They're expecting to be burned with torches and beaten and have their bones broken. They are warriors, and they're trained to resist torture. These guys are not a bunch of high school kids. It's easy to slip into the mindset that torture by music is more of an irritant than a way of mentally abusing humans.Īs Steve Asheim, the drummer for the death-metal band Deicide whose songs have been used at Guantanamo, told the Guardian: "Look at it this way. The psychological effect of music torture "You almost have to stop yourself from laughing because you realize this is actually torture," Shaddock said to Mother Jones. With a great big hug, and a kiss from me to you. In addition, torturers used what has been called "futility music", like Barney's "I love you" and the song from the Meow Mix commercial-songs so upbeat and repetitive that they can be used to "break" prisoners into thinking that resistance is futile. But Afghan villagers, Yemenis, these guys were dazed, dazzled and confused, bewildered, completely out of it," Moazzam Begg, a British man who was arrested by the CIA in Pakistan in February 2002, wrote in his memoir. I'd grown up in Britain, I knew what it was. These guys were dazed, dazzled and confused, bewildered, completely out of it By using mainly hard rock and metal music, detainees become inundated with sounds that are foreign to their ear and thus even more grating and isolating that something they might be better associated with. Playing music that was intentionally American or foreign was intended to distance detainees from themselves and their culture, as well as to wear them down psychologically. Music, like many forms of art, is how we identify with our culture and our place in the world. "It is music’s capacity to take over your mind and invade your inner experience that makes it so terrifying," Thomas Keenan, director of the Human Rights Project at Bard College, told Al Jazeera. Music connects you to your culture - or severs you from it Metal and country music simply don't have the kind of world-wide proliferation as pop, and that makes them foreign sounds for detainees. In clubs from Stockholm to Tel Aviv, Rihanna and Drake songs are played. Sharrock, and reports by The Guardian, reveal that the two most common genres of music played for detainees are metal and country, because they are distinctly American genres. Dope: "Die MF Die", "Take Your Best Shot".But in 2008, Justine Sharrock made a list of songs for Mother Jones that she learned from ex-soldiers and detainees had been used against detainees. There wasn't, as far as we know, an formalized torture playlist. "Rawhide" is the only song the CIA report explicitly states was used as a torture technique. Not only was music used to wear down an opponent until they were "broken," but the CIA also, according to the report, used specific music as a trigger to a detainee that another interrogation was about to begin. A 2008 AP report on prisoner conditions at Guantanamo Bay said that music was used "to create fear, disorient. We know from past torture reports from Guantanamo Bay that this means the same song or album is often played on repeat at very loud volumes to keep detainees awake for hours on end. Detainees there, the report reads, "were kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste." The report specifically mentions that music was used as a no-touch torture device at the COBALT detention facility. How the CIA used music to break prisoners This is how, and why, the CIA used some of America's most beloved, iconic songs as an instrument of torture. "the Blues Brothers rendition of 'Rawhide' played." CIA records state that bin al-Shibh's reaction to hearing the song was evidence of his conditioning, as bin al-Shibh "knows when he heard the music where he is going and what is going to happen."' 'CIA records indicate that in the CIA interrogation of Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
One of those was the Blues Brothers' "Rawhide." In a footnote, the report reveals: But it also detailed the agency's use of "sound disorientation techniques," as the report calls the music blared at detainees 24 hours a day. The long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee torture report that was released to the public on Tuesday revealed some horrible physical torture performed by the CIA - waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and sexual assault. The song ends with men cheering over the sound of a thrashing whip. Backup singers create a layering to the song that makes it impossible to know how many men are involved. In the Blues Brothers recording, the main vocals are a deep alto with a soulful, upbeat tone. The song, originally recorded by Frankie Laine, was used as the intro music for television Westerns. "Rolling, rolling, rolling," Rawhide begins.
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