to be properly managed and channelled. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates scoffs at the idea that “music and poetry were only play and did no harm at all.” He distinguishes between musical modes that “suitably imitate the tone and rhythm of a courageous person who is active in battle” and those which strike him as soft, effeminate, lecherous, or melancholy. The Chinese “Book of Rites” differentiated between the joyous sound of a well-ruled state and the resentful sound of a confused one. John Calvin believed that music “has an insidious and well-nigh incredible power to move us whither it will.” He went on, “We must be all the more diligent to control music in such a way that it will serve us for good and in no way harm us.”

German thinkers in the idealist and Romantic tradition—Hegel, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Schopenhauer, among others—sparked a drastic revaluation of music’s significance. It became the doorway to the infinitude of the soul, and expressed humanity’s collective longing for freedom and brotherhood. With the canonization of Beethoven, music became the vehicle of genius. Sublime as Beethoven is, the claim of universality blended all too easily with a German bid for supremacy. The musicologist Richard Taruskin, whose rigorously unsentimental view of Western music history anchors much recent work in the field, likes to quote a phrase ironically articulated by the historian Stanley Hoffman, who died last year: “There are universal values, and they happen to be mine.”

Despite the cultural catastrophe of Nazi Germany, the Romantic idealization of music persists. Pop music in the American tradition is now held to be the all-encompassing, world-redeeming force. Many consumers prefer to see only the positive side of pop: they cherish it as a culturally and spiritually liberating influence, somehow free of the rapacity of capitalism even as it overwhelms the marketplace. Whenever it is suggested that music might arouse or incite violence—Eminem’s graphic fantasies of abuse and murder, or, more recently, the whiff of rape culture in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”—fans suddenly devalue music’s potency, portraying it as a vehicle for harmless play that cannot propel bodies into action. When Eminem proclaims that he is “just clownin’, dogg,” he is taken at his word.

Bruce Johnson and Martin Cloonan expose this inconsistency in “Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence” (2008). They are not reactionaries in the Tipper Gore mode, trying to whip up a moral panic. Pioneers of pop-music studies, they address their subject with deep respect. Nonetheless, if music can shape “our sense of the possible,” as they say, it must also be able to act destructively. Either music affects the world around it or it does not. Johnson and Cloonan avoid claims of direct causality, but they refuse to rule out links between violence in music—in terms both of lyrical content and of raw decibel impact—and violence in society. Furthermore, musical brutality need not involve a brutal act, for a “song of vilification is in itself an act of social violence.”

The pattern of sonic aggression that runs from the Noriega siege to the Iraq War poses these issues in the starkest terms. There was a nasty undertow of cultural triumphalism in the hard-hitting, hypermasculine music used to humiliate foreign prisoners. “The detainee’s subjectivity was to be lost in a flood of American sounds,” Johnson and Cloonan write. On a symbolic level, the rituals at Guantánamo present an extreme image of how American culture forces itself on an often unwilling world.

Although music has a tremendous ability to create communal feeling, no community can form without excluding outsiders. The sense of oneness that a song fosters in a human herd can seem either a beautiful or a repulsive thing—usually depending on whether you love or hate the song in question. Loudness heightens the tension: blaring music is a hegemonic move, a declaration of disdain for anyone who thinks differently. Whether we are marching or dancing or sitting silently in chairs, we are being molded into a single mass by sound. As Quignard notes in “The Hatred of Music,” the Latin word obaudire , to obey, contains audire , to hear. Music “hypnotizes and causes man to abandon the expressible,” he writes. “In hearing, man is held captive.”

Quignard’s slender, unnerving volume is quite different in tone from the sober academic books on the theme of music and violence. It hovers in a peculiarly French space between philosophy and fiction, and goes on mysterious lyrical flights, animating scenes from history and myth. One astonishing sequence evokes St. Peter’s denial of Jesus before the third crowing of the cock. Quignard imagines that, ever after, Peter was traumatized by any high-pitched noise, and that he soundproofed his home to escape the cacophony of the street: “The palace was shrouded in silence, the windows blinded with drapes.”

For years, Quignard was active on the French music scene, organizing concerts and working with the Catalan viol player Jordi Savall. Quignard co-wrote the screenplay for the music-drenched 1991 film “Tous les Matins du Monde.” Soon afterward, he retreated from such projects and wrote “The Hatred of Music” as a cri de cœur. Although he does not explain this change of heart, he gestures toward the meaningless ubiquity of music in contemporary life—Mozart in the 7-Eleven. Quignard gives this familiar lament a savage edge. In a chapter on the infernal Muzak of Auschwitz, he quotes Tolstoy: “Where one wants to have slaves, one must have as much music as possible.”

The book’s most disquieting passages suggest that music has always had a violent heart—that it may be rooted in the urge to dominate and kill. He speculates that some of the earliest music was made by hunters luring their prey, and devotes a chapter to the myth of the Sirens, who, in his reading, beguiled men with song just as men once beguiled animals with music. Quignard muses that some early weapons doubled as instruments: a string stretched across a bow could be resonantly plucked or it could send an arrow through the air. Music relied conspicuously on the slaughter of animals: horsehair bows drawn over catgut, horns torn from the heads of big game.

What to do with these dire ruminations? Renouncing music is not an option—not even Quignard can bring himself to do that. Rather, we can renounce the fiction of music’s innocence. To discard that illusion is not to diminish music’s importance; rather, it lets us register the uncanny power of the medium. To admit that music can become an instrument of evil is to take it seriously as a form of human expression. ♦

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Review Essay: “Free Radical: Music, Violence and Radicalism”

John Morgan O’Connell is an Irish ethnomusicologist with a specialist interest in cultural history. Currently professor of ethnomusicology at Cardiff University, U.K., he has taught musicology and ethnomusicology at Otago University, NZ, and the University of Limerick, Ireland, among others. His publications concern in principle issues related to music and conflict in ethnomusicology (Illinois, 2010), music and aesthetics in Turkey (Routledge, 2013), and music and commemoration in WW1 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). He is currently working on an edited collection that concerns the politics of staged folklore in Ireland (Cork, under contract).

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John Morgan O’Connell; Review Essay: “Free Radical: Music, Violence and Radicalism”. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 March 2021; 33 (1): 155–162. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2021.33.1.155

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Ten years ago, I co-edited a volume titled Music and Conflict . In it, many contributors noted the paradoxical character of music in conflict, music being used both to promote peace and to incite war. Most worryingly, they pointed out, music can be employed to disguise conflict in the guise of conflict resolution. That is, music may be sponsored by governmental bodies in peace initiatives to hide social inequality and political injustice. Here, music is both ambivalent and multivalent. In this essay, I wish to explore the volatile character of music in violent contexts and radical organizations. Invoking the chemical concept of free radical, I explore the explosive potential of music to excite an ideological reaction, be it in the realm of the sacred or the secular, the autocratic or the democratic. Like the free radical in chemistry, the free radical in music is as explosive as it is temporary, its character changing frequently in its dialogue with extremism.

In this essay, I review three recent publications that concern either music and violence or music and radicalism. The monographs are complementary in that they consider similar issues in distinctive ways. By way of juxtaposition, I elicit similitude and difference in their treatment of the principal issues. The first is My Music, My War by Lisa Gilman, a folklorist at George Mason University. Gilman is also renowned for her war documentary Grounds for Resistance . The second is Radicalism and Music by Jonathan Pieslak, a composer and musicologist at the City College of New York. Pieslak is also noted for his war-time monograph Sound Targets (2009). The third is Lions of the North by Benjamin Teitelbaum, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Of especial interest, all three scholars utilize ethnographic methods with scholarly finesse in their individual readings of popular culture.

My Music My War concerns the musical tastes of military personnel who fought in the American wars that followed 9/11, specifically those wars that occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq. Based upon an extended period of ethnographic research among veterans on the West Coast of the United States, Gilman focuses on the listening habits of American troops both within and outside combat zones. Conducting in-depth interviews with more than thirty subjects, she impressively encompasses a representative sample of the armed forces both in terms of service affiliation and ethnic composition. Significantly, Gilman does not ignore the different perspectives of her male and female interlocutors. Like other scholars, Gilman notes the ambivalent position of music in conflictual situations, for her music being used to express or suppress emotion (in its various forms) or music being employed to articulate gender (in its different guises). The sections on music enabling combatants simultaneously to engage and disengage or to conform and rebel are noteworthy. The final discussion that concerns veterans against war is especially important.

The book is organized into eight principal chapters. Each addresses specific themes that range from gender to emotion, technology to ideology. In Chapter One, Gilman locates her study concisely within the recent scholarship that considers music and conflict, her contribution to this literature being her interrogation of music media and music reception among combatants. Here, Gilman argues that music is shared to cement relationships in extreme circumstances, music being at once pervasive but at times invasive depending upon the aesthetic sensibilities of the groups involved or individuals represented. In Chapter Two, Gilman contextualizes recruitment, the issue of job opportunity often taking precedence over patriotic loyalty as a principal motivation for enlisting. She pays attention here to aesthetic preference with relation to rank and race, with recruits on the battle front showing a strong preference for heavy metal and rap. In Chapter Three, Gilman explores the role of music listening in combat zones. Mapping out the different contexts for listening, she notes the importance of sharing soundtracks for facilitating comradeship.

In Chapter Four, Gilman investigates the relationship between music listening and socio-spatial control. Noting the close connection between soundtracks and sound memories, she shows how listening habits among combatants were employed to create “sound bubbles.” In these, headphones were used to help create individualized spaces in overcrowded and overwrought conditions. Interestingly, she shows how specific genres were equated with particular sentiments; for example, metal was associated with militarism and country with patriotism. In Chapter Five, Gilman presents a sophisticated interpretation of gender and genre. In particular, she focuses on metal (by way of timbre) and rap (by way of text) to explore distinctive constructions of manliness both among men and women. Here, she investigates musical taste in terms of the masculine and the feminine. As a particular performance of manliness, hypermasculinity is expressed (especially through rap) by means of misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric. By extension, music listening allows recruits to conform to yet rebel against societal norms and social hierarchies that are especially marked in the armed forces.

In Chapter Six, Gilman explores the relationship between music and emotion. She argues that music listening enables combatants to manage feelings that range from anger to fear, from isolation to connection. Where the expression of emotion in the military might be considered feminine, the control of emotion is considered to be masculine, and music listening helps combatants navigate this ambiguous distinction. In turn, music helps recruits to manage memory by providing an audible structure to make sense of seemingly contradictory emotions both in conflict and post-conflict situations. In Chapter Seven, Gilman moves from war to peace. She examines the difficult transformation of warriors who become civilians in terms of emotional suffering or as she calls it “invisible wounds” (123). She argues that music provides an important medium for social interaction and for sharing memories to counteract trauma. Her study of the artist called Soldier Hard is especially valuable since it represents an important case study for looking at support networks among veterans made possible by music-making. As Gilman might contend: where talking fails, musicking succeeds.

In Chapter Eight, Gilman concludes with a study of warriors who become pacifists. Using individual case studies, she shows how volunteers became disillusioned with war, with emphasis on issues of unreasonable expectations and inadequate supplies. That volunteers were at war to bring about peace was voiced as being especially ironic. Of course, music-making helped articulate this disenchantment. Gilman here analyses a song titled “Camillo” by State Radio, which concerns the corporate interests that benefit from warfare. The line: “Is blood money just money to you?” is especially poignant. Interestingly, rap is employed here both to represent an emboldened pacifism and an aggressive militarism. In sum, Gilman invokes an impressive range of interdisciplinary sources to make sense of her ethnographic engagement with her principal subjects. Her ethical yet reflexive interpretation of interviews demonstrates her established skill as a folklorist. Although Pieslak (2009) deals with similar genres, Gilman’s focus on the listening habits of American recruits is as innovative as it is productive. Here, her consideration of soundtracks as a form of personal diary is especially intriguing.

My Music My War for the most part explores music listening with reference to a specific technology (the iPod). Other technologies and other media are not extensively investigated. For example, Gilman notes that recruits read books and viewed videos among other activities in war zones. The significance of dance for socializing is only mentioned in passing, and this is achieved in a somewhat voyeuristic fashion. That is, Gilman’s focus on music listening seems to prescribe the outcome of her interviews so much so that some exchanges seem forced or constrained. Since this is a book about musical discourse, a discourse analysis of ethnographic dialogues might have been fortuitous. Further, the chapter structure is not always discrete, information is repeated and themes are dissipated. That the listening habits of volunteers are essentially confined to Euro-American popular genres is problematic, especially in warzones that were often permeated with the sounds of non-“western” musics. This is an issue that is redressed by Jonathan Pieslak in the next book under review.

As Pieslak succinctly states, “ Radicalism and Music is a comparative study of the music cultures of four diverse radical groups” (2). Employing a methodology in comparative anthropology established by Marilyn Strathern, Pieslak juxtaposes “disjunctive contexts” to establish similarity and difference between extremist groups that range from jihadists to skinheads, evangelists to environmentalists where music is employed to incite violence or to propagate fanaticism. Like Gilman, Pieslak notes the importance of the iPod as a tool in violent circumstances. In contrast to Gilman, Pieslak investigates radicalism with reference to non-“western” and “western” musics, not limiting himself, as she does, to popular genres and secular styles. The monograph is organized into five chapters, four of which consider particular issues with reference to a specific organization. The final chapter is an extended analysis and interdisciplinary overview of radical cultures, music here being used to facilitate indoctrination and to promote “groupness.” The publication features elegant ethnographic vignettes and, unusually, includes an Interlude that concerns the role of musical taste in establishing racial supremacy.

In Chapter One, Pieslak considers the ways in which “music” is employed by Jihadists. With specific reference to the religious genre called nashīd , he argues that “music” is permissible in Islamic contexts by virtue of its lyrical content rather than musical setting. By way of contextualization, Pieslak provides an extended discussion of the legal status of “music” in Islam (known as the “ samā‘ polemic”) arguing that the Jihadi nashīd occupies an ambivalent position in this debate, the genre being sanctioned by contravening religious edicts. Pieslak shows how different radical groups in the Muslim world have historically attempted to negotiate this apparent paradox especially in their distinctive usage of musical instruments and musical textures. The musical group Blackstone is a case in point. As Pieslak contends, the band employs rap in English to convey a militant ideal, a secular style being employed to deliver a sacred message. Here, the musical setting is at odds with the lyrical content. It is a musical compromise between melody and text that is used by radical Muslims to recruit and to motivate.

In Chapter Two, Pieslak examines the relationship between music and racism with reference to skinheads. Noting that skinheads came to America from Europe, Pieslak shows how music provided a medium for advancing indoctrination, that is, skinheads were not necessarily racist before they engaged with music (especially punk). Here, the symbols worn (such as Celtic crosses) and the actions undertaken (such as Nazi salutes) by skinheads at relevant concerts served to reinforce a supremacist agenda, with skinhead attire and skinhead activity as an assemblage representing a “choreography of belonging” and an articulation of hypermasculinity (81). In this matter, Pieslak provides an interpretation of performed masculinities distinct from Gilman’s. Pieslak then traces the connection between racist skinheads and white power. Here, the notion of a holy war to preserve the white race is reminiscent of a Jihadi precedent. Although not explicitly stated, Pieslak might have noted that Islamic fundamentalism is not so different in character from Christian fundamentalism. Moreover, music is used by both radical movements to realize acts of terrible violence.

