Call for Papers

Special Issue on Music and Violence

Popular Music and Society invites papers for a special themed issue on the connection between music, sound, and violence. Although that connection is as ancient as music itself, the development of technologized sound has increased the range and magnitude of acoustic assault since the nineteenth century. The highest-profile links have been the use of music for purposes of torture, humiliation, harassment, coercion, and punishment, from Sudan to the US invasion of Iraq and the internment camp at Guantánamo Bay. However, the link is also pervasive in the everyday life of modern conurbations. Apart from direct engagement with music and violence, contributors might also wish to consider larger social policy and censorship implications. While we wish to avoid undocumented statements for or against causality in the connection between music and violence, we invite carefully argued critiques of public debates on the topic. Further lines of enquiry will be suggested by the following sample reading (refer also to its own cited sources), which is also provided in order to prevent potential contributors from duplicating existing studies:

• Bayoumi, Moustafa. "Disco Inferno." The Nation 26 Dec. 2005: 32-35.
• Cloonan, Martin, and Bruce Johnson. "Killing Me Softly with His Song: An Initial Investigation Into the Use of Popular Music as a Tool of Oppression." Popular Music 21 (2002): 27-39.
• Cusick, Suzanne G. "Music as Torture, Music as Weapon." Revista Transcultural de Música/ Transcultural Music Review 10 (2006).
• Hirsch, Lily E. "Weaponizing Classical Music: Crime Prevention and Symbolic Power in the Age of Repetition." Journal of Popular Music Studies 19 (2007): 342-58.
• Johnson, Bruce, and Martin Cloonan. Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.
• "Position Statement on Torture (February 2, 2007)." Society for Ethnomusicology.

We welcome submissions in English covering any time period, any location, and citizens of any region, and by authors of any political persuasion. We are particularly interested in studies that go beyond what have become "the usual suspects."

Research papers will be double blind peer-reviewed at academic level for potential inclusion in the main section of the journal. Polemical and journalistically oriented papers will be considered for inclusion in our Forum section.

In the first instance, we invite proposals of up to 500 words. Please indicate the name under which you would wish to be published, your professional/academic affiliations, a postal address, and preferred email contact. Deadline for submission of proposals is 31 May 2009. We would hope to commission articles by the end of June, and deadline for submission of the articles will be the end of November 2009.

Please email proposals to Bruce Johnson at brujoh@utu.fi.