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When Music Is Violence

By Alex Ross

In December, 1989, the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was expelled from power by American forces. To escape capture, he took refuge in the Papal Nunciatura in Panama City. When an American general arrived to confer with the papal nuncio, the U.S. Army blared music from loudspeakers to prevent journalists from eavesdropping. Members of a psychological-operations unit then decided that non-stop music might aggravate Noriega into surrendering. They made requests for songs on the local armed-forces radio station, and directed the din at Noriega’s window. The dictator was thought to prefer opera, and so hard rock dominated the playlist. The songs conveyed threatening, sometimes mocking messages: Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.”

Although the media delighted in the spectacle, President George H. W. Bush and General Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took a dim view of it. Bush called the campaign “irritating and petty,” and Powell had it stopped. Noriega, who had received psy­ops training at Fort Bragg in the nineteen-sixties, is said to have slept soundly through the clamor. Nonetheless, military and law-enforcement officials became convinced that they had stumbled on a valuable tactic. “Since the Noriega incident, you’ve been seeing an increased use of loudspeakers,” a psyops spokesman declared. During the siege of the Branch Davidian compound, in Waco, Texas, in 1993, the F.B.I. blasted music and noise day and night. When Palestinian militants occupied the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, in 2002, Israeli forces reportedly tried to eject them with heavy metal. And during the occupation of Iraq the C.I.A. added music to the torture regime known as “enhanced interrogation.” At Guantánamo, detainees were stripped to their underwear, shackled to chairs, and blinded by strobe lights as heavy metal, rap, and children’s tunes assaulted their ears. Music has accompanied acts of war since trumpets sounded at the walls of Jericho, but in recent decades it has been weaponized as never before—outfitted for the unreal landscape of modern battle.

The intersection of music and violence has inspired a spate of academic studies. On my desk is a bleak stack of books examining torture and harassment, the playlists of Iraq War soldiers and interrogators, musical tactics in American crime-prevention efforts, sonic cruelties inflicted in the Holocaust and other genocides, the musical preferences of Al Qaeda militants and neo-Nazi skinheads. There is also a new translation, by Matthew Amos and Fredrick Rönnbäck, of Pascal Quignard’s 1996 book, “The Hatred of Music” (Yale), which explores age-old associations between music and barbarity.

When music is applied to warlike ends, we tend to believe that it has been turned against its innocent nature. To quote the standard platitudes, it has charms to soothe a savage breast; it is the food of love; it brings us together and sets us free. We resist evidence suggesting that music can cloud reason, stir rage, cause pain, even kill. Footnoted treatises on the dark side of music are unlikely to sell as well as the cheery pop-science books that tout music’s ability to make us smarter, happier, and more productive. Yet they probably bring us closer to the true function of music in the evolution of human civilization.

A striking passage in J. Martin Daughtry’s “Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq” (Oxford) evokes the sound of the battlefield in the most recent Iraq war:

The growl of the Humvee engine. The thump-thump-thump of the approaching helicopter. The drone of the generator. Human voices shouting, crying, asking questions in a foreign tongue. “ Allahu akbar! ”: the call to prayer. “ Down on the ground! ”: the shouted command. The dadadadadada of automatic weapon fire. The shhhhhhhhhhhhh of the rocket in flight. The fffft of the bullet displacing air. The sharp k-k-k-k-r-boom of the mortar. The rolling BOOM of the I.E.D.

Daughtry underscores something crucial about the nature of sound and, by extension, of music: we listen not only with our ears but also with our body. We flinch against loud sounds before the conscious brain begins to try to understand them. It is therefore a mistake to place “music” and “violence” in separate categories; as Daugh­try writes, sound itself can be a form of violence. Detonating shells set off supersonic blast waves that slow down and become sound waves; such waves have been linked to traumatic brain injury, once known as shell shock. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are often triggered by sonic signals; New York residents experienced this after September 11th, when a popped tire would make everyone jump.

Sound is all the more potent because it is inescapable: it saturates a space and can pass through walls. Quignard—a novelist and essayist of an oblique, aphoristic bent—writes:

All sound is the invisible in the form of a piercer of envelopes. Whether it be bodies, rooms, apartments, castles, fortified cities. Immaterial, it breaks all barriers. . . . Hearing is not like seeing. What is seen can be abolished by the eyelids, can be stopped by partitions or curtains, can be rendered immediately inaccessible by walls. What is heard knows neither eyelids, nor partitions, neither curtains, nor walls. . . . Sound rushes in. It violates.

The fact that ears have no lids—earplugs notwithstanding—explains why reactions to undesirable sounds can be extreme. We are confronting faceless intruders; we are being touched by invisible hands.

Technological advances, especially in loudspeaker design, have increased sound’s invasive powers. Juliette Volcler, in “Extremely Loud: Sound As a Weapon” (New Press), details attempts to manufacture sonic devices that might debilitate enemy forces or disperse crowds. Long-range acoustic devices, nicknamed “sound cannons,” send out shrill, pulsating tones of up to a hundred and forty-nine decibels—enough to cause permanent hearing damage. Police units unleashed these devices at an Occupy Wall Street rally in 2011 and in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, among other settings. A commercial device called the Mosquito discourages young people from loitering; it emits sounds in the 17.5-to-18.5-kilohertz range, which, in general, only those under the age of twenty-five can hear. Further Army research into low- and high-frequency weapons, which developers hoped would “liquefy the bowels,” apparently failed to yield results, although conspiracy theories proliferate on the Internet.

Humans react with particular revulsion to musical signals that are not of their choice or to their liking. Many neuroscientific theories about how music acts on the brain—such as Steven Pinker’s notion that music is “auditory cheesecake,” a biologically useless pleasure—ignore how personal tastes affect our processing of musical information. A genre that enrages one person may have a placebo effect on another. A 2006 study by the psychologist Laura Mitchell, testing how music-therapy sessions can alleviate pain, found that a suffering person was better served by his or her “preferred music” than by a piece that was assumed to have innately calming qualities. In other words, music therapy for a heavy-metal fan should involve heavy metal, not Enya.

Lily Hirsch’s “Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment” (Michigan) explores how divergences in taste can be exploited for purposes of social control. In 1985, the managers of a number of 7-Eleven stores in British Columbia began playing classical and easy-listening music in their parking lots to drive away loitering teen-agers. The idea was that young people would find such a soundtrack insufferably uncool. The 7-Eleven company then applied this practice across North America, and it soon spread to other commercial spaces. To the chagrin of many classical-music fans, especially the lonely younger ones, it seems to work. This is an inversion of the concept of Muzak, which was invented to give a pleasant sonic veneer to public settings. Here instrumental music becomes a repellent.