In Chapter Three, Pieslak investigates the use of music for articulating intolerance and for inculcating fanaticism on the evangelical fringe. With specific reference to the Westboro Baptist Church, he shows how a radical sect employs music to structure a protest against combat veterans by regulating engagement and by cementing fellowship. Music, by way of parody, also allows for the vocal expression of antagonism and, when used in blockades, enables the sonic suppression of opposition. All this is done in the name of homophobic bigotry. Pieslak delves into the mindset of such groups. In particular, he interrogates the ways in which music is employed to indoctrinate children. Disturbingly, he shows how chauvinistic views are inculcated by means of trance-like states, glossolalia (speaking in tongues) helping to embed prejudice in the minds of young adepts. Crucially, music is employed here to organize and to regulate such sessions. Pieslak makes an insightful comparison between Islamic and Christian modes of religious instruction where a literal reading of the Qur’an and the Bible, respectively, serves to validate extreme acts of appalling terror.

In Chapter Four, Pieslak presents his final case study, which deals with music and the radical left. With specific reference to the environmentalist movement and animal activism, he shows how song lyrics are employed by different groups to endorse violence and promote disruption. Providing a lengthy history of relevant organizations, Pieslak demonstrates how individual bodies have progressed over the years from pacific intervention to anarchistic confrontation, the remit of some groups being expanded to embrace larger ideological issues. Importantly, this transformation was marked musically. By way of example, Pieslak looks at the musical output of the faction called “Earth First!” Starting with an anthology (1981) of folk numbers arranged for acoustic guitar, through an album (2009) of diverse styles ranging from rap to reggae, to a CD (2011) of hardcore genres that foregrounded punk and metal, Pieslak traces the sonic transformation of this ideological change. Like his reading of racist skinheads, he argues that musical style is more important than the political message in the attraction and the indoctrination of leftwing radicals.

Throughout Radicalism and Music , Pieslak is careful to draw connections between radical organizations in different contexts, be they Muslim or Christian, right-wing or left-wing. Importantly, he argues that the structure of these factions is remarkably similar, music being employed by most groups to recruit and to motivate, to articulate and to indoctrinate. Most shocking of all: music is used to accompany terrorist acts by providing a “sound bubble” (to cite Gilman) for the perpetrator in order to disengage from and become desensitized to horrific massacres. Here, Pieslak’s comparative approach is especially productive. It is also problematic. By examining so many different examples of music and radicalism, he has been forced to provide credible contextualization for each. This explains his over simplistic outline of Arab music (Chapter One), his lengthy consideration of white power (Chapter Two), his historical survey of evangelical radicalism and his convoluted study of hardcore subcultures. Here, Pieslak’s frequent use of abbreviations to represent relevant organizations (without providing an index to guide the reader) serves to cloud rather than clarify his important findings.

In Lions of the North , Benjamin Teitelbaum also looks at music and radicalism. In contrast to Pieslak, Teitelbaum presents an in-depth analysis of one nationalist movement with reference to one national context, namely Sweden. Where Pieslak traces the gradual inclination towards violence among relevant sects, Teitelbaum shows a contrary development: radical factions in Sweden have increasingly adopted democratic means to achieve extremist ends. Of course, music is foregrounded by both authors to represent these ideological shifts. With its indelible link to a discredited subaltern culture, Teitelbaum argues that music has recently become sidelined in nationalist politics. Demonstrating a sophisticated reflexivity in his multi-layered approach to ethnographic inquiry, Teitelbaum represents in four chapters particular nationalist issues with reference to specific musical genres. For context, Teitelbaum provides in Chapter One an extended introduction to the history and development of extremist sects in Sweden. Here, he is principally concerned with the ways in which new nationalists have tried to eschew the xenophobic pathway forged previously by radical activists, namely (racist) skinheads.

In Chapter Two, Teitelbaum examines the philosophical underpinnings of new nationalism. Like Pieslak, he shows how right-wing radicals have distanced themselves from “white-power rock.” In the United States and Sweden neo-Nazi punk bands such as Skrewdriver no longer suit the musical tastes or the political interests of more recently established fanatical organizations. In Europe but not in America, however, new nationalism owes its inspiration to the anti-liberal movement called the “new right.” Co-opting a multicultural discourse that concerns diversity and equality, new nationalism advocated the equality of all races, whites being offered the same status as other groups in social policy. Here, two concepts are germane. First, “pluriversum”: the recognition of the plurality of races. Second, “identitarianism”: the exotification of a national culture, that is, new nationalism advanced the veneration of a Nordic past that was pre-Christian and pre-modern, an idealized culture for an idealized nation. In its transformation from thug to politician, new nationalism abandoned its liking for punk and cultivated instead musical genres more consistent with its wish for respectability.

In Chapter Three, Teitelbaum looks at music as a medium for colonization. In keeping with the principle of “pluriversum,” nationalists have exploited the potential of transcultural genres to assert an ethnic particularism. Two genres are foregrounded. First, rap is employed by nationalists to critique multiculturalism and to venerate monoculturalism. In keeping with the ideals of “identitarianism,” prosodic meters and poetic techniques with a Nordic pedigree are adopted by some musicians to articulate an idealized nation state. Second, reggae is used by nationalists to advocate for white liberation. Although traditionally used to represent a homeland for Africans, reggae has been manipulated by nationalists to reimagine a homeland for Swedes. The issue of genre subversion does not end there. Where reggae is usually considered to be a medium for expressing love, it is now invoked by nationalists to communicate hate. Where reggae is usually thought to be homeless, it is now engineered by nationalists to represent home. By appropriating the cultural capital of subaltern groups, new nationalism lays claim to its own place in a “pluriversum” committed to diversity and equality.

In Chapter Four, Teitelbaum explores the sensitive issue of musical style and racial purity. With specific reference to folk music in Sweden, he finds a connection between music and landscape, an association in which the sonic vision of a nationalist culture is to be realized. Aware that other political parties have used a similar strategy, Teitelbaum shows how radical sects employ folk music to position themselves against musical anarchists (such as skinheads) on the one hand and musical cosmopolitans (such as migrants) on the other in their bid to enter the political establishment. Here, nationalists are especially critical of arts policy in Sweden, which foregrounds the musical cultures of immigrants and largely ignores the musical traditions of residents. Critical to his argument is the role of folk musicians in nationalist discourse. Although eager to promote their national patronage, the same artists are less eager to advance a nationalist agenda. In this context, Teitelbaum demonstrates how fusion in folk music complements hybridity in popular music to advance a nationalist reading of “pluriversum.”

In Chapter Five, Teitelbaum looks at music and radicalism from a gendered perspective. Here, he examines the stylistic strategies employed by female artists to communicate a racist position, with women employing a softer style than men to recast a fanatical canon drawn from the repertoire of bands such as Skrewdriver. In this regard, he follows in the steps of Pieslak by conducting research on the singer called Saga. Like Pieslak, Teitelbaum traces the connection between the Swedish artist Saga and the Norwegian fanatic Anders Breivik. Both authors show how this terrorist listened to the music of that artist while perpetrating a terrible atrocity outside of Oslo in 2011: the mass murder of sixty-nine youth workers, among others. Teitelbaum, however, has undertaken in-depth research. By interviewing Saga and by reading Breivik, he argues that Saga performs a lament for the Nordic people, a white race that has become the victim of multiculturalism. In his analysis, Teitelbaum contends that men employ song to scream outrage, whereas women use song to whimper despair. For him, this explains the gendered character of musical styles associated with new nationalism.

It is hard to find fault with Lions of the North . The book is beautifully written and cogently argued. Based upon an extended period of field research, Teitelbaum demonstrates his proficiency in ethnographic techniques, be they in his collaborative approach to interviewing or in his reflexive approach to ethnography. Most importantly, Teitelbaum positions himself both as a national and as a “cosmopolitan” in that he has Swedish ancestry and a Jewish background. He is an American who was searching for an idealized identity in Sweden. Much of this was accomplished through music. Although he was never an apostle, his exploration led him along the thorny pathway of radical nationalism. Amazingly, Teitelbaum manages to portray his interlocutors with sensitivity, liking the people but disliking the politics. In particular, Teitelbaum is ethically self-critical in his portrayal of Saga. Writing in a national newspaper about the connection between Saga and Breivik, Teitelbaum inadvertently undermined the Swedish artist’s career. Approaching Saga later, he apologized to the singer in person, the academic being forgiven but not forgotten by the artist.

Music and Radicalism by Jonathan Pieslak is neatly positioned between My Music, My War by Lisa Gilman and Lions of the North by Benjamin Teitelbaum. Like Gilman, Pieslak explores the power of music to express emotion and gender, and both authors examine the place of hypermasculinity among recruits and fanatics alike. Both also show how music is employed to motivate towards or to isolate from violent action. Teitelbaum, like Pieslak, looks at music and radicalism. Both authors demonstrate how musical taste is clearly linked to ideological affiliation, although Pieslak notes a tendency towards anarchistic activism by way of hardcore genres, whereas Teitelbaum notes an inclination towards democratic participation by way of softer styles. All three authors recognize the significance of rap and metal, in particular, for articulating distinctive subject positions, be they in the expression of violent aggression or peaceful integration, in the service of religious validation or radical indoctrination.

In this sense, music is like a free radical, a sonic electron that acts as an explosive intermediary in social reactions. As a free radical, music can attach itself to distinctive ideologies and different communities by providing a medium for promoting or assuaging violence and for provoking or countering intolerance. As in chemical reactions, the musical connection is often volatile and transitory. As I show in “Music in War, Music for Peace,” music occupies an unstable position in conflict and conflict resolution. Gilman, Pieslak and Teitelbaum all demonstrate how the use of music is often paradoxical, being at once communal and individual (Gilman), sacred and secular (Pieslak), autocratic and democratic (Teitelbaum). The ideologies that music serves, however, are often far from ambivalent. In all three monographs music is used to convey homophobia and misogyny, racism and extremism. With the populist election of far-right organizations in many national legislatures, it is clearly time to be concerned about the violent capacity of music to operate as a free radical.

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Review | Music, Politics, and Violence - edited by Susan Fast and Kip Pegley Yona Stamatis

Music, Politics, and Violence. Susan Fast and Kip Pegley, eds. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012. [viii, 3208 p. ISBN 9780819573384. $35.00.] Bibliography, index.

{2} Music, Politics, and Violence (2012), a series of essays compiled by Susan Fast and Kip Pegley, is another important work for the advancement of general ethnomusicology theory about music and conflict. Its focused attention on a cross-cultural examination of music and violence within a political context is long overdue. Interestingly, in the introduction to the book, the editors position the volume as simultaneously a part of, but separate from, the growing tradition of music and conflict studies. “[Our] choice of the term violence in this volume, over the more commonly used conflict , is a deliberate departure from existing literature” (2). It is curious that the editors offer little explanation as to how the study of music and violence strays from the tradition of conflict studies.

{3} Perhaps the most important contribution of the book to ethnomusicology is its positioning of music securely within the broader theoretical discussion about violence and the nation state. In the extensive introduction as well as in the short essays that introduce each chapter, Fast and Pegley engage numerous important theoretical studies about violence including Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” (1921), Frantz Fanon’s Concerning Violence” (1963) and Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970). The editors propose that nation states are inherently violent as they “cut or divide up the world – through borders, passports, citizenship papers, counting and managing its populations through the science of the state itself (statistics)” (3). They conclude that since music is fundamentally intertwined in the nation state, it is riddled with violence and conflict.

{4} A central theoretical springboard for the book is Slavoj Žižek’s important theoretical examination of violence, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (2009). The fundamental premise of this book is that subjective violence with a clearly identifiable source is actually the result of systemic violence inherent in less obvious economic and political systems. Žižek urges his readers to explore these hidden systemic causes of violence as a means of understanding the corruption of basic organizational structures such as contemporary versions of democracy. In Music, Politics, and Violence ,Fast and Pegley engage thoroughly with this notion of systemic violence though they maintain a more neutral political stance: they examine music as “a particularly rich medium for perpetuating symbolic violence, which, in turn, often becomes part of a much larger systemic oppression” (27). Fast and Pegley do disagree with Žižek’s approach to music and violence. They are particularly keen on undoing his assumption that music maintains an inherent transcendent quality somehow expressing ideas and emotions where words fail, and that it thus somehow lies outside of the realm of everyday social context: “We cannot use music to keep our reflections on violence at some respectful distance. Indeed, we must uncover precisely how music does its cultural work, which is what the essays in this volume seek to do” (12). Music, Politics, and Violence emphasizes the social construction of musical meaning, clearly explaining why this is fundamental to understanding the connections between music and violence in a political context.

{5} The nine essays that comprise Music, Politics, and Violence examine the dialogic relationship between music and violence in diverse chronological and geographical contexts. While such a book might have been held together solely by virtue of its basic subject matter, the editors skillfully bring together the numerous case studies with an extensive introductory chapter and carefully integrated theoretical prefaces to each essay. The clear organization of the introductory chapter and of the entire book around three critical theoretical trajectories makes clear to the reader the larger framework of the text. These three theoretical trajectories examine the dialogic relationship between violence and the nation state: Slavoj Žižek’s discussion of subjective, objective and systemic violences and their surrounding discourses of action and inaction; notions of belonging and/or “otherness” within nation-states, ideas incorporated by numerous scholars of violence including Jacques Derrida, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak; and examinations of public and private memorials as tools of justification for committing violence against the dead as discussed by Judith Butler and Sharon Rosenberg.

{6} The book is divided into three parts. Part I, titled “Objective and Subjective Violences,” examines the violent use of music during wartime. Particular attention is paid to the emotional and physical harm caused by music and to the role of music in defining categories of difference and ‘Otherness.’ The four chapters in Part I cover a broad range of conflicts including World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav Wars and the invasion of Iraq. In Chapter One, “‘A Healing Draft for a Sick People’: War in the Pages of the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik , 1914–1918,” Nicholas Attfield examines one of the best known and longest running German-language music journals Neue Zeitschrift für Musik .The focus of the chapter is how political ideology played a surprisingly major role in guiding the journal contents and how the journal reflected subsequently the nation’s war effort. In Chapter Two, “The Afterlife of Neda Ukraden: Negotiating Space and Memory through Popular Music after the Fall of Yugoslavia, 1990–2008,” Catherine Baker discusses the case of Yugoslavian singer Neda Ukraden to demonstrate how musical biographies “become subject to recontextualization and reworking in conditions of ethno-political conflict” (60). Baker examines the erasure of multiple identities in what she characterizes as a violent process to create meaningful identities for newly-formed nation states. In Chapter Three, “Between the Lines: ‘Lili Marlene,’ Sexuality, and the Desert War,” Christina Baade examines the way in which the song “Lili Marlene” was enjoyed across enemy lines during World War II. Also, the author focuses upon three key wartime performers of the song, Lale Andersen, Anne Shelton and Marlene Dietrich, examining how they negotiated the ambivalent sexuality and sentiment of the song in live performance for soldiers and for other audiences. James Deaville traces the history and development of music integrated into televised American news broadcasts of war in Chapter Four, titled “The Changing Sounds of War: Television News Music and Armed Conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq.” He emphasizes a profound transformation in the sound and function of this music during the years between the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War, complicating the ways in which “music served as a primary agent for the transformation of the American living room into the site for war’s ‘virtual reality’” (106).

