The
village of Joujouka sits in the red hills of the Rif in Northern
Morocco. It is a place somewhat removed from the modern world. There
is no electricity, no running water, no pavements or roads, the
village being accessible only on foot. Everything that's needed here
must be carried by mules or the villagers themselves. While the Rif
Mountains are known as a lawless and wild place in which some of the
world's finest hashish is produced, Joujouka itself is known for only
one thing. Its music.
The
Master Musicians of Joujouka play a strange, hybrid trance music that
draws influences and inspiration from the various peoples who have
colonised or settled Morocco over the years, but which has its roots
in the pre-Islamic religious ceremonies of the Berber people. The
music of Joujouka has been passed down through generations, father to
son, a string of pearls stretching back further than any recorded
history. The maleems are exempt from farming and other types of
manual labour, their sole responsibility is to provide the world with
sound, and it is a sound that vacillates between a beatific serenity
and a feral abandon as the men coax supple rhythms and circular
melodies from their various hand drums, ancient guembris, flutes
and rhaitas. This last instrument provides the Master
Musicians with their signature sound, for these oboe like horns are
played by groups who time the rhythms of their breathing to ensure
the sound is endless, a hypnotic and infinitely complex wall of
buzzing noise that colludes with the local hash to produce an awesome
delirium.
Despite
its often noisy and frenetic nature, this is not the sound of a
warrior people. The music is used in service of a spirituality, it
magically opens channels of communication with the spirit world, it
opens spaces of healing and protection and is performed in
celebration of the glory of nature. It is concerned with the
evocation and control of spiritual forces and is always used for a
purpose and to obtain some definite result. Now of course, with the
growth of a global market for 'world' music, the sound of Joujouka
has spread. It is no longer reserved for the villager's rituals and
ceremonies, or for the local festivals and parades. Recordings of the
musicians are available to listeners all over the world as products
of the culture industry, these recordings though can often be as
difficult and jarring as those of Adorno's beloved Schoenberg and
their arrival on the market is the result of a particular history and
a particular set of counter-cultural connections. In the early '50s
Paul Bowles, the proto beat writer, heard the sound while travelling
in the Rif, he introduced the music to Brion Gysin who helped to
popularise the group in the Interzone of post-war Tangiers. Gysin
later turned on William Burroughs to the magical sound of the 4000
year old rock n roll band. As Morocco became a point on the 'hippy
trail', news of the noise slowly spread. In 1968, Brian Jones arrived
in the village where he recorded the annual festival of Bou Jeloud1.
The following year, Timothy Leary sampled the villager's hospitality
while enjoying a short break from prison2.
In the '70s, the musicians recorded with Ornette Coleman and the
Rolling Stones, their music peppered Burroughs' Breakthrough in the
Grey Room, serving as a counterpoint to his tape splicing
experiments. Since then they have travelled and played concerts
around the globe, making money that has helped sustain the whole
community, for even here people need money and the inhabitants of
this remote and rocky region have little else to exchange.
The
press release posted on Joujouka's myspace page was written by a New
York concert promoter and announced that the group were to cancel
their summer tour of the US after encountering difficulties with
their visa applications. A small thing, of interest to only a few
people. Some members of the group have names that require extra
scrutiny, suspicious names that are 'similar' to some known to the US
Department of Justice. It's a small thing, the shadow cast by the War
on Terror just falls in an unexpected place, making something that
should be so simple frighteningly complex. The tightening of security
that is occurring throughout the 'developed' world can often pass
unnoticed, but beneath our noses walls and fences become ever higher,
gates are locked more tightly and entry requirements become more
difficult to meet. This bulletin reawakened me, forced me to think
again about the reach of the current crusade. This is nothing short
of total war, everybody is affected, no matter how remote our
habitat, no matter how ancient our traditions or how peaceful our
intentions.
I
began to dream of musical reprisals, channeling my own anger and
indignation through the Master Musicians themselves, imagining their
ferocious, kaleidoscopic drum and rhaita jams
being used to bring down the walls, not of Jericho, but of those
institutions that seeks to measure and judge us all, that try to
order and control human life and which increasingly, (here I'm
thinking of Agamben and bare life, of orange jump suits, cages and de
Menezes) have the ability to decide who has the right to life and who
counts as human. Of course, I am not the first to imagine the use of
music as a weapon of war, indeed the military-industrial complex is
already way ahead in that game.
Music
has long been a part of the sound of the battlefield, think of the
Scots bagpipes or the trumpet blast of the cavalry and we can see
that the military use of noise to frighten or disturb the opposition
has a history. More recently, Coppola's cinematic image of
helicopters flying low like dragonflies at sunrise, blasting Wagner
from mounted speakers, is one of the most memorable in film history.
Examination of the military use of music, of sonic warfare,
ultimately slips away from what we normally think of as the theatre
of war to expose some disturbing aspects of modern culture and reveal
the possibility that the civilian populations of the developed world
might regularly be subjected to techniques of psychological warfare.
Some
knowledge of the American army's use of music in combat situations
started to filter into the popular imagination in 1989, specifically
during the US invasion of Panama, part of George Bush Sr.'s War on
Drugs. The target of the invasion was Manuel Noriega, dictator of
Panama, associate of the notorious cocaine baron Pablo Escobar and
the Medellin Cartel, and long time ally of the CIA and US government
in their clandestine operations against various Central and South
American left wing guerilla groups3.
During the invasion, 27,000 American troops landed in the country
with the intention of deposing Noriega. The dictator went to ground
in Panama's Vatican Embassy. US forces surrounded the building, but
were unable to physically attack for fear of ruining relations with
the Vatican. Instead, troops bombarded the embassy with constant loud
heavy rock music in an effort to drive Noriega out. This effort
lasted days before complaints from the Vatican forced the general in
charge of the operation to pull the plug on the music4.
Noriega's subsequent surrender had little to do with the military's
sonic experiment, but this did not deter them from again attempting
to use high volume rock 'n' roll as a 'non-lethal weapon'.
In
1993, the sound systems came out again for the siege of Mount Carmel
in Waco, Texas. This operation, led by the FBI, targeted David Koresh
and other followers of the Branch Davidian sect. The siege lasted 51
days and for parts of this time the Branch Davidians were treated to
marathon sessions of loud music in order to disturb their sleeping
patterns and break morale inside the camp. The music was just one
element of the FBI's psychological operations to break the siege,
operations that again proved unsuccessful as tensions escalated on
both sides. As the siege wore on, the event turned into a global
media circus that ended with the deaths of many Branch Davidians as
Mount Carmel went up in televised flames5.
Music
has also been used as a weapon during the conflicts in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Before the brutal military attack on Fallujah in 2004, US
troops engaged in psychological operations in an attempt to weaken
resistance. These operations lasted for three weeks before the tanks
and troops rolled into the desert city, and again involved the use of
high powered speakers mounted on tanks and humvees. The army played
AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Eminem and Barney the Purple Dinosaur
at high volume for long stretches of time to disorientate and confuse
the enemy, in the hope of flushing out insurgents or weakening their
ability to fight6.
That the attack on Fallujah resulted in so many casualties on both
sides, with much heavier resistance to allied troops than was
anticipated, perhaps points to the failure of such psychological
tactics on the battlefield. Music has however, been used elsewhere in
the War on Terror, and perhaps more fruitfully, for it has become
common practice to subject 'enemy combatants' to loud music in
detention centres and interrogation rooms in efforts to gain
information about insurgent activity or terrorist organisation.
In
April 2004, photographs from the Abu Ghraib detention centre hit the
news. These disquieting images depicted naked and contorted Iraqi
prisoners suffering humiliation at the hands of grinning US soldiers.
The world let out a collective gasp of disgust when presented with
such horrifying evidence of the dark face of modern warfare. Donald
Rumsfeld blew gas about 'bad apples' and placed the responsibility
with a handful of low ranking soldiers, rubbishing the idea that this
could be part of any kind of policy, but by the time further evidence
started to emerge the visceral impact of the original story had lost
momentum. Since the Abu Ghraib pictures, it has become apparent that
the techniques depicted in the photographs are being used in a number
of detention centres and prisons associated with the War on Terror,
including at Guantanamo Bay itself. These techniques include the use
of stress positions, sleep deprivation, and alternating sensory
deprivation and sensory overload. Considered as a constellation of
practices, these techniques have been called 'no-touch torture', or
torture-lite. This phrase makes it all sound like the low fat,
vanilla version of what should presumably be thought of as heavy
torture, which I suppose would include the use of pliers, thumb
screws and electric shocks. Torture lite in contrast involves none of
this medieval stuff, for its aim is not to physically degrade its
subject, but to psychologically attack the victim's sense of self, to
erode his or her subjectivity.
