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My Music, My War
The Listening Habits of U.S. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
Music / Culture
Sales Date: 2016-04-05
Music in the everyday lives of U.S. troops and combat veterans
In the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, recent technological developments in music listening enabled troops to carry with them vast amounts of music and easily acquire new music, for themselves and to share with their fellow troops as well as friends and loved ones far away. This ethnographic study examines U.S. troops' musical-listening habits during and after war, and the accompanying fear, domination, violence, isolation, pain, and loss that troops experienced. My Music, My War is a moving ethnographic account of what war was like for those most intimately involved. It shows how individuals survive in the messy webs of conflicting thoughts and emotions that are intricately part of the moment-to-moment and day-to-day phenomenon of war, and the pervasive memories in its aftermath. It gives fresh insight into musical listening as it relates to social dynamics, gender, community formation, memory, trauma, and politics.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Setting the Scene
Musicking at Work and Leisure
Music as a Sound Track of War
Music, Gender, and the Paradox of Masculinity
"Music Doesn't Judge": Managing Feelings at War
Coming Home
Music and Political Transformation
As Time Goes By
Appendix: People Interviewed
Notes
References
Index
LISA GILMAN is an associate professor in the Department of English and Folklore Program at the University of Oregon. She is the author of The Dance of Politics: Performance, Gender, and Democratization in Malawi and director of the film Grounds for Resistance: Stories of War, Sacrifice, and Good Coffee.
"[A]n important, even indispensable, study that resists broad mischaracterizations about U.S. troops at war."
~Jonathan Pieslak, Volume!
""[A]n important, even indispensable, study that resists broad mischaracterizations about U.S. troops at war.""
~Jonathan Pieslak, Volume!
""My Music, My War is a wonderful addition to the scholarship on military folklore that Lisa Gilman and others have pursued since Bruce Jackson's 1989 JAF special issue (vol. 102, no. 406) on Vietnam, a war that received considerable resistance both at home and on the battlefield. This book is a testament to the hard work of a diligent folklorist who accomplished much in helping those veterans she interviewed, as well as those who are still struggling with PTSD.""
~Richard Allen Burns, Journal of American Folklore
"A gifted interviewer, Lisa Gilman goes beyond stereotypes of the wounded American soldier by painting a complex and nuanced emotional portrait of contemporary soldiers' lives, ones which the media rarely allow us to see and hear."
~Jonathan Ritter, coeditor of Music in the Post-9/11 World
"My Music, My War makes an original contribution to current studies on music and war, with its nuanced discussion of how music listening is used to define, and at times resist, gendered norms and rhetorics of hyper-masculinity, as well as the complex roles that music plays in veterans' reintegration into civilian life.""
~Kip Pegley, coeditor of Music, Politics, and Violence