{7} Part II, “Violence and Reconciliation,” is divided into three chapters that examine the diverse roles of music in processes of reconciliation during and after violent conflict. In Chapter Five, “Revivals and New Arrivals: Protest Song in the Al-Aqsa Intifada,” David A. McDonald writes about Palestinian expressive culture since the escalation of the al-Aqsa intifada in 2002. With special attention to various types of protest song, McDonald engages ethnographic analysis of individual performances and events to discover how Palestinian ideational strategies are embodied and performed from within various politico-nationalist frames. In Chapter Six, “Pax Mevlana: Mevlevi Sufi Music and the Reconciliation of Islam and the West,” Victor A. Vicente explores the role of Sufi poetry, music and ritual in countering the “increasing ‘rift’ between the Muslim world and the West” (150). With a particular focus on the music of followers of Mevlana Rumi, Vicente examines moments of musical reconciliation as well as moments of increased tensions found in state-sponsored sema whirling shows, private zikr ceremonies, and popular music performances that incorporate Sufi themes and sounds. Chapter Seven, “Choreographing (against) Coup Culture: Reconciliation and Cross-Cultural Performance in the Fiji Islands,” explores the symbolic power of hybrid music performance in the Fiji Islands. Through an examination of two contrasting performances, one government sponsored and the other “grassroots” that incorporate the music of Indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, ethnomusicologist Kevin C. Miller investigates music and dance as a critical site for nation making in the midst of ethnic tension and multiculturalist discourse on a local and national level.

{8} Part III, “Musical Memorializations of Violent Pasts,” investigates the ways in which music and musicians provide narratives of remembrance for violent histories. In Chapter Eight, “Complementary Discourses of Truth and Memory: The Peruvian Truth Commission and the Canción Social Ayacuchana,” Jonathan Ritter examines how recent violence against the state involving the Shining Path guerillas is woven into local and national historical narratives. Ritter presents a fascinating comparison between the official commemorative work of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and that of canción social ayacuchana musicians. While both served to commemorate violent histories through similar discourse, their divergences in content and style raise interesting questions about the nature and value of local and national narratives of remembrance in the public sphere. The final chapter in the book is “National Identity After National Socialism: German Receptions of the Holocaust Cantata, Jüdische Chronik (1960/1961)” by Amy Lynn Wlodarski. This chapter engages with broader questions of German memorializing of the holocaust and of how in the aftermath of the war, cultural memory was shared between the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany and of the German Democratic Republic. Using the Holocaust Cantata Jüdische Chronik (1960/1961) as a case study, Wlodarski adeptly demonstrates how one composition can present divergent paths of remembrance and serve ulterior motives: Wlodarski posits that the cultural prominence of the Cantata in the German Democratic Republic was due less to sentiments of guilt or reconciliation and more to its use by the state as a pawn in Cold War politics.

{9} Ethnomusicologist J. Martin Doughtry provides a thoughtful and inspiring Afterword to the book titled “From Voice to Violence and Back Again.” In this essay, Doughtry skillfully ties the nine essays of the book together through a philosophical engagement with the voice and with violence in which he challenges conventional understandings of their intersections: “[I]t is clear that we need a definition of violence that does not put it in opposition to voice, or to music” (257). Doughtry proposes that violence is not merely an activity engaged when the voice is no longer effective; it is an activity that incorporates the voice as systemically and subjectively as Fast and Pegley propose that violence and politics incorporate music.

{10} Music, Politics, and Violence makes a convincing case for the need for conflict studies framed specifically around music and violence and presents a tenable theoretical framework for doing so with cross-cultural applicability. Incorporating the work of a number of renowned scholars who examine theoretical implications of various social constructs including violence, national identity, and public and private space, editors Susan Fast and Kip Pegley successfully and organically integrate music into larger theoretical discussions about violence and the nation state. As such, they offer a fully integrated theoretical framework for examining music and violence from a cross-cultural perspective and emphasize the importance of considering the role of music in moments of systemic, subjective or objective violence. In the words of the editors, “music is never neutral, and we cannot turn a blind eye to how it is used for violent purposes in the realm of the political” (27).

Yona Stamatis is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Associated Faculty of the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Springfield.

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah. On Violence . New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970.

Benjamin, Walter. “Critique of Violence.” In Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings , translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Schocken Books, 1986 [1921].

Fanon, Frantz. “Concerning Violence.” In The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963.

Fast, Susan and Kip Pegly, eds. Music, Politics, and Violence . Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012.

O’Connell, John Morgan and Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, eds. Music and Conflict . Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

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

Pieslak, Jonathan. Sound Targets . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009.

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

Žižek, Slavoj. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2006.

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NPR Music Playlists

We insist: a century of black music against state violence.

Bobby Carter

Nate Chinen

Shana L. Redmond

Oliver Wang

Lil Baby performs during a Juneteenth voter registration rally on June 19, 2020 at Murphy Park Fairgrounds in Atlanta, Ga. One week earlier, he released "The Bigger Picture," a song protesting police brutality. Paras Griffin/Getty Images hide caption

In the liner notes to John Coltrane's 1964 album Live At Birdland , Amiri Baraka (then writing as Le Roi Jones) contemplated the gift the saxophonist and his band offered with this music inspired by the horrific deaths of four Black girls in a Birmingham church bombing inspired by white supremacist hatred. "Listen," Baraka wrote. "What we're given is a slow delicate introspective sadness, almost hopelessness, except for Elvin [Jones], rising in the background like something out of nature... a fattening thunder, storm clouds or jungle war clouds. The whole is a frightening emotional portrait of some place, in these musicians' feelings." Baraka is describing the transformation in art of unfathomable pain, the human response to violence, into grace. Not transcendence or reconciliation – but grace, the honor of one presence, the ability to face injustice and remain whole and gain the energy to respond. That's what Coltrane created in his landmark piece, which you'll find in the middle of the list below, as part of a history that parallels American culture's development: the story of Black American music and its response to oppression, and particularly, state-sanctioned violence.

In recent weeks, musicians have responded to the crowning of the Black Lives Matter movement as a central force motivating social change by writing new anthems, a remarkable new chapter in protest music. Listeners have connected creative leaps like Lil Baby's "The Bigger Picture" and Terrace Martin's "Pig Feet" to the hip-hop classics that challenged police violence in the 1990s and beyond, and to singular historical works like Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit." The truth, though, is that the witnessing, coded or open warnings and encouragement and political dissent communicated through today's urgent soundtrack characterize the whole of Black American music. From the oldest shout songs that surfaced on the Georgia coast to the spirituals that were revered after Emancipation, shared choruses documented brutality and exhorted people to resist. Jazz and blues songs that, to white listeners, seemed like good fun for dancing were news reports to those who knew how to listen. The civil rights movement codified hymns of resistance, but the soul and funk that poured from radios paid mind to police harassment and other threats too, sometimes more pointedly. There was never a moment, in fact, when Black musicians put aside their commitment to telling the truth of how Black people have been wronged, and survived, and fought back.

The 50 songs discussed in this list often describe specific acts of police violence but they are not limited to that subject. Together they construct a kind of timeline of an ongoing movement within American music, stretching back more than a century. It is meant to be revelatory but not complete. The songs here take on some of the ugliest stories with which America — and, since it goes international, the world — has to reckon. They mourn the dead and fight for the living. Some are easy to identify as protest songs; others feel like a party. Many address police violence directly decades before that subject became a lodestone in hip hop. Some of these songs have been misinterpreted even when their messages are perfectly clear. All contribute to the history of Black people showing what America's official histories would hide in plain sight: the destructiveness of white supremacy and the uprisings against it that are not only organized and political, but personal. Like music itself, this spirit of resistance takes many shapes, but has never been silenced. As Baraka said of Coltrane, all you have to do is really listen.

Listen to the songs featured below on playlists via Spotify and Apple Music .

Billie Holiday in 1957. Bob Parent/Getty Images hide caption

1927–1963: Witness & Resistance

Sara Martin "Georgia Stockade Blues" (1927)

This Classic Blues from the period dominated by a woman named Ma and a number of Smiths is described by scholar Sarah Haley as, perhaps, "the definitive popular expression of the brutality of southern women's imprisonment." The turpentine farm that sets Martin's scene highlights one of the numerous industries that took advantage of a captive and overwhelmingly Black labor pool in order to build modern infrastructure. The listener knows nothing of why she's there; the only crime explicitly named is the crime of impoverishment ("They found me guilty without one dime") that has forced her into shackles in a place without respite or mercy. —Shana L. Redmond

Louis Armstrong "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead (You Rascal You)" (1931)

Perhaps you've seen the egregious Betty Boop cartoon, wherein a high-flying Louis Armstrong gets conflated with a tribal savage on an African safari. One year earlier, Armstrong and his band had been thrown in jail for running afoul of Jim Crow in Memphis, released on bail with the condition that they play a benefit concert. In a gesture often cited as Exhibit A for Armstrong's trickster reputation, that show featured a version of "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead (You Rascal You)" — which Pops dedicated to the Memphis Police Department. —Nate Chinen

Ethel Waters "Supper Time" (1933)

One might not expect to find a musical revue number in this list, let alone one authored by Irving Berlin. It is both the profundity of the story behind the music and the subtleties of its performance that make it a study in anti-Black state violence. Written for Waters, the song tells the story of a woman struggling to reconcile her daily routine with the news that her husband has been lynched and "ain't comin' home no more." Lynching was a pastime for some in the late 19th and 20th centuries that created its own rules of engagement. Citizens deputized themselves to enact what they considered to be justice, nearly always with the assistance, consent and collaboration of the local police who provided supplies, cover or intel for their mob murders. Families with children often attended, bringing lunches and posing for the photographs that became souvenirs along with bits of rope, tree or the victim's body parts. Waters' delivery of the song, full of painful lyrical articulation and gesture, shows the slow resignation to grief that the victim's loved ones experience. Contemporary lynchings may appear differently but her feeling still speaks volumes. —Shana L. Redmond

Billie Holiday "Strange Fruit" (1939)

Throughline

Strange fruit.

The song, like the singer, is iconic — and the two have been inextricable nearly from the start. One of the most heralded protest anthems on record, "Strange Fruit" paints a chilling portrait of a southern lynching, using language both lyrically formal and brutally direct. First published as a poem by Abel Meeropol, who'd been horrified by a photograph of a lynching in 1930, the song circulated widely in New York leftist circles before it found its way to Billie Holiday. Her early performances of "Strange Fruit," during an engagement at Café Society in Greenwich Village, were an instant sensation. ("She gave a startling, most dramatic and effective interpretation," recalled Meeropol, "which could jolt an audience out of its complacency anywhere.") Because her label, Columbia Records, balked at releasing such charged material, Holiday recorded it as a single for Commodore, a couple of weeks after she turned 24. Backed by Frankie Newton's Café Society Band, which sets the stage with a mournful fanfare, Holiday sings carefully, in a troubled calm. Her composure is critical, enacting both a plea to empathy and a confrontation with ugly truth: When she curls her voice around "the sudden smell of burning flesh," it's a moment made all the ghastlier for its intimacy. Subsequent versions of "Strange Fruit" — by everyone from Nina Simone to Jeff Buckley to Bettye LaVette — would mostly hew to a declarative mode. But Billie still haunts the song, as it haunted her. —Nate Chinen

Vera Hall "Another Man Done Gone" (1940)

The mid-20th century field recordings John and Alan Lomax collected became a cornerstone of the folk revival, but they are not infinitely mutable texts. Many reveal the maps and codes that Black rural Southerners created to survive the nation's ongoing betrayal. This one, shared by the father-and-son duo's favorite singer, Alabama native Vera Hall, bears witness to the destruction wrought by the carceral system built to contain Black Americans after emancipation. Hall's spare verses describe a man who – escapes? is killed? — while on a chain gang, one of the mobile prisons designed shortly after emancipation to contain and terrorize free Black people. John Lomax heard something in Hall's woeful tone, or perhaps in her unrecorded conversation, that prompted him to play "Another Man Done Gone" in 1937 at the 75th anniversary commemoration of the the Emancipation Proclamation's signing.

