SOUNDS
INSTRUMENT OF WAR
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1:
A Great and Secret Power
Chapter 2:
Music, Race, Empire
Chapter 3:
Music and Guns Go Hand in Hand
Chapter 4:
The Best-Entertained Soldier in the World
Chapter 5:
The Powers of Song
Chapter 6:
Demythologizing the Rock-and-Roll War
Chapter 7:
Shoot to Thrill
- “Taliban Bodies”
- “Ride of the Valkyries”
Coda
Seven Elegies
INSTRUMENT OF WAR
Chapter 7: Shoot to Thrill
“TALIBAN BODIES”
The video “Taliban Bodies” (2001), set to the song “Bodies” by Drowning Pool, inaugurated a new genre of war-themed music-videos. This video was traded widely among soldiers and screened by the military in official settings as well.
“RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES”
In a feedback loop of life imitating art, soldiers sometimes blasted Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” at local Iraqi populations, inspired by the now-iconic scene in Apocalypse Now.
Here’s a scene from the movie Jarhead (2005), about the Gulf War, depicting soldiers watching that scene from Apocalpse Now and the motivating effect it had on them:
Here’s the original:
