The Listening Habits of U.S. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
A study of music in the everyday lives of U.S. troops and combat veterans.
“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
A study of music in the everyday lives of U.S. troops and combat veterans.
During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, technological developments in music listening enabled troops to carry vast amounts of music with them, and allowed them to easily acquire new music. Digital music files allow for easy sharing, with fellow troops as well as with 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.
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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. Her articles have appeared in Folklore, Popular Music, and Journal of American Folklore.
“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
Music Culture Series
April
240 pp., 6 x 9”
Unjacketed Cloth, $80.00 x
978-0-8195-7599-9
Paper, $26.95
978-0-8195-7600-2
eBook, $21.99 Y
978-0-8195-7601-9
