Achy breaky heart: Professor speaks on music torture

By: Charlie Weeks

Posted: 9/17/07

The music that Donald Vance enjoyed destroyed him emotionally.

Vance, a Navy veteran who was detained in Camp Cropper in Baghdad, was tortured by music that was blasted into his cell, a sensory overload that eventually drove him to tears. Vance said he was held after whistle-blowing to the F.B.I. about illegal arm sales in Iraq, according to the Associated Press.

Suzanne Cusick has spoken to enough people like Vance to know just how damaging music can be.

Cusick, an associate professor of music at New York University, spoke on Saturday at the Hall of Languages as a part of Syracuse University's Music, Justice and Gender symposium.

Her presentation, "Music and Torture," dealt with the use of music as a means of torture for terror suspects at United States government-operated detention centers.

She detailed incidents occurring in detention centers from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to Camp Cropper in Iraq where prisoners were subjected to rap and heavy metal as means of sensory depravation and overload.

This causes a breakdown in the detainee's sense of reality and drowns out one's inner thoughts, Cusick said.

Cusick interviewed detainees who described the deafening noises that they were subjected to, such as a cacophony of barking dogs, sounds of screaming by other detainees being interrogated and the deafening music

This chaotic combination of sounds made it impossible for these prisoners to routinely sleep.

"There is something very real about not having the freedom to turn off unpleasant music," said Lydia Hamessley, an associate professor of music at Hamilton College who attended the lecture. "It's terrifying. This goes past being annoyed by some awful song."

Cusick described similar accounts of these torture methods from former military interrogators. One described a "black room," where everything inside was painted black with speakers in the corner.

The interrogators also pointed out methods of sleep deprivation that correlate with accounts given by torture victims, including pouring cold or hot water on detainees and shining strobe lights at them.

The specific songs and recording artists Cusick said were used for torture ranged from Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails to the Bee Gees' "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack to music from the kids TV show "Barney."

Cusick will be publishing her full report of "Music and Torture" in the "Journal of the Society for American Music" in early 2008.

Once done speaking, Cusick appeared. During the Q&A session, she the left the audience with a chilling proposal:

"Imagine a piece of music that you love, and imagine it being used to torture people."