Later singers filled in the lines of Vera Hall's cipher. Johnny Cash, who heard the song interpolated with the voices of witnesses to lynchings on Alan Lomax's 1957 compilation Blues in the Mississippi Night , added the phrase "they hung him on a tree." Folk revival originator Odetta also made state violence explicit in her version, changing Hall's phrase "he killed another man" to the state-implicating "they killed another man." The song became an emblem of institutionalized violence, used by poets, novelist and activists to demonstrate brutality's dull repetitiveness. "There is all the pathos of the world poured into a few words," an Ebony magazine op-ed on the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. declared in 1968, invoking the song. "No one is exempt." —Ann Powers

Leadbelly "Duncan and Brady" (1947)

Outlaw stories far precede 1990s rap in American music, and often document resistance to police brutality. The novelist Cecil Brown, among other scholars, connects the most famous of all — that of Stagolee, the 19th-century father of Superfly and Ice-T's "Cop Killer" — to this lineage. The Stagolee ballads emerged alongside more explicit accounts of self-defense killings of police, including this one, relaying the story of a Black bartender defending himself against a St. Louis officer intending to "shoot somebody just to see him die." (The actual Brady case was more complicated, and led to the first time a Black lawyer argued a case in the Supreme Court, though Walter Moran Farmer failed to exonerate the possibly innocent Harry Duncan.) When Lead Belly incorporated the song into the repertoire he mostly performed for white audiences after John Lomax brought him to New York, he performed it with cutting sarcasm, apparently recognizing that this was a chance to note the real threat Black Americans faced amidst what some listeners took as tall tales. —Ann Powers

Louis Jordan "Saturday Night Fish Fry" (1949)

Social gatherings have historically offered more than just fun for Black Americans. The rent parties of Harlem, Midwestern "buffet flats" and fish fries of New Orleans provided ways ways to feed the community, pass the hat and gather rent, create informal business networks and, for artists, perfect the music that might eventually bring them fame. These temporary autonomous zones — which have, at times, welcomed the low-level illegal activities dubbed "vice," like sex work and drug use — are routinely disrupted by police, who often use deadly force. Songs like Fats Waller's "The Joint is Jumpin'" and Hot Lips Page's "They Raided the Joint" turn these dangerous encounters into comedy, as does this classic by Louis Jordan — a song some call the first rock and roll record. Jordan's account of a rollicking good time abruptly takes a turn when he's punched in the face by an officer, hustled into a "Black Maria" (or police wagon) and dumped in jail. Jordan's arch delivery belies the detailed account of the pain police induced in partygoers. In the song, Jordan is bailed out by his girlfriend; "Saturday Night Fish Fry" ruled the R&B charts for twelve weeks and made clear that however much the state tried to regulate the creative expression people generated a the parties, the joints would keep jumpin' anyway. —Ann Powers

Alex Foster & Michel Larue "Follow the Drinking Gourd" (1958)

Little is known about the group that released an album named after this song in 1958 — later reissued as American Negro Slave Songs — except that they were folklore collectors and they once rented the Greenwich Village club the Gate of Horn to perform this repertoire. The story of Black performers in the folk revival still begs to be thoroughly told. "Follow the Drinking Gourd" has been classified as a spiritual, but its meaning is very much of this world — it was meant to instruct people fleeing their enslavers to read constellations like the Big Dipper to map their way to freedom. Foster and LaRue's interpretation in modern and evocative, conjuring the night that offered some hope of protection on such perilous paths. Its menace keeps alive the original spirit of a song that today is often defused and redefined as children's music. —Ann Powers

Lord Commander "No Crime, No Law" (1959)

The 1950s launched a global Calypso craze, yet commercial success did not surrender the political content of this famed Caribbean musical genre. One of a number of Calypso Lords from Trinidad and Tobago, Lord Commander used the documentary nature of this dance music to tell the story of the fat cat colonial police officers, lawyers and magistrates who, he says, should be kissing the criminals who keep them well paid. —Shana L. Redmond

Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach "Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace" (1960)

"Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in 1964, for an essay commissioned by the Berlin Jazz Festival. He was referring to the music made by Black musicians in America, commonly known as jazz — and while he didn't name specific artists, it's no stretch to suggest Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln were rattling somewhere in his mind. We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite was released four years earlier, in 1960. Its cover shows a black-and-white image of a lunch-counter sit in. Featuring music by Roach and lyrics by Oscar Brown, Jr., it's a concept album in every sense, connecting the bitter legacy of American slavery with the push for freedom in South Africa. "Triptych: Prayer / Protest / Peace" is the album's striking centerpiece, a rolling tone poem with Lincoln's wordless vocals out front. In the first section, her incantatory moan evokes both a field holler and the cry of the church; during the final stretch, she sounds spent and becalmed. But the crux of the matter is "Protest," in which Roach rains a hail of blows on his snare and toms while Lincoln screams and howls: a cathartic, unsparing embodiment of righteous fury. Sixty years later, it rages on. —Nate Chinen

John Coltrane "Alabama" (1963)

On Sept. 15, 1963, four young Black girls were killed by a bomb at a Baptist church in Birmingham, Ala. Two months later, saxophonist John Coltrane recorded "Alabama," whose dirge-like cadence was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King's oration at the girls' funeral service. The soft rumble of McCoy Tyner's piano and the ceremonial thrum of Elvin Jones' toms deepen the gravity of a song that frames protest in terms of a human toll, devastating and irretrievable. —Nate Chinen

Stevie Wonder in 1975. Evening Standard/Getty Images hide caption

1967–1985: Black Power

The Equals "Police on My Back" (1967)

After years of effort by Black immigrants in England to rebuild the nation post-World War II, British policy makers in the 1950s and 1960s thanked them with immigration restriction laws as well as housing and employment discrimination, all of which was enforced with assistance from police. The repetitive pop melody of "Police on My Back" mirrors the repetition of police harassment experienced by the singer Eddy Grant, himself an immigrant from Guyana. The passive voice statement that "there was a shooting" offers an oblique reference but no clear justification for the police pursuit that sends him on a sprint via street and railway every day of the week. —Shana L. Redmond

The Lumpen "No More" (1970)

The Lumpen was a little-known soul/funk band formed amongst active Black Panther Party members. Inspired by the example of fellow Party member Elaine Brown, who recorded the 1969 protest album Seize The Time , The Lumpen meant to "use popular forms of music that the community could relate to and politicize it so it would function as another weapon in the struggle for liberation." The Black Panthers were founded with a 10 point program, one of which was "an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people" and this core tenet is at the heart of the group's sole single. One side, "Free Bobby Now," was a contemporary funk tune devoted to Party co-founder Bobby Seale, at the time imprisoned on contempt charges and a cause celebre for activists around the world. The other side, "No More," was performed in a more traditional spiritual style, with lyrics written by Lumpen member Bill Calhoun decrying state oppression "from Watts to Brownsville" but envisioning a future free of "pigs on our streets and poverty." —Oliver Wang

Marvin Gaye "Inner City Blues" & "What's Going On" (1971)

Despite the well-publicized examples of police violence against the Black community through the '60s and early '70s, a star of Marvin Gaye's stature could ill risk writing an entire song dedicated to the topic. However, on his best-selling, era-defining What's Going On, from 1971, Gaye still found ways to call out the police on two of the LP's biggest hits. On "Inner City Blues," "trigger happy policing" is one of the dozens of laments he lists, alongside rising crime rates and falling wages. Likewise on the title track, his line "picket lines and picket signs / don't punish me with brutality," can't be read as anything but a commentary on how civil rights-era law enforcement often responded to nonviolent protests with swinging batons or worse. —Oliver Wang

Gil Scott-Heron "No Knock" (1972)

This "no knockin', head-rockin', inter-shockin'" poem by the "Godfather of rap" speaks as clearly and as devastatingly today as on the date of its release. No-knock warrants permit law enforcement officers to forcibly enter a property without announcement. A no-knock warrant was issued for the home of Breonna Taylor, a Louisville woman killed in her home by police on March 13, 2020. A no-knock warrant was served on the home in which 7-year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones slept in the minutes before her 2010 murder by a Detroit police officer. There was also Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta; before her Alberta Spruill in New York. And as Scott-Heron says, the cops "no knocked on [his] brother," the revolutionary and Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, assassinating him in 1969. —Shana L. Redmond

Archie Shepp "Attica Blues" (1972)

Several months after the Attica Prison uprising met its infamous and bloody end, saxophonist Archie Shepp made Attica Blues — a teeming, unwieldy concept album bound by searing moral clarity. Its strength assumes many forms, but none more arresting than the title track, a gnarly funk invocation with urgent singing by Carl Hall. "I got a feeling that something ain't going right!" he cries. "And I'm worried 'bout the human soul!" —Nate Chinen

Stevie Wonder "Living For The City" (1973)

In her book about black radicalism in Oakland, named after this 1973 epic, historian Donna Jean Murch quotes Black Panther Party cofounder Huey Newton, who himself was imprisoned and then exonerated of shooting a police officer in 1967, about the police presence in his city: "The police ... were really the government." Wonder's song draws that bottom line. It's a terrifying inversion of the all-American Horatio Alger story, in which an impoverished boy from "hard time Mississippi" heads to the urban mecca to make something of himself. Instead, as the song's climactic spoken-word interlude portrays, he's quickly set up for a petty crime and nabbed by law enforcement. Anyone who's seen the clusters of blue uniforms on any major city's downtown street corners may get a chill from the rapidity in which our hero becomes a victim of circumstance — and of racism. The words that greet Wonder's protagonist upon arrest — "get in that cell, N*****" – became a key sample in hip-hop, employed by artists from Public Enemy to Slick Rick. —Ann Powers

War "Me and Baby Brother" (1973)

As with other popular soul-era artists such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, the multiracial Long Beach group War found ways to subtly speak on police brutality. The snappy funk track "Me and Baby Brother," featured on the group's 1973 LP Deliver the Word , is ostensibly about reminiscing on days spent hanging with "baby brother" on street corners and "drinking funky wine" until the song hits the bridge and a chilling line appears: "hang on, baby brother / Oh, they call it law and order." The main hook — "come back baby brother" — returns immediately, but it's easy to mishear it as "shot my baby brother." Years later, on War co-founder Lonnie Jordan's 2007 album War Stories , the version of "Baby Brother" is updated and Jordan now sings, explicitly: "They shot my baby brother, back in 1971 with bombs and guns, and they called it law and order." —Oliver Wang

Sweet Honey in the Rock "Joanne Little" (1976)

Beginning with the defiant and repeated line, "Who is this girl and what is she to you," this song tells the story of Joan (pronounced Jo-ann) Little, a Black woman who, while being held in a North Carolina men's jail in 1974, murdered a guard in self-defense against sexual assault. Her eventual trial drew the attention of prison abolitionists and women's and civil rights organizations, as well as the high-profile support of Angela Y. Davis. Led by the voice of movement artist Bernice Johnson Reagon, the song by Black women's a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock gives Little full dimension and answers the recurring question by naming her our sister, mama, lover and "the woman who's gonna carry your child." —Shana L. Redmond

Fela Kuti "Sorrow, Tears & Blood" (1977)

In 1977, Fela Kuti's creative compound, Kalakuta Republic, was raided and burned to the ground by Nigerian military in retaliation for his political beliefs and public critiques of the government and its military. Kuti, his band and guests were beaten, and his mother thrown from a window, which caused fatal injuries. Instead of silence, he returned with his band Africa 70 to the studio and in 1977 produced a series of albums, including Sorrow Tears and Blood , which, true to form, announces the police and military as the murderers who create a culture of fear and confusion that forces people to "scatter scatter." —Shana L. Redmond

Rick James "Mr. Policeman" (1981)

Funk popularizer James was notorious for being a self-proclaimed Superfreak, and his hits remain party mix staples. But his most successful album – and its cover — showed that he could be a protest artist, too. Inspired by the police shooting of an unarmed friend in his native Buffalo, James wrote a direct and incendiary lyric: "It's a shame, it's a disgrace, why every time you show your face somebody dies, man." He set it to a reggae rhythm in tribute to the 1972 Jamaican film classic The Harder They Come , in which Jimmy Cliff plays a social outsider eventually killed by police. And he styled the iconic Street Songs cover to bring the song to visual life: On the front, James leans against a streetlight as two women in the background struggle in handcuffs, led away by a shadowy lieutenant. On the back cover he's being frisked by the same officer. This twist on the ubiquitous early-1970s romanticization of the pimp in blaxploitation films and music shows that no matter how freaky, an urban hustler could not escape routine police harassment. —Ann Powers

Nina Simone "I Was Just A Stupid Dog To Them" (1982)

The obvious choice would be "Mississippi Goddam," which responds to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi, among other outrages during the thick of the civil rights movement. But Nina Simone held her anger close in the years to come, well after expatriating to Europe. On this misleadingly jaunty tune, a staple of her repertoire in the '80s, she recalls the death of Bob Marley and the dehumanizing treatment that still plagued her, along with a vow: "Now everything will change." —Nate Chinen

McIntosh County Shouters "Wade the Water to My Knees" (1983)

It's not an exaggeration to say that the stories of violence against Black people in America, preserved in music, are as old as the nation itself. This song is a variant of the familiar spiritual "Wade in the Water," but its roots run even deeper, into the silty banks of Dunbar Creek at St. Simons Island, Ga. There, in 1803, a group of West Africans transported in the Middle Passage revolted at the end of their journey; both history and legend assert that they drowned themselves rather than remain captive. Such narratives were often buried between the lines of the spirituals and shout songs that form the foundation of African-American music. In the past half-century, musical preservationists like Georgia Sea Islands group have revived the original meanings of these songs, reminding listeners that their messages are not piously universal, but hauntingly particular. —Ann Powers

Wynton Marsalis "Black Codes" (1985)

Trumpeter-composer Wynton Marsalis was not yet the institutional figurehead he'd become when he made Black Codes (From the Underground) in 1985, featuring his brother Branford on saxophone along with a fearsome rhythm section. The album's title invokes laws in the postbellum South that prevented former slaves from exercising their freedoms. Wynton's slashing horn, and the band's muscular prowess, stand united in proud rebuke. —Nate Chinen

Lauryn Hill in 2001. Scott Gries/Getty Images hide caption

1985–2012: Policing & Protest

Toddy Tee "Batterram" (1985)

Of the long list of decisions made by the LAPD during the reign of now-disgraced former chief Daryl Gates, few were as notorious — and embarrassing — as their construction of a six-ton tank tipped with a 14-foot battering ram. The idea was that the vehicle, officially dubbed a "batterrram," could be used in hostage situations or drug raids by busting through building walls; the 2015 film Straight Outta Compton dramatizes this in its opening scene. Produced by soul legend Leon Haywood, the 1985 single, "Batterram," features Compton rapper Toddy Tee warning listeners, "the Chief of Police says he just might / flatten out every house he sees on sight." Compared with later songs by L.A. rappers, "Batterram" is almost playful in tone, but it was an early example of local artists reacting to overuse of force by the LAPD. After only a handful of deployments, a cavalcade of lawsuits and civic outrage forced Gates to mothball the assault vehicle. —Oliver Wang

N.W.A. "F*** Tha Police" (1988)

Arguably the most blatant protest song in hip-hop, 1988's "F*** Tha Police" left absolutely nothing to the imagination and spoke bluntly to the fractured police/community relations of inner-city Los Angeles. The song not only struck a nerve with countless Black youth in cities nationwide, it caught the attention of the FBI, whose displeasure with the record was documented and sent to the group's record label. Unfortunately, the song's relevance hasn't subdued; over the years it has been remade and re-recorded many times over, most recently by rapper YG during this year's protest. —Bobby Carter

Tracy Chapman "Across the Lines" (1988)

The shooting of Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through a Georgia subdivision brought into stark relief the threats facing Black Americans when they venture into neighborhoods where they are perceived as strangers. Segregation is one of the most powerful state-imposed reinforcements of American racism, living on informally (and, sometimes, illegally) long after it was supposedly abolished by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Tracy Chapman, born poor in Cleveland in 1965, paid witness as a child to the ways in which poorly enforced integration led to violence against Black citizens in their own neighborhoods. Chapman, whose universe expanded when she received a scholarship to a Connecticut boarding school, brought her political perspective and personal experience of being bullied as a child to her work as a rare Black singer-songwriter in the informally segregated folk-rock scene of the 1990s. This song cries out for all lines to be eradicated even as it contends with the reality that most Americans choose sides, forcing others to run for their lives. —Ann Powers

Public Enemy "Anti-N***** Machine" (1990)

New York's Public Enemy first introduced the phrase "anti-n***** machine" on its 1988 song "Black Steel In the Hour of Chaos," which was a modern-day "Attica Blues," speaking on the American prison system. On the 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet , Chuck D and his group turned the phrase into a short, 90 second song where the "machine" represents the government and justice systems, implicating policy makers and police alike. That said, Chuck's most direct barbs are aimed at law enforcement, especially in the song's second verse: "went to Cali, a rally was for a brother's death. It was the fuzz who shot him and not the bloods or cuzz." It was a prescient line, predicting the L.A. gang truce of 1992. On the album, "Anti-N***** Machine" led directly into the next song, "Burn Hollywood Burn," thus connecting anti-Black racism in law enforcement with racist imagery in popular media. —Oliver Wang

Main Source "Just a Friendly Game of Baseball" (1991)

Lead by Queens rapper/producer Large Professor, Main Source turned in one of the more creative early-'90s rap songs about police violence by comparing it to the national pastime: "To the cops, shooting brothers is like playing baseball, and they're never in a slump. I guess when they shoot up a crew, it's a grand slam, and when it's one, it's a home run." The group squeezes as much as they can from the analogy over three verses, with corrupt government officials being called umpires and the dugout a metaphor for the graves that victims were sent to after being "gunned down" by an outfielder with a badge and firearm. The song, originally released on the group's 1991 Breaking Atoms LP, made such an impression that its remix was one of the only songs by an East Coast artist included on the otherwise West Coast-centric Boyz n the Hood soundtrack. —Oliver Wang

Body Count "Cop Killer" (1992)

Few songs have sparked as much controversy as "Cop Killer," released on the self-titled debut by the rap/rock group Body Count in the spring of 1992. Originally written in 1990, "Cop Killer" found the group's lead, L.A. rapper Ice-T, taking a preemptive "kill or be killed" approach to police violence: "Cop killer, better you than me. Cop killer, f*** police brutality." The song mentioned both LAPD chief Daryl Gates and beating victim Rodney King; its release came barely a month before the King verdict would ignite protests and riots across the U.S.

