GLOBAL DIALOGUE Volume 12 ● Number 1 ● Winter/Spring 2010—Working the Dark Side

Cranking up the Volume: Music as a Tool of Torture

JONATHAN PIESLAK

Jonathan Pieslak is a composer and associate professor at the City College of New York and Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War (Indiana University Press, 2009).

n May 2003, Adam Piore wrote a short article for Newsweek magazine about a set of unusual interrogation techniques practised by United States military units. The article explained that “uncooperative Iraqis” were being exposed to music—Metallica, Drowning Pool, Barney (the purple dinosaur from a popular US children’s television show)—in an effort to frustrate, irritate, and sleep-deprive them into answering questions. The tactic was intended “to break down a subject’s resistance through sleep deprivation and annoyance with music...