To Hirsch, it’s no coincidence that 7-Eleven perfected its technique of musical cleansing while American forces were experimenting with musical harassment. Both reflect a strategy of “deterrence through music,” capitalizing on rage against the unwanted. The spread of portable digital technology, from CDs to the iPod and on to smartphones, means that it is easier than ever to impose music on a space and turn the psychological screws. The logical next step might be a Spot­ify algorithm that can discover what combination of songs is most likely to drive a given subject insane.

When Primo Levi arrived in Ausch­witz, in 1944, he struggled to make sense not only of what he saw but of what he heard. As prisoners returned to the camp from a day of hard labor, they marched to bouncy popular music: in particular, the polka “Rosamunde,” which was an international hit at the time. (In America, it was called the “Beer Barrel Polka”; the Andrews Sisters, among others, sang it.) Levi’s first reaction was to laugh. He thought that he was witnessing a “colossal farce in Teutonic taste.” He later grasped that the grotesque juxtaposition of light music and horror was designed to destroy the spirit as surely as the crematoriums destroyed the body. The merry strains of “Rosamunde,” which also emanated from loudspeakers during mass shootings of Jews at Majdanek, mocked the suffering that the camps inflicted.

The Nazis were pioneers of musical sadism, although loudspeakers were apparently deployed more to drown out the screams of victims than to torture them. Jonathan Pieslak, in his 2009 book, “Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War,” finds a telling cinematic precedent in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film “Foreign Correspondent,” where Nazi spies torment a diplomat with bright lights and swing music. To some extent, sonically enhanced interrogation may have been a Hollywood fantasy that migrated into reality—just as other aspects of the American torture regime took inspiration from TV shows like “24.” Similarly, in the 2004 battle of Fallujah, speakers mounted on Humvees bombarded the Iraqis with Metallica and AC/DC, mimicking the Wagner scene in “Apocalypse Now,” in which a helicopter squadron blasts “The Ride of the Valkyries” as it lays waste to a Vietnamese village.

Jane Mayer, a staff writer at this maga­zine, and other journalists have shown that the idea of punishing someone with music also emerged from Cold War-era research into the concept of “no-touch torture”—leaving no marks on victims’ bodies. Researchers of the period demonstrated that sensory deprivation and manipulation, including extended bouts of noise, could bring about the disintegration of a subject’s personality. Beginning in the nineteen-fifties, programs that trained American soldiers and intelligence operatives to withstand torture had a musical component; at one point, the playlist reportedly included the industrial band Throbbing Gristle and the avant-garde vocalist Diamanda Galás. The concept spread to military and police units in other countries, where it was applied not to trainees but to prisoners. In Israel, Palestinian detainees were tied to kindergarten chairs, cuffed, hooded, and immersed in modernist classical music. In Pinochet’s Chile, interrogators employed, among other selections, the soundtrack to “A Clockwork Orange,” whose notorious aversion-therapy sequence, scored to Beethoven, may have encouraged similar real-life experiments.

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In America, musical torture received authorization in a September, 2003, memo by General Ricardo Sanchez. “Yelling, Loud Music, and Light Control” could be used “to create fear, disorient detainee and prolong capture shock,” provided that volume was “controlled to prevent injury.” Such practices had already been publicly exposed in a short article in Newsweek that May. The item noted that interrogations often featured the cloying theme of “Barney & Friends,” in which a purple dinosaur sings, “I love you / You love me / We’re a happy family.” The article’s author, Adam Piore, later recalled that his editors couched the item in joking terms, adding a sardonic kicker: “In search of comment from Barney’s people, Hit Entertainment, Newsweek endured five minutes of Barney while on hold. Yes, it broke us, too.” Repeating a pattern from the Noriega and Waco incidents, the media made a game of proposing ideal torture songs.

The hilarity subsided when the public learned more of what was going on at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Mosul, and Guantánamo. Here are some entries from the interrogation log of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “twentieth hijacker,” who was refused admittance to the United States in August, 2001:

1315: Corpsman checked vitals—O.K. Christina Aguilera music played. Interrogators ridiculed detainee by developing creative stories to fill in gaps in detainee’s cover story. 0400: Detainee was told to stand and loud music was played to keep detainee awake. Was told he can go to sleep when he tells the truth.

1115: Interrogation team entered the booth. Loud music was played that included songs in Arabic. Detainee complained that it was a violation of Islam to listen to Arabic music.

0345: Detainee offered food and water—refused. Detainee asked for music to be turned off. Detainee was asked if he can find the verse in the Koran that prohibits music.

1800: A variety of musical selections was played to agitate the detainee.

Aguilera seems to have been chosen because female singers were thought to offend Islamist detainees. Interrogation playlists also leaned on heavy-metal and rap numbers, which, as in the Noriega case, delivered messages of intimidation and destruction. Songs in regular rotation included Eminem’s “Kim” (“Sit down, bitch / If you move again I’ll beat the shit out of you”) and Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” (“Let the bodies hit the floor”).

Does such coerced listening qualify as torture? The N.Y.U.-based musicologist Suzanne Cusick, one of the first scholars to think deeply about music in the Iraq War, addressed the question in a 2008 paper for The Journal of the Society for American Music. During the Bush Administration, the U.S. government held that techniques inducing psychological rather than physical pain did not amount to torture, as international conventions have defined it. Cusick, however, makes clear that the loud-music tactic displays a chilling degree of casual sadism: the choice of songs seems designed to amuse the captors as much as to nauseate the captives. Few detainees probably understood the English lyrics aimed at them.

No official policy dictated the prison playlists; interrogators improvised them on-site, making use of whatever music they had on hand. Pieslak, who interviewed a number of Iraq veterans, observes that soldiers played many of the same songs for their own benefit, particularly when they were psyching themselves up for a dangerous mission. They, too, favored the most anarchic corners of heavy metal and gangsta rap. Thus, certain songs served both to whip soldiers into a lethal frenzy and to annihilate the spirit of “enemy combatants.” You couldn’t ask for a clearer demonstration of the non-universality of music, of its capacity to sow discord.

The soldiers told Pieslak that they used music to strip themselves of empathy. One said that he and his comrades sought out a “predator kind of music.” Another, after admitting with some embarrassment that Eminem’s “Go to Sleep” (“Die, motherfucker, die”) was a “theme song” for his unit, said, “You’ve got to become inhuman to do inhuman things.” The most unsettling choice was Slayer’s “Angel of Death,” which imagines the inner world of Josef Mengele: “Auschwitz, the meaning of pain / The way that I want you to die.” Such songs are far removed from uplifting wartime propaganda like “Over There,” the patriotic 1917 tune by George M. Cohan. The image of soldiers prepping for a mission by listening to Metallica’s “One”—“Landmine has taken my sight . . . Left me with life in hell”—suggests the degree to which they, too, felt trapped in a malevolent machine.