Police associations, already reeling from criticism, attempted to deflect attention onto "Cop Killer" instead, arguing that its threats to "dust some cops off" put police lives in danger. They demanded that parent company Time Warner retract the Warner Music release and pressured stores to remove it from shelves. The protest went all the way up to the White House, with both Vice President Dan Quayle and President George H.W. Bush castigating the song as well. "Cop Killer" ignited a fierce free speech debate around censorship and though Warner Bros. refused to pull the album, in the end, Ice T made the decision to remove the song from future versions of the album and he eventually broke from the label out of disappointment with Time Warner's handling of the situation. —Oliver Wang

Rage Against The Machine "Killing In the Name" (1992)

"Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses," snarled Zack de la Rocha in the first verse of this oracular explosion from L.A. rock band Rage Against the Machine. The line laid bare a long historical connection between law enforcement and racist hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan — more recently the subject of lengthy FBI investigations. And it announced a new leader in political rock. Radical and unafraid of censure, bursting forth in the moment when the riots following Rodney King's assault by police had ripped Los Angeles apart, Rage brought the confrontational spirit of both punk and hip-hop to a genre that had grown decadent. The band was denounced as a "hate group" by some but inspired a new generation to scream its protest. —Ann Powers

Ice Cube "Who Got the Camera" (1992)

Ice Cube stands as one of the one of architects of hip-hop protest, and has always delivered a message from the perspective of the oppressed. "Who Got The Camera" rings disturbingly relevant, thanks to the sheer volume of police brutality incidents that have been caught on film over the past few years. —Bobby Carter

KRS-One "Sound of da Police" (1993)

While the term "racial profiling" wasn't as prevalent in 1993 as it is today, KRS-One's "Sound of da Police" is a textbook breakdown of what it means to be targeted by law enforcement as Black person in America. "The Teacha" masterfully deciphers this relationship, likening it to that of the slave and the overseer in his signature Jamaican patois. —Bobby Carter

Queen Latifah "Just Another Day..." (1993)

A love song to the New Jersey neighborhoods that raised her, "Just Another Day..." reveals a Queen without her title as she's "just plain old Dana today." Similar to the scenes of Black life popularized in the late 1980s and 1990s by filmmakers Spike Lee and John Singleton, Latifah focusses on street-level interactions and relationships. In them she sees the complicated beauty of her 'hood where, in spite of daily witnessing violence at the hands of neighbors and police, she can also sing and play. —Shana L. Redmond

Michael Jackson "They Don't Care About Us" (1996)

Released on Jackson's HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book 1 , "They Don't Care About Us" was a rare unabashed protest song from the King of Pop, albeit a muddled one. On it, Jackson tries to compare (and conflate) his own legal woes, dealing with accusations and investigations of alleged pedophilia, with a larger commentary on human rights struggles happening globally. "I am the victim of police brutality, now, I'm tired of being the victim of hate," he sings and on one of the two Spike Lee-directed music videos made for the song, we see images of the Rodney King beating cut into a video mostly set inside a prison where Jackson is dressed in county blues. The other video, shot in a Rio de Janeiro favela, doesn't reference the prison system but it does include several pointed scenes of Jackson standing defiantly next to uniformed Brazilian police officers. While some previous songs, most notably "Black Or White," addressed race, "They Don't Care About Us" was Jackson's most strident song about racism. It was a stark departure from his chart-topping pop persona to hear him sing lines such as, "Black male, blackmail, throw the brother in jail." Ironically, the song's underlying anti-racism message was undermined by criticism that some of his lyrics —"Jew me, sue me, everybody do me" — were anti-Semitic. Jackson issued several public apologies in response. —Oliver Wang

Lauryn Hill "Forgive Them Father" (1998)

Songs are open-ended things, their meanings adaptable to new historical moments, making necessary responses. Hill wrote this song as an invocation of Bob Marley's spirit, interpolating the Wailers' "Concrete Jungle" into her litany of call-outs that range from thoughtless men to capitalism itself. In recent years, however, she has made the message more pointed by extending the song's ending in her performances and showing a montage of phone- and videocamera- captured incidents of police brutality as she sings. The song becomes a form of sanctified dissent, a cry for reconciliation and reparations, communicating compassion even as it unwaveringly seeks justice. —Ann Powers

Hip Hop For Respect " A Tree Never Grown " (2000)

In February of 1999, four plain-clothed NYPD officers in the Bronx shot and killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from Guinea, mistaking his wallet for a gun. Infamously, they fired 41 shots at Diallo — that number became a shorthand for the excesses of police force. Diallo's killing and the subsequent acquittal of all four officers drew widespread condemnation and sparked dozens of musical response, including a project from the 41 rappers who comprised the Hip Hop For Respect project, assembled by Mos Def and Talib Kweli. Their 2000 EP included "A Tree Never Grows," its title a mournful commentary on what was lost with Diallo's death. On the song's hook, Mos Def sings of Diallo's mother: "As the coffin had closed, committed to the earth below, first seed she had sewn, would be a tree never grown." —Oliver Wang

Gregory Porter "1960 What?" (2010)

Led and grounded by upright bass, Porter's deceptively powerful question—"1960 What?"—refuses the narrative of exceptional or isolated incidences of violence as he sings into one deadly genealogy the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the murder by police of a young man carrying "three pieces of black licorice." —Shana L. Redmond

Esperanza Spalding "Land of the Free" (2012)

As a bassist and composer, Esperanza Spalding makes a virtue out of virtuosity; as a singer-songwriter, she often bends her ebullience toward a pointed aim. "Land of the Free," a secular hymn from her 2012 album Radio Music Society , tells the tale of Cornelius Dupree, Jr., who spent 30 years imprisoned on a wrongful charge. From this particular miscarriage of justice, she draws a circle wide enough to implicate our entire society. The song ends with a pause where you'd expect to hear the word "free," followed by the slamming of a cell door. —Nate Chinen

Ambrose Akinmusire in 2011. Eva Hambach/Getty Images hide caption

2014–2020: Black Lives Matter

Vince Staples "Hands Up" (2014)

About a month after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Vince Staples released "Hands Up," which became a rallying cry for the protests that followed. Over a manic instrumental, the Long Beach rapper delivers furious bars, mostly focused on the corruption within various Los Angeles law enforcement divisions. The parallels between his personal experiences and the ones reported across the globe are undeniable. —Bobby Carter

Ambrose Akinmusire "Rollcall for Those Absent" (2014)

The haunting drone of a Mellotron has a near-liturgical quality as it supports the voice of a young child reading the names of dozens of men, women and children murdered by police and vigilantes. More than once, the voice lingers in repetition of the name Trayvon Martin, the Black teenager whose 2012 murder by a neighborhood watch coordinator in Florida elicited widespread outrage, public memorials and a personal statement from President Obama. —Shana L. Redmond

Kendrick Lamar "The Blacker the Berry" (2015)

Not long after the release of To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, Lamar's "Alright" was adopted as a protest chant across the U.S., beginning in Cleveland among activists rallying against the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by officer Timothy Loehmann. However, the song's more incendiary sibling was "The Blacker the Berry," which found Lamar defiantly excoriating anti-Blackness in all its forms: "This plot is bigger than me: It's generational hatred, it's genocism." The rapper had previously taken heat for his views on the role of personal accountability in confronting violence within Black communities. Though most of "The Blacker the Berry" is directed at white supremacy, his last lines reignited the debate: "So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street / When gang-banging make me kill a n**** blacker than me?" —Oliver Wang

Georgia Anne Muldrow "Blam" (2018)

Even under assault, generations of oppressed people have done much more than simply survive, or even fight back. They have flourished, nurturing the roots that others would upend. The funky, hypnotically soulful music of Georgia Anne Muldrow evokes the beloved neighborhoods, community circles and cultural hubs that many commenters celebrate when they say the phrase, "I love us ." This song is a call to the battlefield of an "ancient war" – the same one that took out Tulsa's Greenwood district in 1921, put an interstate through North Nashville in 1968 and bombed Philadelphia's Cobbs Creek neighborhood in 1985. Muldrow's groove is steady, the mood she raises coolly defiant, as she leads the chorus: "Before I be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave." —Ann Powers

Jorja Smith "Blue Lights" (2018)

Jorja Smith: Tiny Desk Concert

Before she had even released an LP, the British singer-songwriter took a stand with "Blue Lights." The song is an ode to the Black men of her hometown in the West Midlands of England, who fear the mere sight of those lights in the city. —Bobby Carter

Our Native Daughters "Mama's Cryin' Long" (2018)

Today's movement seemed to erupt from the streets themselves, propelled by the rapid-fire distribution of horrifying images across social media. Yet diligent work by artists, journalists and historians has also played a role in shifting American consciousness. The novels of Colson Whitehead and Jesmyn Ward, the films of Steve McQueen and Ava DuVernay, the music of Dom Flemons and Cecile McLorin Salvant, and the massive, historically grounded 1619 Project led by Nikole Hannah-Jones at The New York Times – as well as Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash hit musical Hamilton – have all helped make the buried or overlooked lineage of resistance feel visceral. Rhiannon Giddens has been a leader in these endeavors. On her own albums and with the quartet Our Native Daughters, Giddens has opened herself fearlessly to be inhabited by the stricken spirits of the women who suffered and fought against their own objectification and confinement on the block, in the fields and on the run throughout America. This harrowing song employing call and response and the rhythms of the diaspora is a powerful example — Giddens sings as a child witnessing her mother's personal revolt against a rapacious enslaver, and that mother's death. Heartbreakingly beautiful work like this motivates and sustains. —Ann Powers

Terri Lyne Carrington & Social Science feat. Malcolm Jamal Warner "Bells (Ring Loudly)" (2019)

Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science: Tiny Desk Concert

Social Science, the improvising collective fronted by drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, tackled a welter of issues on its 2019 album Waiting Game . The most visceral of them inspired this track, composed in the wake of Philando Castile's killing by a police officer during a traffic stop in 2016. Debo Ray sings the heartbreaking chorus, while Malcolm-Jamal Warner intones an indictment: "Blue lives try to play Picasso / By splattering red on canvases of brown skin / As if Black lives mattering is a game to them / And not a basic right within." —Nate Chinen

Rapsody "Nina" (2019)

Featured on the 2019 album Eve , "Nina" opens with the piercing voice of namesake Nina Simone, singing her rendition of "Strange Fruit." Rapsody's opening line is a reminder of the specter of violence that haunts Black lives: "Emit light, rap, or Emmett Till," referring to the 14-year-old lynched in Mississippi in 1955. However, "Nina" is ultimately a song about resistance in the face of turmoil, especially by Black women: "Failed to kill me, it's still me, woke up singing Shirley Murdock / As we lay these edges down, brown women, we so perfect." —Oliver Wang

Terrace Martin "Pig Feet" (2020)

One of the first songs to emerge in the wake of national protests after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, "Pig Feet" is a furious, frenetic composition by jazz artist Terrace Martin that features rappers Denzel Curry and Daylyt and saxophonist Kamasi Washington, plus cameos from G Perico and Britney Thomas. Curry opens his verse pulling no punches: "Helicopters over my balcony / If the police can't harass, they wanna smoke every ounce of me." The music video is no less impactful, built from footage of recent protests and violent police responses against them. The song itself lasts roughly three minutes, but the remainder of the nearly five minute video is given over to a slow, sickening crawl of hundreds of names of Black people killed by the police. This portion passes in silence, yet it speaks with a deafening volume. —Oliver Wang

Lil Baby "The Bigger Picture" (2020)

All Songs Considered

Heat check: bigger picture.

Lil Baby invites us into his consciousness and vividly illustrates the complexities of what it means to be a young Black man in America in 2020. The Atlanta MC struggles with fear for his life, his family and his community at the hands of law enforcement, but brilliantly incorporates messages of hope and resilience. It's as powerful a protest song as any we've heard in decades past. —Bobby Carter

Leon Bridges "Sweeter" (2020)

Sweet is not the word most would use to describe our contemporary moment, but for soul singer Bridges, it's a future worth hoping for. Written in 2019, "Sweeter" feels just as revelatory in 2020, linking the past and present in tragic continuity. With Terrace Martin lending his talents on saxophone, Bridges sings of the terrors of persistent violence against Black communities who, nonetheless, extend care to one another through tears and song. —Shana L. Redmond

Listen To A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence

Our Native Daughters
Jorja Smith
Terrace Martin
Leon Bridges
Vince Staples
Gregory Porter
Kendrick Lamar
Ambrose Akinmusire
Lauryn Hill
Terri Lyne Carrington
Tracy Chapman
Archie Shepp
Esperanza Spalding
Gil Scott-Heron
Michael Jackson
Marvin Gaye
Public Enemy
Sweet Honey In The Rock
Nina Simone
Abbey Lincoln
Wynton Marsalis
John Coltrane
Queen Latifah
Louis Armstrong
Stevie Wonder
Georgia Anne Muldrow
Billie Holiday

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Music, Substance Use, and Aggression

This study investigated whether young people’s substance use and aggressive behaviors are related to their listening to music containing messages of substance use and violence.

Data were collected using self-administered questionnaires and from a sample of community college students aged 15-25 (N = 1056; 43% male). A structural equation modeling method was used to simultaneously assess the associations between listening to various genres of music, alcohol use, illicit drug use, and aggressive behaviors, taking into account respondents’ age, gender, race/ethnicity, and level of sensation seeking.

