U.K.’s Guardian.co.uk reports: It was a throwaway statistic in an article about the heavy metal band SLAYER that got Jonathan Pieslak thinking. During the Gulf war, he read, some 40% of the band’s fan mail came from soldiers stationed in the Middle East.
Professor Pieslak (pictured below) is a music theorist at the City College of New York. Over the past few years he has interviewed U.S. soldiers about the music they listen to and – more importantly — what they listen to it for.
You wouldn’t expect much Chris de Burgh or Barry White to come floating over the barbed wire fences around military camps in Iraq or Afghanistan, and Pieslak’s research confirms the hunch. The playlists are dominated by SLAYER, METALLICA, EMINEM and others.
What’s interesting about the work is not so much which bands soldiers are drawn to, but the extraordinary terms they use to describe the power the music has over them. Some talk about tracks turning them into monsters, making them inhuman so they can do inhuman acts.
The subjects of Pieslak’s interviews are among the first generation to take MP3 players to war. Some, only half joking, say iPods should be standard issue for soldiers. The psychological effect the music has, and highly stressful situations, make for a powerful mix.
Read the entire article HERE.