As Hirsch and other scholars point out, the idea of music as inherently good took hold only in the past few centuries. Philosophers of prior eras tended to view the art as an ambiguous, unreliable entity that had to be properly managed and channelled. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates scoffs at the idea that “music and poetry were only play and did no harm at all.” He distinguishes between musical modes that “suitably imitate the tone and rhythm of a courageous person who is active in battle” and those which strike him as soft, effeminate, lecherous, or melancholy. The Chinese “Book of Rites” differentiated between the joyous sound of a well-ruled state and the resentful sound of a confused one. John Calvin believed that music “has an insidious and well-nigh incredible power to move us whither it will.” He went on, “We must be all the more diligent to control music in such a way that it will serve us for good and in no way harm us.”

German thinkers in the idealist and Romantic tradition—Hegel, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Schopenhauer, among others—sparked a drastic revaluation of music’s significance. It became the doorway to the infinitude of the soul, and expressed humanity’s collective longing for freedom and brotherhood. With the canonization of Beethoven, music became the vehicle of genius. Sublime as Beethoven is, the claim of universality blended all too easily with a German bid for supremacy. The musicologist Richard Taruskin, whose rigorously unsentimental view of Western music history anchors much recent work in the field, likes to quote a phrase ironically articulated by the historian Stanley Hoffman, who died last year: “There are universal values, and they happen to be mine.”

Despite the cultural catastrophe of Nazi Germany, the Romantic idealization of music persists. Pop music in the American tradition is now held to be the all-encompassing, world-redeeming force. Many consumers prefer to see only the positive side of pop: they cherish it as a culturally and spiritually liberating influence, somehow free of the rapacity of capitalism even as it overwhelms the marketplace. Whenever it is suggested that music might arouse or incite violence—Eminem’s graphic fantasies of abuse and murder, or, more recently, the whiff of rape culture in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”—fans suddenly devalue music’s potency, portraying it as a vehicle for harmless play that cannot propel bodies into action. When Eminem proclaims that he is “just clownin’, dogg,” he is taken at his word.

Bruce Johnson and Martin Cloonan expose this inconsistency in “Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence” (2008). They are not reactionaries in the Tipper Gore mode, trying to whip up a moral panic. Pioneers of pop-music studies, they address their subject with deep respect. Nonetheless, if music can shape “our sense of the possible,” as they say, it must also be able to act destructively. Either music affects the world around it or it does not. Johnson and Cloonan avoid claims of direct causality, but they refuse to rule out links between violence in music—in terms both of lyrical content and of raw decibel impact—and violence in society. Furthermore, musical brutality need not involve a brutal act, for a “song of vilification is in itself an act of social violence.”

The pattern of sonic aggression that runs from the Noriega siege to the Iraq War poses these issues in the starkest terms. There was a nasty undertow of cultural triumphalism in the hard-hitting, hypermasculine music used to humiliate foreign prisoners. “The detainee’s subjectivity was to be lost in a flood of American sounds,” Johnson and Cloonan write. On a symbolic level, the rituals at Guantánamo present an extreme image of how American culture forces itself on an often unwilling world.

Although music has a tremendous ability to create communal feeling, no community can form without excluding outsiders. The sense of oneness that a song fosters in a human herd can seem either a beautiful or a repulsive thing—usually depending on whether you love or hate the song in question. Loudness heightens the tension: blaring music is a hegemonic move, a declaration of disdain for anyone who thinks differently. Whether we are marching or dancing or sitting silently in chairs, we are being molded into a single mass by sound. As Quignard notes in “The Hatred of Music,” the Latin word obaudire , to obey, contains audire , to hear. Music “hypnotizes and causes man to abandon the expressible,” he writes. “In hearing, man is held captive.”

Quignard’s slender, unnerving volume is quite different in tone from the sober academic books on the theme of music and violence. It hovers in a peculiarly French space between philosophy and fiction, and goes on mysterious lyrical flights, animating scenes from history and myth. One astonishing sequence evokes St. Peter’s denial of Jesus before the third crowing of the cock. Quignard imagines that, ever after, Peter was traumatized by any high-pitched noise, and that he soundproofed his home to escape the cacophony of the street: “The palace was shrouded in silence, the windows blinded with drapes.”

For years, Quignard was active on the French music scene, organizing concerts and working with the Catalan viol player Jordi Savall. Quignard co-wrote the screenplay for the music-drenched 1991 film “Tous les Matins du Monde.” Soon afterward, he retreated from such projects and wrote “The Hatred of Music” as a cri de cœur. Although he does not explain this change of heart, he gestures toward the meaningless ubiquity of music in contemporary life—Mozart in the 7-Eleven. Quignard gives this familiar lament a savage edge. In a chapter on the infernal Muzak of Auschwitz, he quotes Tolstoy: “Where one wants to have slaves, one must have as much music as possible.”

The book’s most disquieting passages suggest that music has always had a violent heart—that it may be rooted in the urge to dominate and kill. He speculates that some of the earliest music was made by hunters luring their prey, and devotes a chapter to the myth of the Sirens, who, in his reading, beguiled men with song just as men once beguiled animals with music. Quignard muses that some early weapons doubled as instruments: a string stretched across a bow could be resonantly plucked or it could send an arrow through the air. Music relied conspicuously on the slaughter of animals: horsehair bows drawn over catgut, horns torn from the heads of big game.

What to do with these dire ruminations? Renouncing music is not an option—not even Quignard can bring himself to do that. Rather, we can renounce the fiction of music’s innocence. To discard that illusion is not to diminish music’s importance; rather, it lets us register the uncanny power of the medium. To admit that music can become an instrument of evil is to take it seriously as a form of hu­man expression. ♦

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By Lauren Collins

By Jane Mayer

By Bernard Avishai

By Susan B. Glasser

Review | Music, Politics, and Violence - edited by Susan Fast and Kip Pegley Yona Stamatis

Music, Politics, and Violence. Susan Fast and Kip Pegley, eds. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012. [viii, 3208 p. ISBN 9780819573384. $35.00.] Bibliography, index.

{2} Music, Politics, and Violence (2012), a series of essays compiled by Susan Fast and Kip Pegley, is another important work for the advancement of general ethnomusicology theory about music and conflict. Its focused attention on a cross-cultural examination of music and violence within a political context is long overdue. Interestingly, in the introduction to the book, the editors position the volume as simultaneously a part of, but separate from, the growing tradition of music and conflict studies. “[Our] choice of the term violence in this volume, over the more commonly used conflict , is a deliberate departure from existing literature” (2). It is curious that the editors offer little explanation as to how the study of music and violence strays from the tradition of conflict studies.