Listening to rap music was significantly and positively associated with alcohol use, problematic alcohol use, illicit drug use, and aggressive behaviors when all other variables were controlled. Additionally, alcohol and illicit drug use were positively associated with listening to musical genres of techno and reggae. Control variables such as sensation seeking, age, gender and race/ethnicity were significantly related to substance use and aggressive behaviors.

The findings suggest that young people’s substance use and aggressive behaviors may be related to their frequent exposure to music containing references to substance use and violence. Conversely, music listening preference may reflect some personal predispositions or lifestyle preferences. Alternatively, substance use, aggression and music preference are independent constructs, but share common “third factors.”

Listening to music is the number one rated leisure-time activity for American youth ( Roberts, Foehr et al., 1999 ; Roberts, Henriksen et al., 1999 ). Some music genres contain more references to substance use and social defiance than do other genres. A recent study of music popular among adolescents from 1996-1997 revealed that nearly half (47%) of all rap/hip hop (hereafter referred to as rap) songs mentioned alcohol ( Roberts, Henriksen et al., 1999 ). In contrast, other genres of music were much less likely to mention alcohol in the lyrics (country-western [13%], hot-100/top-40 [12%], alternative rock [10%], and heavy metal [4%]). Moreover, nearly two thirds of the rap songs mentioned illicit drugs as compared to approximately a tenth of the songs from the other genres. Another study of rap music indicated that references to alcohol in rap song lyrics increased five times (8% → 44%) from 1979 to 1997 ( Herd, 2005 ). Of songs that mentioned alcohol, the positive attitude toward alcohol expressed in lyrics increased from 43% in 1970-1989 to 73% in 1994-1997. Furthermore, a music video study revealed that twice as much violence and criminal activity was depicted in rap and rock music videos as compared to country, adult contemporary and rhythm-and-blues music videos ( DuRant, Rich et al., 1997 ). Similarly, weapon carrying was shown more often in rap and rock music videos. Together, these studies raise an important issue: Will frequent exposure to music containing references to substance use, violence, and social defiance impact youth’s behaviors?

Empirical studies suggest that alcohol and illicit drug use among youth may be associated with listening to popular music such as hard rock, heavy metal, rap, and techno (e.g., Arnett, 1991 , 1992 ; Forsyth et al., 1997 ; Hitzler, 2002 ; Miranda and Claes, 2004 ). Similarly, aggressive behaviors have been linked to various genres of music. For example, studies have shown that adolescents with a preference for heavy metal or hard rock music reported higher rates of reckless behaviors than those who did not like these forms of music ( Arnett, 1991 , 1992 ). In addition, exposure to rap music was positively associated with aggressive behaviors and negative health outcomes at a 12-month follow-up for African American girls of ages 14-18 ( Wingood et al., 2003 ). Consistently, experimental studies demonstrated that greater exposure to popular music containing antisocial content was associated with more favorable attitudes toward antisocial behaviors and a greater likelihood of performing such behaviors ( Anderson et al., 2003 ; Hansen and Hansen, 1990 ; Johnson et al., 1995 ).

Rap music has been identified as particularly glorifying and encouraging the use of alcohol, other substances and violence more than other genres of music ( Herd, 2005 ). A closer look at some features of rap music is warranted. Rap music is the predominant musical genre of hip hop culture. Rap music rose to American prominence in the early 1980s with New York disc jockeys appropriating Jamaican deejays’ style of talking over pre-recorded instrumental tracks ( Ayazi-Hashjin, 1999 ; Davey D., 1984 ; Ogg and Upshal, 1999 ). It is the most listened to genre of music for African American and Latino youth and the second-most listened to genre for youth of European origin ( Roberts, Foehr et al., 1999 ). Rap music is used by many advertisers to promote products that target urban teens and young adults ( Atkinson and Holliday, 2003 ; Friedman, 1992 ; Spiegler, 1996 ). Moreover, many rap musicians are involved in promoting alcoholic beverages ( Alaniz and Wilkes, 1998 ; Allen-Taylor, 1997 ; Herd, 1993 , 2005 ). Malt liquor, in particular, has been portrayed as the “gangsta drink of choice, the brew of alienation” in rap music ( Allen-Taylor, 1997 , interview with Makani Themba) and is associated in popular culture with drug use, underage drinking, misogyny, violence, and irresponsible sex ( Alaniz and Wilkes, 1998 ; Herd, 1993 ). Concerns about the influences of marketing tactics on youth drinking arise ( Alaniz and Wilkes, 1998 ; Allen-Taylor, 1997 ; Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1998 ; Herd, 1993 , 2005 ). Additional concerns about rap music’s influence on youth are generated from the messages embedded in the rap music and the violent lifestyles of the performers (e.g., Alaniz and Wilkes, 1998 ; Hansen, 1995 ; Herd, 1993 ). Specifically, misogynistic lyrics, profane language, and glorification of violence have become hallmarks of some rap music known as “gangsta rap” ( Rule, 1994 ; Toop, 2004 ). The undercurrents of violence and profane language of “gangsta rap” are criticized for its potential detrimental influences on youth and result in calls for “gangsta rap” musicians’ self discipline from musicians, politicians, African American church groups, music retailers, the police, and Tipper Gore’s Parents’ Music Resource Center ( Rule, 1994 ; Toop, 2004 ).

Individuals’ listening preference for certain styles of music may be related to personal characteristics. A recent college study showed that liking the music genres of punk, heavy metal, and reggae were associated with higher levels of sensation seeking ( Weisskirch and Murphy, 2004 ). Consistently, Arnett (1991 , 1992 ) reported that adolescents who had listening preferences for heavy metal or hard rock music expressed higher levels of sensation seeking than did those who did not prefer these forms of music. Once level of sensation seeking was controlled, however, the associations between musical preference and most adolescent reckless behaviors were no longer significant. Arnett suggested that sensation seeking underlies both reckless behaviors and music preference. In other words, adolescents with higher levels of sensation seeking are more attracted to heavy metal or hard rock music and have a greater propensity for reckless behaviors as well.

In summary, prior research suggests a connection between preferences for certain genres of music and alcohol and illicit drug use, aggression, and other risky behaviors. More recently, rap music has been viewed as a genre of music that is associated more with these behaviors and is therefore of greater concern in its influence on youth. The present study aimed to investigate whether young people’s substance use (i.e., alcohol and illicit drugs) and aggressive behaviors were related to their listening to popular music, particularly rap music. Because references to alcohol, drugs and violence are frequently shown in various forms of popular music ( DuRant, Rich et al., 1997 ; DuRant, Rome et al., 1997 ; Roberts, Henriksen et al., 1999 ), a wide spectrum of music genres were included in this study. Personal attributes such as sensation seeking and important demographic characteristics were taken into account. Specifically, the present study addressed four research questions: (a) Is listening to music that contains messages of substance use and violence significantly associated with behaviors of substance use and aggression? (b) Are behaviors of substance use and aggression particularly associated with listening to rap music? (c) Is malt liquor use particularly associated with listening to rap music? and (d) Can any relationships between music preference, substance use and aggression be accounted for by sensation seeking and other predisposing factors?

Sampling and Data Collection

Students from a 2-year community college in the central valley of California were recruited to participate in this study. The data were collected using self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaires. Community colleges in the US generally have a wider range of ages among their students compared to 4-year colleges. In order to have a study sample compatible with the age range of students in 4-year colleges, students aged 25 or younger were the focus of the study. The registrar indicated that students in this age range mostly attended daytime classes and all new students were required to take an English course. The surveys were thus administered in daytime English classes (8:30 a.m. ~ 5:00 p.m.) over a 2-week period in September 2002. A week before the survey, a letter and a fact sheet describing the study were distributed to all students enrolled in daytime English classes (N = 1,409; 45 class sessions) to invite them to participate in the study. Trained research staff administered the survey. Prior to beginning the survey, students were reminded that the survey was anonymous and that their participation was voluntary. At the end, participants were paid $20 each for their participation. In total, 1,226 students took part in the survey for a response rate of 87%.

Participants’ ages ranged from 15 to 65. Data analyses for the present study were limited to 1,056 students who were 25 years old or younger. Data for 149 cases were excluded because they were older than 25 years; another 21 cases were dropped because most data were missing (n = 9) or because gender or age information was not available (n = 12).

Music listening

Respondents indicated how often they listened to music overall on a 5-point scale (never, less than monthly, monthly, weekly, daily or almost daily). In addition, they were provided with a list of 15 categories of music and were asked to check (yes-no) the type of music they listened to “often.” The list included alternative, Christian, classical, country, heavy metal, jazz, Latin/salsa, top-40/hot-100, punk, rap, rhythm-and-blues/soul/funk/urban (hereafter referred to as R&B), reggae, rock, techno/house, and world music. “Often” was not specifically defined, but relied on respondents’ subjective assessment. In the data analyses, we considered a person having a listening preference for a particular genre of music if (a) that person reported listening to music “daily or almost daily” and (b) checked that particular genre of music as a type that he or she listened to “often.” Accordingly, we assumed that this person had been frequently exposed to the messages embedded in that genre of music. Respondents were allowed to check more than one genre of music. An equal weight was given to each of the checked genres.

Alcohol use and alcohol use disorder

The survey used the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT, Babor and Higgins-Biddle, 2002 ) to measure alcohol use and alcohol use disorder. The AUDIT consists of 10 questions covering three domains: hazardous alcohol use (3 questions), alcohol dependence (3 questions), and harmful alcohol use (4 questions). Each question is given a score depending on the response. Typical usage of the AUDIT is to compute a sum score over the 10 items to construct an overall AUDIT score. The possible AUDIT score ranges from 0 to 40. A score of 8 or higher indicates a strong likelihood of alcohol use disorder. Respondents who did not report any alcohol use in the past 12 months did not respond to these questions and were given a score of 0 to each of these questions in the data analyses. The internal consistency of the AUDIT scale, estimated by Cronbach’s α, was .84. For the purpose of this study, three alcohol use measures were yielded from the AUDIT: frequency of alcohol use in the past 12 months (a 5-point scale: never, monthly or less, 2-4 times a month, 2-3 times a week, and 4 or more times a week), the sum score, and a dichotomous indicator of potential alcohol use disorder (AUDIT score ≥ 8 vs. < 8). A higher sum score indicates a greater likelihood of having alcohol use disorder.

If respondents reported any alcohol use in the past 12 months, they were also asked about their use of malt liquor in the past 12 months (a 6-point scale: never, less than once a month, once a month, 2-3 times a month, once a week, and more than once a week).

Illicit drug use

Use of two types of illicit drugs was assessed: marijuana and club drugs. Marijuana use was measured by asking respondents to indicate how often during the past 12 months they used marijuana on a 5-point scale (never, once a month or less, 2-3 times a month, once a week, and more than once a week). Club drugs use was measured by asking respondents to indicate how often during the past 12 months they used each of the following three categories of drugs: (a) ecstasy (e.g., MDMA, GHB, Ketamine) (b) amphetamines and methamphetamines (e.g., crystal, ice, speed), and (c) hallucinogens (e.g., PCP, LSD, mushroom), also on a 5-point scale. Cronbach’s α was .76 for the three club drug measures.

Aggressive behaviors

Respondents indicated how often in the past 12 months, on a 5-point scale (not at all, 1-2 times, 3-5 times, 6-9 times, and 10 times or more), they engaged in each of five aggressive behaviors: being in a fist fight where they hit someone, being in a gang fight, starting a fist fight or shoving match, threatening someone with a knife or gun, and attacking someone intending to seriously injure that person. Cronbach’s α = .80.

Sensation seeking

Five items from the Impulsive Unsocialized Sensation Seeking Subscale of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire ( Zuckerman et al., 1991 ) were selected to construct a short sensation seeking scale. Respondents indicated how much they liked or disliked, on a 4-point scale (dislike very much, dislike, like, like very much), going to wild parties, doing things that are scary, watching a sexy movie, doing “crazy” things just for fun, and doing things on impulse. These items were selected based on their relevance to young people’s lifestyle and have been used in our previous studies with youth. Cronbach’s α = .77.

Background variables included respondents’ age, gender, race/ethnicity, school enrollment status, employment and parents’ educational achievement.

Data Analysis

The associations between music genres and behaviors of substance use and aggression were first examined through bivariate analyses. T-test analyses were conducted to examine the associations between music genres and continuous behavioral outcomes. χ 2 test analyses were used to examine the associations between music genres and the dichotomous behavioral outcome, i.e., potential alcohol use disorder (AUDIT score ≥ 8 vs. <8). Music genres significantly associated with these behaviors in the bivariate analyses (either positively or negatively and at p < .01) were then included in a structural equation modeling analysis that simultaneously assessed the associations between music preference and alcohol use (frequency of any alcohol use, frequency of malt liquor use, AUDIT sum score), use of illicit drugs (marijuana and club drugs), and aggressive behaviors. Gender, age, race/ethnicity, and level of sensation seeking were included in the model as control variables. The structural equation modeling analysis was conducted using a maximum likelihood method implemented with the EQS software ( Bentler, 1985-2004 ). Latent variables were constructed to represent constructs that were measured using multiple items (i.e., sensation seeking, club drug use, and aggression). No cross-factor loadings were allowed. No error covariance was added into the model. The exogenous variables (i.e., age, gender, race/ethnicity, sensation seeking, and music genres) and the residuals of the dependent variables (i.e., any alcohol use, malt liquor use, AUDIT sum score, marijuana use, club drug use and aggressive behaviors) were allowed to freely covariated with each other. Because the data were not normally distributed, robust estimates of the standard errors were requested. The comparative fit index (CFI) and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) indices were used to assess the model fit (Hu and Bentler, 1999). A value close to .95 for CFI and a value close to.06 for RMSEA were considered as an indication of good model fit. Among the 1,056 cases included in the analyses, 37 cases had some missing data. Missing data were handled through the missing data procedure (i.e., EM imputation) implemented with the EQS.

Sample characteristics

The study sample was 43% male. About two-fifths of the respondents (38%) identified themselves as Caucasian American, 27% as Latino American, 21% as Asian and Pacific Island American (“Asian Americans” hereafter), 5% as African American, and 9% as other, mixed ethnicity or unknown. Their ages ranged from 15 to 25 (mean [SD] = 18.9 [1.80]; 86% < 21). Four-fifths of the respondents (81%) were full-time students and 82% had a paid job during the 12 months prior to the survey. Respondents’ parents, on average, had 12.5 years of education for both father and mother.

Approximately three quarters of the respondents (74%) reported drinking alcoholic beverages of any type in the past 12 months and about two-fifths (38%) reported drinking malt liquor during the same time period. In addition, 29% of the study sample had an AUDIT score of 8 or higher. Two-fifths of the study sample (38%) reported using marijuana and 13% using club drugs in the past 12 months. Moreover, 27% reported being engaged in at least one act of aggressive behaviors in the past 12 months.