The
term conceals the reality of these devastating practices, for it is
only when we hear first hand reports of torture-lite that we can
begin to estimate the distance between actual practice and official
rhetoric. In 2003, a BBC report suggested that Iraqi enemy combatants
were being locked in shipping containers in the desert heat, and
subjected to songs such as Metallica's “Enter Sandman”, or Barney
the Dinosaur's “I Love You” at high volume for extended periods7.
Since then, first hand accounts collected by Human Rights Watch have
described many other instances in detention centres and prisons
across the region. Benyan Mohammed, a prisoner at Guantanamo, told
human rights lawyers that high volume rap music was pumped into his
cell for twenty solid days before it was replaced by twisted laughter
and “Halloween sounds”8.
If we try to imagine ourselves subjected to such treatment, and then
think of how the music is often played while we are kept in complete
darkness, or in rooms with strobe lighting in which the temperature
fluctuates between extreme heat and extreme cold, then we can begin
to come to a vague understanding of how such treatment may push a
person to the brink of insanity.
The
fact that such similar practices are being revealed in detention
camps in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay destabilises Rumsfeld's
insistence that the practices depicted in the Abu Ghraib photographs
were the work of a few corrupt soldiers. Indeed, Alfred McCoy argues
in his book A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from
the Cold War to the War on Terror (2006)9
that these practices are the result of five or six decades worth of
research conducted by the CIA and British and Canadian secret
services. According to McCoy, the techniques of no-touch torture
originate in the experiments
conducted during the Cold War in programs such as MKUltra, the CIA's
notorious mind control program that saw thousands of American
soldiers and civilians used as guinea pigs in the search for truth
drugs and mind control techniques10.
In John Marks' 1979 book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, we
find descriptions of early experiments with some of the techniques in
current use including ultrasonics, solitary confinement, sleep
deprivation, fluctuating temperatures and strobe lighting, while
other experiments involved all kinds of drugs, electroshock
treatments, even neurosurgery. These programs all carried out by
secretive state sanctioned institutions acting in contravention of
international laws and treaties, have led to the modern system of
torture lite that was tested in counter insurgency operations during
the Vietnam War, and again by British secret services during its
campaign against the IRA in the '70s and '80s, and by police units
across South and Central America11.
It may be comforting to imagine that such techniques are reserved for
remote detention centres and interrogation cells, but music is also
used to manipulate behaviour in more subtle and insidious ways that
we may recognise from our own everyday experiences.
The
use of music to manipulate workers and consumers for commercial ends
has a long history that perhaps provided some inspiration to those
CIA operatives who first decided to use sound as part of their
repertoire of interrogation techniques. The Muzak Corporation was
born in 1934, the brainchild of Major General George O. Squier. Over
the course of the century, the Muzak Corporation came to define the
piped music industry, tirelessly promoting their product until now,
in the 21st Century world of consumer capitalism, this
music is almost ubiquitous in public space. Squier recognised music's
link to the emotions and looked for ways to capitalise. He developed
systems to deliver music through telephone cable and proceeded to
sell this piped music to businesses. While the styles of music
available through the Muzak Corporation and other similar companies
has changed radically over the years, the purpose of this music has
however, always remained the same; to manipulate human behaviour.
Muzak's
Stimulus Progression(R) system was designed to “...boost
productivity, reduce errors and improve morale in businesses
throughout the country”12.
The system uses songs programmed in fifteen minute blocks, imprinting
a kind of counterfeit bio-rhythm to provide workers or shoppers with
a subconscious sense of 'forward movement'. The corporation claim
their product helps to reduce the stress of shoppers and workers,
leading to increased brand perception, loyalty, sales and
productivity. If we “...employ the science of Muzak: in
an office, workers tend to get more done, more efficiently, and feel
happier. In an industrial plant, people feel better and, with less
fatigue and tension, their jobs seem less monotonous. In a store,
people seem to shop in a more relaxed and leisurely manner. In a
bank, customers are generally more calm, tellers and other personnel
are more efficient. In general, people feel better about where they
are; whether it's during work or leisure time”13.