{3} Perhaps the most important contribution of the book to ethnomusicology is its positioning of music securely within the broader theoretical discussion about violence and the nation state. In the extensive introduction as well as in the short essays that introduce each chapter, Fast and Pegley engage numerous important theoretical studies about violence including Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” (1921), Frantz Fanon’s Concerning Violence” (1963) and Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970). The editors propose that nation states are inherently violent as they “cut or divide up the world – through borders, passports, citizenship papers, counting and managing its populations through the science of the state itself (statistics)” (3). They conclude that since music is fundamentally intertwined in the nation state, it is riddled with violence and conflict.

{4} A central theoretical springboard for the book is Slavoj Žižek’s important theoretical examination of violence, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (2009). The fundamental premise of this book is that subjective violence with a clearly identifiable source is actually the result of systemic violence inherent in less obvious economic and political systems. Žižek urges his readers to explore these hidden systemic causes of violence as a means of understanding the corruption of basic organizational structures such as contemporary versions of democracy. In Music, Politics, and Violence ,Fast and Pegley engage thoroughly with this notion of systemic violence though they maintain a more neutral political stance: they examine music as “a particularly rich medium for perpetuating symbolic violence, which, in turn, often becomes part of a much larger systemic oppression” (27). Fast and Pegley do disagree with Žižek’s approach to music and violence. They are particularly keen on undoing his assumption that music maintains an inherent transcendent quality somehow expressing ideas and emotions where words fail, and that it thus somehow lies outside of the realm of everyday social context: “We cannot use music to keep our reflections on violence at some respectful distance. Indeed, we must uncover precisely how music does its cultural work, which is what the essays in this volume seek to do” (12). Music, Politics, and Violence emphasizes the social construction of musical meaning, clearly explaining why this is fundamental to understanding the connections between music and violence in a political context.

{5} The nine essays that comprise Music, Politics, and Violence examine the dialogic relationship between music and violence in diverse chronological and geographical contexts. While such a book might have been held together solely by virtue of its basic subject matter, the editors skillfully bring together the numerous case studies with an extensive introductory chapter and carefully integrated theoretical prefaces to each essay. The clear organization of the introductory chapter and of the entire book around three critical theoretical trajectories makes clear to the reader the larger framework of the text. These three theoretical trajectories examine the dialogic relationship between violence and the nation state: Slavoj Žižek’s discussion of subjective, objective and systemic violences and their surrounding discourses of action and inaction; notions of belonging and/or “otherness” within nation-states, ideas incorporated by numerous scholars of violence including Jacques Derrida, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak; and examinations of public and private memorials as tools of justification for committing violence against the dead as discussed by Judith Butler and Sharon Rosenberg.

{6} The book is divided into three parts. Part I, titled “Objective and Subjective Violences,” examines the violent use of music during wartime. Particular attention is paid to the emotional and physical harm caused by music and to the role of music in defining categories of difference and ‘Otherness.’ The four chapters in Part I cover a broad range of conflicts including World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav Wars and the invasion of Iraq. In Chapter One, “‘A Healing Draft for a Sick People’: War in the Pages of the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik , 1914–1918,” Nicholas Attfield examines one of the best known and longest running German-language music journals Neue Zeitschrift für Musik .The focus of the chapter is how political ideology played a surprisingly major role in guiding the journal contents and how the journal reflected subsequently the nation’s war effort. In Chapter Two, “The Afterlife of Neda Ukraden: Negotiating Space and Memory through Popular Music after the Fall of Yugoslavia, 1990–2008,” Catherine Baker discusses the case of Yugoslavian singer Neda Ukraden to demonstrate how musical biographies “become subject to recontextualization and reworking in conditions of ethno-political conflict” (60). Baker examines the erasure of multiple identities in what she characterizes as a violent process to create meaningful identities for newly-formed nation states. In Chapter Three, “Between the Lines: ‘Lili Marlene,’ Sexuality, and the Desert War,” Christina Baade examines the way in which the song “Lili Marlene” was enjoyed across enemy lines during World War II. Also, the author focuses upon three key wartime performers of the song, Lale Andersen, Anne Shelton and Marlene Dietrich, examining how they negotiated the ambivalent sexuality and sentiment of the song in live performance for soldiers and for other audiences. James Deaville traces the history and development of music integrated into televised American news broadcasts of war in Chapter Four, titled “The Changing Sounds of War: Television News Music and Armed Conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq.” He emphasizes a profound transformation in the sound and function of this music during the years between the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War, complicating the ways in which “music served as a primary agent for the transformation of the American living room into the site for war’s ‘virtual reality’” (106).  

{7} Part II, “Violence and Reconciliation,” is divided into three chapters that examine the diverse roles of music in processes of reconciliation during and after violent conflict. In Chapter Five, “Revivals and New Arrivals: Protest Song in the Al-Aqsa Intifada,” David A. McDonald writes about Palestinian expressive culture since the escalation of the al-Aqsa intifada in 2002. With special attention to various types of protest song, McDonald engages ethnographic analysis of individual performances and events to discover how Palestinian ideational strategies are embodied and performed from within various politico-nationalist frames.  In Chapter Six, “Pax Mevlana: Mevlevi Sufi Music and the Reconciliation of Islam and the West,” Victor A. Vicente explores the role of Sufi poetry, music and ritual in countering the “increasing ‘rift’ between the Muslim world and the West” (150). With a particular focus on the music of followers of Mevlana Rumi, Vicente examines moments of musical reconciliation as well as moments of increased tensions found in state-sponsored sema whirling shows, private zikr ceremonies, and popular music performances that incorporate Sufi themes and sounds. Chapter Seven, “Choreographing (against) Coup Culture: Reconciliation and Cross-Cultural Performance in the Fiji Islands,” explores the symbolic power of hybrid music performance in the Fiji Islands. Through an examination of two contrasting performances, one government sponsored and the other “grassroots” that incorporate the music of Indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, ethnomusicologist Kevin C. Miller investigates music and dance as a critical site for nation making in the midst of ethnic tension and multiculturalist discourse on a local and national level.

{8} Part III, “Musical Memorializations of Violent Pasts,” investigates the ways in which music and musicians provide narratives of remembrance for violent histories. In Chapter Eight, “Complementary Discourses of Truth and Memory: The Peruvian Truth Commission and the Canción Social Ayacuchana,” Jonathan Ritter examines how recent violence against the state involving the Shining Path guerillas is woven into local and national historical narratives. Ritter presents a fascinating comparison between the official commemorative work of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and that of canción social ayacuchana musicians. While both served to commemorate violent histories through similar discourse, their divergences in content and style raise interesting questions about the nature and value of local and national narratives of remembrance in the public sphere. The final chapter in the book is “National Identity After National Socialism: German Receptions of the Holocaust Cantata, Jüdische Chronik (1960/1961)” by Amy Lynn Wlodarski. This chapter engages with broader questions of German memorializing of the holocaust and of how in the aftermath of the war, cultural memory was shared between the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany and of the German Democratic Republic. Using the Holocaust Cantata Jüdische Chronik (1960/1961) as a case study, Wlodarski adeptly demonstrates how one composition can present divergent paths of remembrance and serve ulterior motives: Wlodarski posits that the cultural prominence of the Cantata in the German Democratic Republic was due less to sentiments of guilt or reconciliation and more to its use by the state as a pawn in Cold War politics.  