Almost all respondents (94%) reported listening to music “daily or almost daily.” Rap music appeared to be popular among this sample of students. Of these “daily or almost daily” music listeners, 69% of them reported often listening to rap music. Also popular among this sample were the music genres of alternative (65%), R&B (57%), rock (51%), top-40/hot-100 (37%), techno/house (32%), country (31%), punk (28%), and heavy metal (22%). The rest of the music genres were often listened to by less than 20% of the “daily or almost daily” music listeners: Latin/salsa (19%), reggae (17%), classical (16%), jazz (14%), world (11%), and Christian (0%). On average, respondents often listened to 4.8 (SD = 2.8) genres of music. Very few of them (5%) listened to only one genre of music. Moreover, only three respondents reported listening to music “daily or almost daily” without identifying music genres that they listened to often.

Bivariate analyses

Results from t-tests indicated that frequency of any alcohol use was significantly and positively associated with often listening to music genres of alternative, heavy metal, punk, rap, R&B, reggae, rock, and techno ( p s < .01), but negatively with often listening to world music ( p < .01). Frequency of malt liquor use was significantly and positively associated with often listening to the music genres of heavy metal, punk, rap, reggae, rock, and techno ( p s < .01). Frequency of marijuana use was significantly and positively associated with often listening to the music genres of punk, rap, reggae, and rock ( p s < .01), but negatively with often listening to world music ( p < .01). Level of club drug use was significantly and positively associated with often listening to the music genres of rap and techno ( p s < .01). Level of aggressive behaviors was significantly and positively associated with often listening to rap music ( p < .01), but negatively with often listening to country music ( p < .01). Results from χ 2 tests indicated that alcohol use disorder was significantly and positively associated with often listening to the music genres of heavy metal, punk, rap, reggae, and rock ( p s < .01). Based on these bivariate analyses, music genres of alternative, country, heavy metal, punk, rap, R&B, reggae, rock, techno, and world were included in the further multivariate analysis.

Structural equation modeling analysis

A structural equation model was specified to simultaneously assess the associations between music genres and behaviors of substance use and aggression, taking into account gender, age, race/ethnicity, and level of sensation seeking. Dummy variables were constructed for gender (1 = male) and age (1 = < 21). Separate dummy codes were generated to represent African American, Asian American, Latino American, and other with Caucasian American being the reference group. Table 1 lists the variables included in the model and presents some descriptive statistics of these variables. The structural model fit the data reasonably (CFI= .090, RMSEA = .041 [90%CI = .038-.045]). Results from this analysis are summarized in Table 2 and described as follows.

Measures included in the structural equation modeling analysis

Structural equation model assessing the associations between music preference and substance use and aggressive behaviors

The path coefficients are standardized coefficients.

Music listening and alcohol use

Often listening to rap music significantly and positively predicted frequency of any alcohol use, frequency of malt liquor use, and the sum score of the AUDIT when age, gender, race/ethnicity, level of sensation seeking and other music genres were taken into account. Similarly, often listening to techno music significantly and positively predicted frequency of any alcohol use, frequency of malt liquor use, and the AUDIT sum score when all other variables were controlled. Moreover, when all other variables were controlled, often listening to reggae music significantly and positively predicted frequency of any alcohol use.

Level of sensation seeking positively predicted frequency of any alcohol use, frequency of malt liquor use, and the AUDIT sum score when all other variables were controlled. Age significantly and negatively predicted any alcohol use and the AUDIT sum score when all other variables were controlled. That is, students under age 21 reported drinking alcohol in general less frequently and scored lower on the AUDIT than did students aged 21-25. Asian race significantly and negatively predicted all three alcohol use variables when all other variables were controlled.

To examine whether greater malt liquor use was simply due to greater overall alcohol use, the equation predicting malt liquor use was re-specified by including frequency of any alcohol use as one of the predictors. This analysis showed that the associations between rap and techno music and malt liquor use were no longer significant when controlling for any alcohol use.

Music listening and illicit drug use

When all other variables were controlled, often listening to rap music significantly and positively predicted frequency of marijuana use. Likewise, often listening to reggae music significantly and positively predicted frequency of marijuana use. In contrast, often listening to world music negatively predicted frequency of marijuana use. Often listening to rap and techno music significantly and positively predicted frequency of club drug use, whereas often listening to country music significantly and negatively predicted frequency of club drug use.

Sensation seeking significantly and positively predicted frequency of marijuana use and frequency of club drug use. Age, gender, and Asian race negatively predicted marijuana use. Being African American was negatively associated with frequency of club drug use when all other variables were controlled. Because the association between marijuana use and gender was counterintuitive, further analyses were conducted. Males reported more marijuana use than did females in bivariate analysis ( p < .01); however, when levels of sensation seeking were controlled, marijuana use for females became significantly greater than males. That is, frequency of marijuana use was higher among females at equated levels of sensation seeking.

Music listening and aggressive behaviors

When all other variables were controlled, often listening to rap music significantly and positively predicted aggressive behaviors, whereas often listening to rock music significantly and negatively predicted aggressive behaviors. Sensation seeking significantly and positively predicted aggressive behaviors. African American race significantly and positively predicted aggressive behaviors. Lastly, age significantly and negatively predicted aggressive behaviors.

To investigate whether young people’s substance use and aggressive behaviors were related to their listening to popular music, we conducted a study with a sample of community college students aged 25 or younger. Of the music genres examined in this study, listening to rap music was consistently and positively related to general alcohol use, malt liquor use, and potential alcohol use even after controlling for listening to other genres of music, important demographic characteristics, and sensation seeking. Additional evidence showed that alcohol use was positively associated with listening to techno music and, by a less degree with listening to reggae music. Marijuana use was positively associated with listening to rap and reggae music, whereas club drug use was positively associated with listening to techno and rap music. Aggressive behaviors were positively associated only with rap music. The persistent significant and positive associations between rap music and measures of alcohol use, problem alcohol use, and illicit drug use were of critical importance. Findings of other music–substance use connections provide additional supports to the idea that substance use is associated with listening to certain genres of popular music.

These findings, however, also suggest that some situational mechanism may be involved. For example, the significant association between marijuana use and listening to reggae music seems logical, given the historical use of marijuana in Rastafarian religious ceremonies (e.g., King and Jensen, 1995 ; Llosa, 2002 ). Reggae music, however, has been commonly played in club settings, neighborhood street parties, and open-air concerts in which attendants are mostly not Rastafarians, but the reggae music–marijuana use connection sustains. Moreover, significant associations were found between club drug use, alcohol use, and listening to techno music, which consists of virtually no lyrics. Previous studies report that young people gather in rented settings or night clubs to engage in late-night dance parties that feature electronically produced music (i.e., techno music), light shows, and intense physical dancing (e.g., Randall, 1992a , 1992b ; Schwartz and Miller, 1997 ; Weir, 2000 ). Drugs like ecstasy and other amphetamines are known to be used at such parties and are believed to facilitate dancing for long hours and also increase enjoyment of the event. As Hunt and Evans (2003) maintain, music listening and dancing are important activities for many young people and often occur in settings where alcohol and drug use plays a part. Prevention efforts focusing on substance use of this nature and in these settings may substantially reduce substance use and related problems among young people.

Our data also showed that listening to certain genres of music were negatively associated with substance use and aggressive behaviors. For example, listening to world music was associated with less alcohol and marijuana use, listening to country music was associated with less club drug use, and listening to rock music was associated with fewer aggressive behaviors when all other variables were considered. The negative associations between music genres and behavioral outcomes were, however, less consistent compared to the positive associations. Moreover, the music genre that was consistently related to lower risks, i.e., world music, was listened to “often” by only one-tenth of the study sample. It thus may be premature to conclude that listening to certain genres of music would help reduce problem behaviors among youth.

Our measure of music listening is limited in many ways. We did not measure the amount of time spent on listening to different genres of music and the attention paid to the lyrics. Neither did we ask the respondents to prioritize their preference for genres of music. Nor could we clearly differentiate the influence of one music genre from another music genre on behaviors because most respondents listened to more than one genre of music. We, however, took into account respondents’ listening to other music genres. The association between a certain music genre and an outcome variable was adjusted for other music genres and other control variables.

Because rap music and musicians have been used to promote malt liquor product, whether consumption of malt liquor was particularly associated with listening to rap music was investigated. The analyses showed that the significant and positive associations between malt liquor use and rap and techno music were no longer significant when frequency of any alcohol use was taken into account. Thus, greater malt liquor use was due to greater overall alcohol use, which was significantly related to listening to rap music. This finding thus does not ease the concern that the alcohol industry is promoting alcohol use through rap music. Often listening to rap music was consistently predictive of alcohol use and problematic alcohol use in a positive direction.

Consistent with the literature, Asian American students reported lowest levels of alcohol and marijuana use among all racial/ethnic groups even when all other variables were controlled. Interestingly, Asian students were more likely to listen to techno music than Caucasian and Latino students (42% as compared to 24% of Caucasian, 36% of Latino) and just as likely to listen to rap music (65% as compared to 64% of Caucasian and 70% of Latino), but they apparently were not at higher risks for substance use than Caucasian and Latino students. Future studies should examine whether factors that are protective of Asian Americans regarding substance use also help lessen the connections between substance use and music preference.

Although African American students reported similar levels of substance use as students in other non-Asian racial/ethnic groups, they reported significantly more aggressive behaviors (analyses not shown). This racial/ethnic difference in aggressive behaviors was so significant that it remained significant even when all other variables were controlled. Further investigation was conducted and the analyses showed that the β coefficient for the variable of “African American” remained virtually unchanged across three models consisting of predictors of (a) only ethnicity variables, (b) controlling for age, gender, and sensation seeking, and (c) further controlling for music genres. This finding indicates that rap or any other music did not mediate the relationship between being African American and aggressive behaviors. It is important to note that much of the aggression expressed in gangsta rap is violence against women, particularly African American women (e.g., Barongan et al., 1995 ; Johnson et al., 1995 ; Wester et al., 1997 ), which was not measured in our study.

The short sensation seeking scale used in our study was consistently predictive of substance use and aggressive behaviors. Bivariate analyses were also conducted to examine the associations between music listening and sensation seeking (analyses not shown). The results indicated that respondents with higher levels of sensation seeking were more likely to listen to the music genres that were positively associated with substance use and aggression. Conversely, respondents with lower levels of sensation seeking were more likely to listen to the music genres that were negatively associated with substance use and aggression. Although our study may be limited for using a brief sensation seeking scale, our findings are in agreement with Arnett’s (1991 , 1992 ) argument that sensation seeking is likely a confounder for the relationship between problem behaviors and music preference. Future studies that examine the connection between music preference and youthful problem behaviors could shed additional light on the role of sensation seeking by using a more sophisticated sensation seeking scale.

In summary, our findings indicate that substance use and aggressive behaviors among young people were significantly associated with listening to certain genres of popular music. Findings of this study, however, should be interpreted with caution. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the data, it is difficult to make causal inferences about the relationships between music listening and substance use and aggression. It is possible that frequent exposure to rap music significantly contributes to positive values towards substance use and violence. It is also possible that individuals who often listen to rap music view substance use and violence more positively prior to listening to this genre of music; music listening thus at most reinforces these values. Alternatively, substance use, aggression, and music listening may be independent constructs but share common “third factors.” Finally, our study sample may not be representative of all community college students because our study focused on students aged 25 or younger attending daytime classes. Neither may our study findings be generalized to college students in general, as a large proportion of our survey sample (62%) was non-white. Nor may the study findings be generalized to young people who do not attend colleges. Studies with longitudinal designs and general population samples are needed to better understand the causal or dynamic relations between music listening and behaviors of substance use and aggression among young people.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

This study has been funded by National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grant AA13571. Its contents, however, are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

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Is dancehall promoting crime and violence?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

DANCEHALL MUSIC enjoys one of the greatest following from marginalised Jamaican youths.

It appears to be offering what generally appeals to the underclass, and therefore, could make it perilous having a correlation with crime. Most artistes may pass off combative and violence-touting music as mere creative expressions, not intended to be confused with the real world. And yet, one is left to wonder why so many artistes are charged with the very violence that is claimed to be exclusive to music.

From the pre-Ninja Man era to the present day, it is not unusual to see DJs on stage whose lyrical duel swiftly falls apart and descends into physical rumpus because of a deficiency in rebuttal or because the other guy is gaining the ascendancy.

There seems to be, in many instances, a very thin line separating entertainment from reality, and when creativity becomes injured or compromised, brute force takes over.

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Even if most artistes intend nothing but entertainment in their messages, the pressure from fans can easily push them over on to the wrong side of the law and blur the line between art and real life. A song appearing to promote wicked man can only fortify the already-warped views of reality.

Thus, the violence that is glorified in dancehall music is not insulated from life, or life from it spills both ways, it appears, and especially aided by the already vulnerable acolytes. Neither can sound clashes which are carried by sound systems be excused or separated from this equation – where rounds of dubplates are often rebuked and confronted to the expulsion and salutation of live gunshot.

So, is it possible to contain such form of enjoyment within the province of entertainment only? Does dancehall music influence crime and violence even indirectly?

HOMER SYLVESTER

«Tough but always fair
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CLINTON LINDSAY » BREAKING NEWS , Featured » DOES DANCEHALL MUSIC INFLUENCE CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN JAMAICA?

DOES DANCEHALL MUSIC INFLUENCE CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN JAMAICA?

November 29th, 2020 | Add a Comment

Gladstone Taylor/Multimedia Photo Editor —Professor Donna Hope says the crime and violence problem Jamaica is facing goes way beyond dancehall music.–

In a recent Instagram post, dancehall artiste, Bounty Killer, condemned the recent execution-style killing of an 81-year-old grandmother and her two grandchildren aged ten and six.

The entertainer, born Rodney Pryce, denounced the act as barbaric and lamented that if Jamaica continues down this gruesome path then “dog nyam we supper”. In response, some social media users called out the deejay for the part, they say, Killer and his colleagues have played in enriching the culture of violence now plaguing the society.

They pointed out that with the artiste’s extensive catalogue of “gun songs”, he, and other entertainers in the dancehall, have fed the monster of crime and the beast is haunting us now more than ever.

It’s not a position held by Professor Donna Hope. In an interview with The Sunday Gleaner , Hope, a cultural and entertainment authority, expressed that dancehall music is usually one of the first tenets of society to be blamed for the atrocities the country is now drowning in because the genre was birthed from reflecting on “violent situations”.

“One of the things that I find is that whenever there is a spike in criminality and murders, the powers that be, and persons who are supposed to be taking care of us like the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) seem to always attack dancehall. It seems almost like its good PR to target dancehall. And you and I know that crime and violence comes from a lot of different places. Dancehall perhaps has celebrated it in some ways, but the crime and violence problem we are having in this country goes way beyond dancehall music,” she said.

EASY TARGET

Hope says it is dancehall’s connection to the realities of the inner city that often makes it such an easy target.

“The problem why the music is always blamed is because dancehall has that connection with the hardcore lifestyle of Jamaica that involves guns. Dancehall comes from the garrisons, the ghettos where the guns play a big part. A lot of artistes grew up in these communities where they saw a lot of the things they sing about playing out before their eyes. We spend a lot of time in dancehall talking about guns because Jamaica is a violent society and guns have been a part of the lifestyle of Jamaica,” said Hope.