Such statements made in Muzak's corporate literature place the
company's invisible product squarely in the realms of the behavioural
sciences.
Although
the effects of piped music are seldom considered, there have been a
growing number of complaints in recent years that help us to make the
connection between muzak and Abu Ghraib. The negative psychological
effects of muzak become most acute during the consumer frenzy of
Christmas, when shop workers and harassed consumers, bullied from all
sides into spending beyond their means or needs, are subjected to an
endless stream of inane Christmas songs. Some have likened this
bombardment to a kind of psychological torture. A spokesman for
Pipedown, the anti-muzak pressure group said Christmas muzak is
“...acoustic torture ...it's not loud but the
repetitive nature causes psychological stress”14.
Meanwhile, an Austrian shopworker's union has tried to limit the
amount of time shops are allowed to play festive music each day,
claiming it is a health and safety issue. A union representative told
reporters that “...shop workers can't escape the
Christmas muzak. They feel as if they are terrorised all day.
Especially Jingle Bells. It arouses aggressive feelings”15.
And
so, the soundtrack to so much of our experience of public space is
revealed as a scientifically engineered instrument to pacify a
potentially unruly workforce and to narcotise the consumer. Music's
abilities to connect with the emotions and to alter our psychological
state are being exploited and perverted in a number of ways in a
variety of locations, from office or commercial spaces to clandestine
interrogation cells. What we generally consider to be a harmless form
of creative expression becomes a tool, coldly employed in the
manipulation and control of populations, numb from the constant
stimulus of programmed information.
I
again imagine the musicians of Joujouka, dressed in dusty djellabas,
pounding hand drums, fire music from broken saxophones. They are
joined by drummers from Burundi and Kerala, Tibetan monks from remote
mountaintops blow trumpets carved from the thighbones of dead saints,
bleary eyed kids with whistles and pans, punks with electric guitars
modified for maximum feedback. Sound systems mounted on trucks blast
non repetitive beats unleashing crazed movement, fearsome wardancing.
All are collaborators in a spontaneous sonic uprising that intends to
awaken us from our collective dream. The streets fill with people, we
congregate in the centres of power, in prisons and military
installations, banks and marketplaces, we reclaim public space and
fill it with an unpredictable and invigorating noise, a musick that
embodies the creative power of humanity, harnessed and concentrated
to banish the evil spirits that haunt the modern world.
Jones
released sections of these recordings as the infamous album Brian
Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. (1971) Rolling
Stones Records.
Leary
describes his stay in the village in a chapter entitled “The Four
Thousand Year Old Rock 'n' Roll Band: A Memory Experienced” in
Leary, T. (1970) Jail Notes
London: New English Library.
If
this sounds like an unlikely alliance, check out White-Out:
The CIA, Drugs & the Press,
Cockburn, A. & St. Clair, J. (1998) London: Verso, for a
comprehensive analysis of the CIA's involvement in the global drugs
trade.
Cusick,
S. (2006) “Music as Torture/Music as a Weapon” in Trans:
Transcultural Music Review #10,
December 2006 available at
http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/indice10.htm
Stafford
Smith, C. (2008) “Welcome to the Disco” The Guardian;
Thursday, June 19th
2008
ibid
McCoy,
A. W. (2006) A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the
Cold War to the War on Terror
New York: Owl Books
For
extended discussion of this dark period in history, have a look at
Lee, M. & Shlain, B. (1994) Acid Dreams: The Complete
Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond
New York: Grove Press, or John Marks' equally frightening The
Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate': The CIA & Mind
Control, the Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences
(1991) New York: Norton
Cusick, S. (2006) “Music as Torture/Music as a Weapon” in Trans: Transcultural Music Review #10, December 2006 available at http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/indice10.htm
Cusick, S. (2006) “Music as Torture/Music as a Weapon” in Trans: Transcultural Music Review #10, December 2006 available at http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/indice10.htm
http://www.muzak.com/muzak.html
http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/articles/muzak.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4531190.stm
ibid