{9} Ethnomusicologist J. Martin Doughtry provides a thoughtful and inspiring Afterword to the book titled “From Voice to Violence and Back Again.” In this essay, Doughtry skillfully ties the nine essays of the book together through a philosophical engagement with the voice and with violence in which he challenges conventional understandings of their intersections: “[I]t is clear that we need a definition of violence that does not put it in opposition to voice, or to music” (257). Doughtry proposes that violence is not merely an activity engaged when the voice is no longer effective; it is an activity that incorporates the voice as systemically and subjectively as Fast and Pegley propose that violence and politics incorporate music.

{10} Music, Politics, and Violence makes a convincing case for the need for conflict studies framed specifically around music and violence and presents a tenable theoretical framework for doing so with cross-cultural applicability. Incorporating the work of a number of renowned scholars who examine theoretical implications of various social constructs including violence, national identity, and public and private space, editors Susan Fast and Kip Pegley successfully and organically integrate music into larger theoretical discussions about violence and the nation state. As such, they offer a fully integrated theoretical framework for examining music and violence from a cross-cultural perspective and emphasize the importance of considering the role of music in moments of systemic, subjective or objective violence. In the words of the editors, “music is never neutral, and we cannot turn a blind eye to how it is used for violent purposes in the realm of the political” (27).

Yona Stamatis is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Associated Faculty of the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Springfield.  

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah. On Violence . New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970.

Benjamin, Walter. “Critique of Violence.” In Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings , translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Schocken Books, 1986 [1921].

Fanon, Frantz. “Concerning Violence.” In The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963.

Fast, Susan and Kip Pegly, eds. Music, Politics, and Violence . Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012.

O’Connell, John Morgan and Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, eds. Music and Conflict . Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

Pettan, Svanibor, ed. Music, Politics and War: Views from Croatia . Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, 1998

Pieslak, Jonathan. Sound Targets . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009.

Sweeney, Regina M. Singing Our Way to Victory: French Cultural Politics and Music During the Great War . Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

Žižek, Slavoj. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2006. 

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• Music, Politics, and Violence

In this Book

• edited by Susan Fast and Kip Pegley
• Published by: Wesleyan University Press
• Series: Music Culture

Table of Contents

• Title Page, Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• pp. vii-viii
• Introduction
• PART I: OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE VIOLENCES
• 1. “A Healing Draft for a Sick People”: War in the Pages of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 1914–1918
• 2. The Afterlife of Neda Ukraden: Negotiating Space and Memory through Popular Music after the Fall of Yugoslavia, 1990–2008
• 3. Between the Lines: “Lili Marlene,” Sexuality, and the Desert War
• 4. The Changing Sounds of War: Television News Music and Armed Conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq
• pp. 104-126
• PART II: VIOLENCE AND RECONCILIATION
• 5. Revivals and New Arrivals: Protest Song in the Al-Aqsa Intifada
• pp. 129-149
• 6. Pax Mevlana: Mevlevi Sufi Music and the Reconciliation of Islam and the West
• pp. 150-170
• 7. Choreographing (against) Coup Culture: Reconciliation and Cross-Cultural Performance in the Fiji Islands
• pp. 171-193
• PART III: MUSICAL MEMORIALIZATIONS OF VIOLENT PASTS
• 8. Complementary Discourses of Truth and Memory: The Peruvian Truth Commission and the Canción Social Ayacuchana
• pp. 197-222
• 9. National Identity after National Socialism: German Receptions of the Holocaust Cantata, Jüdische Chronik (1960/1961)
• pp. 223-242
• Afterword: From Voice to Violence and Back Again
• pp. 243-263
• Bibliography
• pp. 265-293
• List of Contributors
• pp. 295-297
• pp. 299-308
• Further Reading
• pp. 309-311

Additional Information

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Summer Sale Ends Soon:

The Impact of Violent Music Lyrics on Kids

Words by Joseph Pratt

Published on

MAY 07, 2024

Warning: Reader Discretion Advised

The following content may disturb readers as it contains graphic material that describes domestic violence, murder, violence against children, and suicide.

Picture this: a child with headphones on, lost in the world of aggressive beats and contentious lyrics. Are they destined for delinquency, or just vibing to the beat?

Society has long debated the impact of violent music on young minds.  

Researchers have suggested that exposure to violent music lyrics has been linked to emotional and behavioral problems , including aggression, substance abuse, risky sexual behaviors, and suicide.

One study found a relationship between violent song lyrics and an increase in aggressive thoughts and feelings of hostility.

The 2024 dispute between high-profile artists Drake and Kendrick Lamar provides a great example. What started as two rappers exchanging diss tracks full of violent, threatening lyrics spilled into “real world” violence with a drive-by shooting at Drake’s home just days after Lamar used a photo of the lavish mansion as album art, effectively doxxing the home address.

Parents of teens have good reason to be interested in this discussion. They want to know what they can do to encourage their children to make healthy music choices . 

Here is what the research says about the impact of violent music on youth.

Murder, Violence, and Suicide—Common Themes

Consider these disturbing lyrics in the hit “Kim,” penned over 20 years ago by rapper Eminem and still popular today. 

Murder of a spouse, violence in front of a child, revenge, and suicide are the prevailing themes.  Rolling Stone describes it as “Eminem screaming at his ex in an insane stream-of-consciousness hate spew” and characterizes it and the entire album as “loud, wild, dangerous, out of control, grotesque, unsettling”

Though this is just one example, it illustrates how graphic violence in music can be.

Other popular songs depict violence in just as much striking detail. This content normalizes these antisocial, violent behaviors, especially in the developing minds of children. 

Such destructive messages impact the listener’s worldview , attitudes, and tolerance for violence and misogyny. These lyrics discourage the growth of empathy, whereas prosocial lyrics seem to be the “key factor” influenced by music with prosocial lyrics.

Who Enjoys Listening to Violent Music?

Personality, self-view, and cognitive abilities influence what kind of music people enjoy. 

For instance, those who score lower for agreeableness and conscientiousness are more likely to be fans of violent music genres , such as death metal or gangster rap.When a child within our influence struggles in these ways, decreasing access to violent music and increasing exposure to positive music , regardless of the genre, is a best practice.