“In Jamaica, people know when a bullet connects with flesh, and some guys will tell you from the sound of the bullet, they know what kind of gun it came from and that’s because of the intimate relationship they have with guns in some of these places. And these are not guys who are criminals or people firing guns, but they live in a community where guns are a part of the lifestyle, and so they can’t escape it,” she continued.

“So the intimacy with guns becomes a big part of dancehall and then everybody who comes into dancehall even if they don’t live in that kind of situation, it’s almost like a rite of passage. Artistes know that in order for dem to buss in dancehall, dem affi have gyal tune and gun tune. It is a ritual.”

Gutty Bling, producer for dancehall artiste Skillibeng agreed. He expressed that he doesn’t play too much into the gun culture in dancehall, and usually encourages his artistes to expand their musical horizons. However, he says he understands why male dancehall artistes would play into the gun rhetoric.

“More while when the artiste do dem gun song deh, a di biggest forward dem ever get inna dem career and das why nuff a dem love it differently. Respect levels go up when yuh talk about certain things inna song and who nuh want respect as a dancehall artiste?” he questioned, as he pointed out that guns are seen as a symbol of power in Jamaica.

“Mi think international and a only one and two gun songs will get weh overseas and das why my aim as a producer is not to push out gun music. But majority a di time di man dem a medz the gun songs and mi understand why. Once yuh get a badman tune and it buss inna dancehall, yuh start get certain ratings. Is a culture thing from before me born weh singing about guns get yuh certain respect. And it nuh only go fi when artiste a sing bout murdering people, it also goes when dem a tell yutes things like it nuh look good fi a kill old people and children. But, you know people nah go see dat part of the music. Dem nah go recognize when artiste a go against killings and gun violence, only when dem a embrace it,” he shared.

Songwriter and dancehall artiste, Savage, shared similar sentiments. The entertainer who is responsible for penning the track, Gully Christmas back in 2009, which came under heavy scrutiny for turning what was considered a joyful time of year into another celebration of guns and murders, said artistes have condemned gun violence in their songs, but expressed that dancehall is seldom recognized for positive rhetoric.

“I really don’t want the people dem fi go too hard pan the music industry because dancehall is culture. Dancehall music talks about a lot of what is happening in real-time in the ghettos with the poorer class and most a di man dem weh rise form these places a sing bout dem life and weh dem see happen around dem. Most of these gun song stem from reality and is not just baay killing songs. Nuff man sing gun song weh a make man and man know say da lifestyle yah anuh supmn fi follow up because a two roads it lead to: death or prison. Why dem nuh talk bout that when dem a talk bout gun songs weh dancehall artistes sing?” he questioned.

The artiste, whose given name is Simone Daley, says the bad is often highlighted more frequently that the good.

“Nuff man sing about doing the crime and nuh care, but man talk bout the consequences of gun violence too, but I guess the negative is always easier to glorify. For example, if I was to see an old lady going across the road and mi hold her hand and cross her, I would get no recognition. But if I was to see that same old lady and push her dung while she a cross, everybody would be talking about it,” he said.

“Mi just think the artiste dem need a break because a nuff artiste sing gun song and never get caught up in no gun nothing yet,” he continued.

“Bounty Killer is a perfect example of that because a him sing ‘big things a gwaan 2004, mi have a gun weh name see you no more’, but yuh never hear say Bounty Killer get charged fi a gun or get hol’ wid a gun or nothing like dat. Him have the personality like a badman and him have the image because dancehall nuh deal wid coward and timid people, but him separate him dancehall persona from him real-life image. The dancehall crowd respect him as the five-star general, but people outside of dancehall also respect him cuz him nuh live weh him sing.”

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What to know about the crisis of violence, politics and hunger engulfing Haiti

A woman carrying two bags of rice walks past burning tires

A long-simmering crisis over Haiti’s ability to govern itself, particularly after a series of natural disasters and an increasingly dire humanitarian emergency, has come to a head in the Caribbean nation, as its de facto president remains stranded in Puerto Rico and its people starve and live in fear of rampant violence.

The chaos engulfing the country has been bubbling for more than a year, only for it to spill over on the global stage on Monday night, as Haiti’s unpopular prime minister, Ariel Henry, agreed to resign once a transitional government is brokered by other Caribbean nations and parties, including the U.S.

But the very idea of a transitional government brokered not by Haitians but by outsiders is one of the main reasons Haiti, a nation of 11 million, is on the brink, according to humanitarian workers and residents who have called for Haitian-led solutions.

“What we’re seeing in Haiti has been building since the 2010 earthquake,” said Greg Beckett, an associate professor of anthropology at Western University in Canada.

Haitians take shelter in the Delmas 4 Olympic Boxing Arena

What is happening in Haiti and why?

In the power vacuum that followed the assassination of democratically elected President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, Henry, who was prime minister under Moïse, assumed power, with the support of several nations, including the U.S.

When Haiti failed to hold elections multiple times — Henry said it was due to logistical problems or violence — protests rang out against him. By the time Henry announced last year that elections would be postponed again, to 2025, armed groups that were already active in Port-au-Prince, the capital, dialed up the violence.

Even before Moïse’s assassination, these militias and armed groups existed alongside politicians who used them to do their bidding, including everything from intimidating the opposition to collecting votes . With the dwindling of the country’s elected officials, though, many of these rebel forces have engaged in excessively violent acts, and have taken control of at least 80% of the capital, according to a United Nations estimate.

Those groups, which include paramilitary and former police officers who pose as community leaders, have been responsible for the increase in killings, kidnappings and rapes since Moïse’s death, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at Uppsala University in Sweden. According to a report from the U.N . released in January, more than 8,400 people were killed, injured or kidnapped in 2023, an increase of 122% increase from 2022.

“January and February have been the most violent months in the recent crisis, with thousands of people killed, or injured, or raped,” Beckett said.

Armed groups who had been calling for Henry’s resignation have already attacked airports, police stations, sea ports, the Central Bank and the country’s national soccer stadium. The situation reached critical mass earlier this month when the country’s two main prisons were raided , leading to the escape of about 4,000 prisoners. The beleaguered government called a 72-hour state of emergency, including a night-time curfew — but its authority had evaporated by then.

Aside from human-made catastrophes, Haiti still has not fully recovered from the devastating earthquake in 2010 that killed about 220,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless, many of them living in poorly built and exposed housing. More earthquakes, hurricanes and floods have followed, exacerbating efforts to rebuild infrastructure and a sense of national unity.

Since the earthquake, “there have been groups in Haiti trying to control that reconstruction process and the funding, the billions of dollars coming into the country to rebuild it,” said Beckett, who specializes in the Caribbean, particularly Haiti.

Beckett said that control initially came from politicians and subsequently from armed groups supported by those politicians. Political “parties that controlled the government used the government for corruption to steal that money. We’re seeing the fallout from that.”

Haiti Experiences Surge Of Gang Violence

Many armed groups have formed in recent years claiming to be community groups carrying out essential work in underprivileged neighborhoods, but they have instead been accused of violence, even murder . One of the two main groups, G-9, is led by a former elite police officer, Jimmy Chérizier — also known as “Barbecue” — who has become the public face of the unrest and claimed credit for various attacks on public institutions. He has openly called for Henry to step down and called his campaign an “armed revolution.”

But caught in the crossfire are the residents of Haiti. In just one week, 15,000 people have been displaced from Port-au-Prince, according to a U.N. estimate. But people have been trying to flee the capital for well over a year, with one woman telling NBC News that she is currently hiding in a church with her three children and another family with eight children. The U.N. said about 160,000 people have left Port-au-Prince because of the swell of violence in the last several months.

Deep poverty and famine are also a serious danger. Gangs have cut off access to the country’s largest port, Autorité Portuaire Nationale, and food could soon become scarce.

Haiti's uncertain future

A new transitional government may dismay the Haitians and their supporters who call for Haitian-led solutions to the crisis.

But the creation of such a government would come after years of democratic disruption and the crumbling of Haiti’s political leadership. The country hasn’t held an election in eight years.

Haitian advocates and scholars like Jemima Pierre, a professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, say foreign intervention, including from the U.S., is partially to blame for Haiti’s turmoil. The U.S. has routinely sent thousands of troops to Haiti , intervened in its government and supported unpopular leaders like Henry.

“What you have over the last 20 years is the consistent dismantling of the Haitian state,” Pierre said. “What intervention means for Haiti, what it has always meant, is death and destruction.”

Image: Workers unload humanitarian aid from a U.S. helicopter at Les Cayes airport in Haiti, Aug. 18, 2021.

In fact, the country’s situation was so dire that Henry was forced to travel abroad in the hope of securing a U.N. peacekeeping deal. He went to Kenya, which agreed to send 1,000 troops to coordinate an East African and U.N.-backed alliance to help restore order in Haiti, but the plan is now on hold . Kenya agreed last October to send a U.N.-sanctioned security force to Haiti, but Kenya’s courts decided it was unconstitutional. The result has been Haiti fending for itself.

“A force like Kenya, they don’t speak Kreyòl, they don’t speak French,” Pierre said. “The Kenyan police are known for human rights abuses . So what does it tell us as Haitians that the only thing that you see that we deserve are not schools, not reparations for the cholera the U.N. brought , but more military with the mandate to use all kinds of force on our population? That is unacceptable.”

Henry was forced to announce his planned resignation from Puerto Rico, as threats of violence — and armed groups taking over the airports — have prevented him from returning to his country.

An elderly woman runs in front of the damaged police station building with tires burning in front of it

Now that Henry is to stand down, it is far from clear what the armed groups will do or demand next, aside from the right to govern.

“It’s the Haitian people who know what they’re going through. It’s the Haitian people who are going to take destiny into their own hands. Haitian people will choose who will govern them,” Chérizier said recently, according to The Associated Press .

Haitians and their supporters have put forth their own solutions over the years, holding that foreign intervention routinely ignores the voices and desires of Haitians.

In 2021, both Haitian and non-Haitian church leaders, women’s rights groups, lawyers, humanitarian workers, the Voodoo Sector and more created the Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis . The commission has proposed the “ Montana Accord ,” outlining a two-year interim government with oversight committees tasked with restoring order, eradicating corruption and establishing fair elections.

For more from NBC BLK, sign up for our weekly newsletter .

CORRECTION (March 15, 2024, 9:58 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated which university Jemima Pierre is affiliated with. She is a professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, not the University of California, Los Angeles, (or Columbia University, as an earlier correction misstated).

Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter for NBC News Digital.

Char Adams is a reporter for NBC BLK who writes about race.

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The results indicate a relationship between violent song lyrics and increased aggressive thoughts and feelings of hostility. Humorous violent songs also increased aggression levels, relative to humorous nonviolent songs, according to Anderson. The findings held even after the researchers controlled for the listeners' gender and personality ...
A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence : NPR
"Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in 1964, for an essay commissioned by the Berlin Jazz Festival.
Rap music, race, and perceptions of crime
Abstract. Scholars who study rap music have long expressed concerns that criticism of the genre is inextricably linked to stereotypes of young Black men in the United States. Yet minimal research has empirically examined how rap music is linked to race in ways that legitimize and maintain anti-Black attitudes, particularly attitudes related to ...
Violence in Music Essay
Violence In Music. Music is an important part of everyday life, it not only brings you happiness, it expresses in a way no one can ever. The music in movies plays a particularly meaningful part. In the movie, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2" the soundtrack "Come a little bit closer " is very crucial because it sets the mood, makes Rocket ...
Music, Substance Use, and Aggression
The undercurrents of violence and profane language of "gangsta rap" are criticized for its potential detrimental influences on youth and result in calls for "gangsta rap" musicians' self discipline from musicians, politicians, African American church groups, music retailers, the police, and Tipper Gore's Parents' Music Resource ...
[PDF] Rap Music and Its Violent Progeny: America's Culture of Violence
Rap Music and Its Violent Progeny: America's Culture of Violence in Context. J. Richardson, K. Scott. Published 22 January 2002. Art, Sociology. Journal of Negro Education. America for all her protests against violent rap lyrics has failed to acknowledge her role in the creation of this relatively new art form.
Violence, Media Effects, and Criminology
There have been over 1000 studies on the effects of TV and film violence over the past 40 years. Research on the influence of TV violence on aggression has consistently shown that TV violence increases aggression and social anxiety, cultivates a "mean view" of the world, and negatively impacts real-world behavior. (Helfgott, 2015, p.
In Defense Of Music And Violence In Popular Music
Music and songs have been created to protest wars, raise awareness to violence, express pride in one 's race and culture, and challenge political forums, only to name a few examples. For example, "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel was created to oppose United States involvement in the Vietnam War, along with raising awareness of ...
Music Cannot Be Blamed for Crime and Violence Essay
Society blaming Goth music for teen violence is entirely arbitrary. They are blaming Goth music because it is dark and intense. " [Teens] being attracted to a very strange group of people and listening to very alternative music" (Dority 93). Parents see Goth music as a source for kids to be introduce to a dark and violent subculture.
Violent music lyrics increase aggressive thoughts and feelings
WASHINGTON - Songs with violent lyrics increase aggression related thoughts and emotions and this effect is directly related to the violence in the lyrics, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The findings, appearing in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, contradicts ...
Violence in Music and Media and Its Effects on Children
Students at Harvard University conducted a study in 1998 regarding the amount of violence shown in televised music videos. 76 two to three minute long music videos were examined and each video showed a mean of six violent acts. The number of shootings, stabbings, and fights in these seventy-six music videos reached a total of 462.
Is dancehall promoting crime and violence?
THE EDITOR, Madam: DANCEHALL MUSIC enjoys one of the greatest following from marginalised Jamaican youths. It appears to be offering what generally appeals to the underclass, and therefore, could make it perilous having a correlation with crime. Most artistes may pass off combative and violence-touting music as mere creative expressions, not ...
music violence
The history of the connection between music and violence is a long and fascinating one, but even a glimpse at a few well-known examples of music violence can reveal a significant amount of truth about ourselves as humans. There was a recorded link between music and violence even in ancient times of humanity.
Does Dancehall Music Influence Crime and Violence in Jamaica?
Gladstone Taylor/Multimedia Photo Editor —Professor Donna Hope says the crime and violence problem Jamaica is facing goes way beyond dancehall music.-. In a recent Instagram post, dancehall artiste, Bounty Killer, condemned the recent execution-style killing of an 81-year-old grandmother and her two grandchildren aged ten and six.
Essay about Rap Music and Teen Violence
Rap music was essentially intended to create a voicing of one's frustrations and disappointment with society, it has recently taken a turn and is creating a negative impact on the youth. It is the root that influences and encourages degrading women, violence, and is filled with sexual content. 884 Words. 4 Pages.
The Haiti crisis, explained: Violence, hunger and unstable political
The U.N. said about 160,000 people have left Port-au-Prince because of the swell of violence in the last several months. Deep poverty and famine are also a serious danger.