Engagement with violent [music content] has been linked with emotional and behavioral problems, including aggressive behaviors and drug and alcohol use. —Dr. William Forde Thompson, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University

How Does Violent Music Affect Youth?

Most research suggests violent lyrics both increase anger and aggressiveness and decrease positive emotions.

Some studies propose the inverse is true—that prosocial lyrics increase empathy and positive mood .

Even so, it is plausible that long-term, regular exposure to violent music desensitizes listeners to violence. 

Evidence from other violent media forms supports this explanation.

Many of us adults have jammed out to a song from our younger days, only to realize the innocent lyrics we remember are actually inappropriate. That’s because adults have the development and experience to sift through messaging that a child cannot yet process.

Violent video games have been linked to “increased aggressive behaviors and decreased empathy.”

Music Choice, Friend Groups, and Friends’ Behavior as Warning Signs

A National Center for Biotechnology Information study shows the influence of music choice and friend groups on adolescent misbehavior.

Friend groups are often formed and maintained by a shared preference in music.

This is not a call to ban any specific genre of music; to categorize any genre as responsible for childhood maladies and societal decline oversimplifies the issue. As parents we can create a family culture of sharing playlists and talking with kids about their music choices as a way to identify warning signs.

If we notice a change in mood, behavior, and family connection and a teen seeks friends who engage in damaging behavior, there is cause for concern.

Does Violent Music Cause Violent Behavior?

In short, the answer is maybe . 

Exposure to violent content certainly normalizes deviant and illegal acts perpetrated by violent offenders. 

It also can poison the emerging worldview of a child and impact their relationships with others. 

Over time, this seems to have the potential to harm temperament. 

Whether this results in violent behavior depends on individual personality, life circumstances, and predisposition.

Steering children toward upbeat, positive songs is the safest route.

Continued conversations about the music in your home and on your family’s devices will provide a chance for connection. 

Though we can’t know everything our kids listen to, we do have control over what types of music they can access through devices we provide. 

Streaming platforms offer kids almost unlimited access to popular music—much of it with explicit lyrics and adult themes. Most of these services don’t offer parent controls or rely on inadequate filters .

For these reasons, a safe streaming app is a smart choice for protecting children.

Parents don’t have to worry because songs with profanity, violence, and sexual innuendo aren’t just filtered out, they simply are not included in an app’s library.

For many families, a clean streaming service is the perfect answer. Kids are protected from destructive messages, at least on their personal devices.

Conversations about music choices are still the best way to set boundaries and teach kids about how the content we consume affects us.

Music streaming services today are built for adults, with kids as an afterthought. Gabb Music is different. Completely safe from the start, kids and parents alike can listen freely.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments!

Joseph Pratt

Joseph Pratt joined Gabb as a writer and researcher because he finds immense fulfillment in helping parents empower their children. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in English from Brigham Young University. Learn More

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Mom of teens on Nov 05, 2023 03:42 PM

This is so true!! As a parent. I really appreciate your approach on this. I wish there was a way to do this on school Chromebooks as well...!!

• elements are the same like in depth-1 level -->

Gabb on Nov 07, 2023 09:06 AM

Kelley Riley on Feb 27, 2024 11:15 AM

This blog post has left us feeling grateful and inspired

avenue17 on Feb 28, 2024 11:47 AM

Many thanks for the information.

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7 Music and violence: Working with youth to prevent violence

• Published: May 2019
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The prevention of youth violence is one of the major challenges of our time. Based on important key concepts on youth violence from the report of the World Health Organization, opportunities are presented for music therapy with youth to prevent violence. As music in its various forms reaches a very large number of young people all around the world on an emotional level, it is important to note its special ability to promote aggressive emotions as well as to regulate these same emotions. Integrated with more mainstream approaches, music therapy can have preventive potential at different levels: in individual settings, group programmes, and community approaches. Different music therapy approaches for the challenges of violence prevention are presented and developmental tasks for the future are discussed.

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‘How a healthy community should be’: how music in youth detention can create new futures

Deputy Director (Research), Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University

Disclosure statement

Alexis Anja Kallio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Griffith University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Many young people in contact with the justice system come from backgrounds of extreme poverty, parental abuse or neglect, parental incarceration and disrupted education.

These complex traumas often manifest as addictions to drugs or alcohol, mental health challenges, poor physical health and wellbeing, and conduct disorders.

How we can effectively respond to offending by these vulnerable young people remains a contentious topic .

“Tough on youth crime” approaches are notoriously ineffective: 85% of young people in Australia reoffend within a year of release , and research from the United Kingdom suggests periods of detention increase the frequency and severity of offending.

Innovative solutions are urgently needed to reduce youth offending in ways that prioritise the best interests of the child .

Music can provide incarcerated youth with opportunities to redefine themselves from young offenders to young artists with creative potential.

Music as an arena for change

My analysis of international studies on music programs in youth detention centres found music can help young people to process trauma, build confidence, improve self-regulation, engage with learning, establish positive social relationships, and generate the hope needed to imagine new futures.

When we include music programs run for justice-engaged youth in community settings, researchers have identified more than 560 wellbeing benefits, including reductions in aggression and violence, a sense of cultural identity and belonging, and improvements in self confidence, trust and empathy.

The transformative potential of music is evident across musical styles and program approaches, from choirs to Javanese Gamelan groups to hip hop workshops.

However, my research suggests music programs need to be carefully designed and implemented to have lasting impact. Importantly, young people need to be given freedom to explore and express who they are and have opportunities to forge trusting relationships with peers and adults.

Music as a safe space

Music programs can alleviate the stressors of incarceration. The Australian Children’s Music Foundation runs music programs in five youth detention centres around Australia, often through guitar or songwriting workshops.

Musicians shared that these programs were not only an escape, but could “change the atmosphere” from a very intense environment in which youth are often wary and tense to one where they can dream and play.

One musician described

[there is a big] difference in the kids’ reactions and their interactions between the guards who are responsible for saying ‘get in your cell now, we’re locking the doors’, and musicians.

Bringing together all of the senses to learn a complex skill, such as playing guitar, means

kids are forgetting about everything that happened yesterday and not thinking about everything that might happen later. They’re thinking about what’s happening right now, so that already is a game changer.

Not a classroom

Musicians Scott “ Optamus ” Griffiths and Rush Wepiha of Banksia Beats emphasise, their program is not a classroom and they are not teachers.

Taking place at Banksia Hill Detention Centre in Western Australia, Griffiths describes Banksia Beats as “simulating how a healthy community should be”.

Youth can participate to whatever extent they feel comfortable. This might involve writing rhymes, laying down beats, rapping, adjusting the microphone, holding a notebook for someone, providing feedback or ideas for others, or simply listening.

In this way, young people can develop trusting relationships and learn from each other as much as they do their facilitators.

Music as creative guidance

Particularly when incarcerated young people have little control over their lives, having ownership over their own stories through music can be significant.

This is not always a comfortable process.

Australian Childrens’ Music Foundation founder Don Spencer noted

it’s not ‘let’s all sing happy songs today’. Some of the songs that young people write are not happy songs, there’s no way you can make everything happy with what’s going on! But it’s the experience that we want to be positive.

The opportunity to experiment through music can be seen as a way to “try on” new identities and ways of interacting with others.

Musicians described music as a form of self care, with youths often requesting to learn songs they had “listened to with their mum and dad” – an important source of comfort and hope in an otherwise isolating environment .

This work demands that musicians build rapport and a safe environment for youth to share who they are, process their experiences, and imagine where they might belong. This can be challenging with young people who have been repeatedly let down by adults and society in general.

As Spencer says:

no matter what happens, you’ve got to be there next time. It’s not like young people can do whatever they want to us, but if there’s a conflict we say ‘Okay, that’s not right, I’d like you to think about it. I’ll see you next time, and we’ll try again’.

Griffiths and Wepiha emphasised they “always validate” young peoples’ lyrics and rhymes , even if they initially seem problematic.

Rather than forbidding swearwords or certain topics, or having a more moralising response, Banksia Beats uses such instances as opportunities to talk through the issues important to the young people themselves.

Music offers a non-confrontational way for musicians to guide the youths to reflect critically on their past experiences and understandings, and make positive decisions for their own futures.

Music as a right, not a reward

Musicians I have interviewed all agree that music programs should not be used to reward young people for good behaviour, only to be taken away if they don’t comply. Framing music as a reward – rather than a right – has the potential to mitigate the transformative potentials of music programs by subsuming them within broader carceral systems of discipline and control.

Music programs should be an alternative, safe, creative space where everyone belongs.

Rather than an intervention to “fix” young people while they also navigate the stressors of detention, music might also be an effective early intervention strategy . By reducing our overreliance on punitive responses to youth offending - which are “particularly unhelpful” at meeting the trauma-related and developmental needs of youth, we can imagine how such programs could change youth justice more broadly.

The question now is how we might make such programs available for the young people who need them the most. As one musician I interviewed asked, “how can music change the life of someone that isn’t given the opportunity?”

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Music Industry — Violence in Music and Media and Its Effects on Children

Violence in Music and Media and Its Effects on Children

• Categories: African American African American History Music Industry

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Published: Jul 17, 2018

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CLINTON LINDSAY » BREAKING NEWS , Featured » DOES DANCEHALL MUSIC INFLUENCE CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN JAMAICA?

DOES DANCEHALL MUSIC INFLUENCE CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN JAMAICA?

November 29th, 2020 | Add a Comment

Gladstone Taylor/Multimedia Photo Editor —Professor Donna Hope says the crime and violence problem Jamaica is facing goes way beyond dancehall music.–

In a recent Instagram post, dancehall artiste, Bounty Killer, condemned the recent execution-style killing of an 81-year-old grandmother and her two grandchildren aged ten and six.

The entertainer, born Rodney Pryce, denounced the act as barbaric and lamented that if Jamaica continues down this gruesome path then “dog nyam we supper”. In response, some social media users called out the deejay for the part, they say, Killer and his colleagues have played in enriching the culture of violence now plaguing the society.

They pointed out that with the artiste’s extensive catalogue of “gun songs”, he, and other entertainers in the dancehall, have fed the monster of crime and the beast is haunting us now more than ever.

It’s not a position held by Professor Donna Hope. In an interview with  The Sunday Gleaner , Hope, a cultural and entertainment authority, expressed that dancehall music is usually one of the first tenets of society to be blamed for the atrocities the country is now drowning in because the genre was birthed from reflecting on “violent situations”.

“One of the things that I find is that whenever there is a spike in criminality and murders, the powers that be, and persons who are supposed to be taking care of us like the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) seem to always attack dancehall. It seems almost like its good PR to target dancehall. And you and I know that crime and violence comes from a lot of different places. Dancehall perhaps has celebrated it in some ways, but the crime and violence problem we are having in this country goes way beyond dancehall music,” she said.

EASY TARGET

Hope says it is dancehall’s connection to the realities of the inner city that often makes it such an easy target.

“The problem why the music is always blamed is because dancehall has that connection with the hardcore lifestyle of Jamaica that involves guns. Dancehall comes from the garrisons, the ghettos where the guns play a big part. A lot of artistes grew up in these communities where they saw a lot of the things they sing about playing out before their eyes. We spend a lot of time in dancehall talking about guns because Jamaica is a violent society and guns have been a part of the lifestyle of Jamaica,” said Hope.

“In Jamaica, people know when a bullet connects with flesh, and some guys will tell you from the sound of the bullet, they know what kind of gun it came from and that’s because of the intimate relationship they have with guns in some of these places. And these are not guys who are criminals or people firing guns, but they live in a community where guns are a part of the lifestyle, and so they can’t escape it,” she continued.

“So the intimacy with guns becomes a big part of dancehall and then everybody who comes into dancehall even if they don’t live in that kind of situation, it’s almost like a rite of passage. Artistes know that in order for dem to buss in dancehall, dem affi have gyal tune and gun tune. It is a ritual.”

Gutty Bling, producer for dancehall artiste Skillibeng agreed. He expressed that he doesn’t play too much into the gun culture in dancehall, and usually encourages his artistes to expand their musical horizons. However, he says he understands why male dancehall artistes would play into the gun rhetoric.

“More while when the artiste do dem gun song deh, a di biggest forward dem ever get inna dem career and das why nuff a dem love it differently. Respect levels go up when yuh talk about certain things inna song and who nuh want respect as a dancehall artiste?” he questioned, as he pointed out that guns are seen as a symbol of power in Jamaica.

“Mi think international and a only one and two gun songs will get weh overseas and das why my aim as a producer is not to push out gun music. But majority a di time di man dem a medz the gun songs and mi understand why. Once yuh get a badman tune and it buss inna dancehall, yuh start get certain ratings. Is a culture thing from before me born weh singing about guns get yuh certain respect. And it nuh only go fi when artiste a sing bout murdering people, it also goes when dem a tell yutes things like it nuh look good fi a kill old people and children. But, you know people nah go see dat part of the music. Dem nah go recognize when artiste a go against killings and gun violence, only when dem a embrace it,” he shared.

Songwriter and dancehall artiste, Savage, shared similar sentiments. The entertainer who is responsible for penning the track,  Gully Christmas  back in 2009, which came under heavy scrutiny for turning what was considered a joyful time of year into another celebration of guns and murders, said artistes have condemned gun violence in their songs, but expressed that dancehall is seldom recognized for positive rhetoric.

“I really don’t want the people dem fi go too hard pan the music industry because dancehall is culture. Dancehall music talks about a lot of what is happening in real-time in the ghettos with the poorer class and most a di man dem weh rise form these places a sing bout dem life and weh dem see happen around dem. Most of these gun song stem from reality and is not just baay killing songs. Nuff man sing gun song weh a make man and man know say da lifestyle yah anuh supmn fi follow up because a two roads it lead to: death or prison. Why dem nuh talk bout that when dem a talk bout gun songs weh dancehall artistes sing?” he questioned.

The artiste, whose given name is Simone Daley, says the bad is often highlighted more frequently that the good.

“Nuff man sing about doing the crime and nuh care, but man talk bout the consequences of gun violence too, but I guess the negative is always easier to glorify. For example, if I was to see an old lady going across the road and mi hold her hand and cross her, I would get no recognition. But if I was to see that same old lady and push her dung while she a cross, everybody would be talking about it,” he said.

“Mi just think the artiste dem need a break because a nuff artiste sing gun song and never get caught up in no gun nothing yet,” he continued.

“Bounty Killer is a perfect example of that because a him sing ‘big things a gwaan 2004, mi have a gun weh name see you no more’, but yuh never hear say Bounty Killer get charged fi a gun or get hol’ wid a gun or nothing like dat. Him have the personality like a badman and him have the image because dancehall nuh deal wid coward and timid people, but him separate him dancehall persona from him real-life image. The dancehall crowd respect him as the five-star general, but people outside of dancehall also respect him cuz him nuh live weh him sing.”

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Sean Combs’ Violence Against Women Goes Back to College, Classmates Say

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ alleged violence toward women dates back to his days as a student at Howard University in the late 1980s, when the future hip-hop mogul purportedly attacked a girlfriend outside of her dorm, horrifying her classmates and friends, three sources claim to Rolling Stone.

Combs allegedly screamed in a “belligerent” manner for the young woman to come outside, and  began hitting her with what appeared to be a belt when she emerged, according to one eyewitness. “She was trying to defend herself a little bit,” the eyewitness says. “She was crying. And we were telling him, ‘Get off of her.’ We were screaming for her.” (The woman at the center of the alleged attack declined to speak with Rolling Stone. )

The previously unreported incident was part of a six-month Rolling Stone investigation into the Bad Boy Entertainment founder. The career-spanning article, published Tuesday and including interviews with more than 50 people, also uncovered new details of alleged physical aggression inside Bad Boy’s offices and claims that Combs sexually harassed a business associate at a party he threw to celebrate his 2001 acquittal in a nightclub shooting.

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While many were shocked by the claims made against Combs — some of which were corroborated by surveillance footage obtained by CNN that shows Combs beating Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 — several women who attended Howard with Combs say they had seen signs of a controlling and abusive personality even before the mogul’s career began. 

Combs arrived at the esteemed college in the fall of 1987 and quickly earned a reputation for throwing legendary, rowdy parties. While some alums remember Combs for his “once-in-a-lifetime” bashes and over-the-top, flamboyant personality, others recall fits of rage, acts of unwanted touching, and public violence. 

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Sean 'diddy' combs: 10 key takeaways from our six-month investigation, bad boy for life: sean combs’ history of violence.

One of the former students says Combs would often turn up to his girlfriend’s English class, tapping on the window to get her to ditch the lesson. The visits were a regular occurrence and eventually became noticeably unwelcome, the classmate says. “She would tense up [when Combs arrived]. Her energy shifted,” the student, who sat next to the woman in class, recalls. “He just had a weird control thing. I felt like she was fearful.” 

Another classmate says she kept “as far away as possible” from Combs after he “caressed” her back without warning and asked if she would be willing to meet one of his friends. Another former student remembers Combs “flying off the handle” and yelling at her simply because she questioned him cutting a cafeteria line.

Combs’ alleged violence toward women was a pattern that followed him throughout his life, according to two lawsuits and sources. Former Bad Boy president Kirk Burrowes says he once saw Combs attack a woman inside Bad Boy’s office in 1994. He and another ex-employee tell Rolling Stone they had to tear Combs off the woman after hearing screams and the sound of shattering glass. (The woman declined Rolling Stone’ s request for comment.) 

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While Combs’ future is still uncertain — a federal investigation looms after Homeland Security agents raided his homes in March — some who knew Combs at Howard have long suspected his legacy would end in disgrace. “None of this was really a surprise for me,” says one of the Howard alums who had knowledge of Combs’ attack on a classmate. “You’re already an abuser [in college]. You were already feeling you had to have certain power over people.” Another says Combs must now face accountability: “It’s time.”

For the full story, read Rolling Stone‘ s complete feature Bad Boy for Life .

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Sean “diddy” combs’ history of violence dates back to college days, according to new investigation.

In a bombshell report, Rolling Stone reveals historical allegations of assault against the scandal-plagued music mogul.

By Abid Rahman

Abid Rahman

International Editor, Digital

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Amid a blizzard of legal trouble, a new in-depth report has raised troubling claims of historical abuse against Sean “ Diddy ” Combs, and allegations from former friends, Bad Boy Records employees and artists claiming the scandal-plagued music mogul was a violent figure behind the scenes.

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Several sources told Rolling Stone that Combs showed flashes of violent and controlling behavior during his time at Howard University. In one incident described by some of Combs’ college contemporaries, a “belligerent” Combs allegedly started screaming for his girlfriend to come outside Howard’s Harriet Tubman Quadrangle dorm. The student source said that several female students in the dorm were aware that Combs, known then by his nickname “Puff,” was allegedly attacking his girlfriend outside the building and began raising the alarm in the dorm. “Puff is out here acting crazy. He’s beating her,” the fellow students said, according to the first witness.

A second Howard student who witnessed the alleged attack told Rolling Stone that Combs used what appeared to be a belt to hit the woman “all over the place.” The second witness said Combs appeared “super angry” and was “screaming at the top of his lungs.” The witness said Combs “whupped her butt — like really whupped her butt” and that the woman was “trying to defend herself a little bit. She was crying. And we were telling him, ‘Get off of her.’ We were screaming for her.”

The woman that Combs’ is alleged to have attacked at Howard declined to comment, but Rolling Stone reports that a third source also recalled the incident.

In separate account, Bad Boy employee Felicia Newsome alleged she once had to hold Combs back when he was about to “beat this girl’s ass” after a fight broke out between two women. “I’m holding him by his waist, saying, ‘You need to calm down. This is not your fight,’” Newsome recalled.

The Rolling Stone report alleges that Combs was a controlling figure, unwilling to let the women in his life move on after the end of a relationship. Combs is accused of assaulting late music executive Shakir Stewart at a wedding in Italy, after Stewart had begun a relationship with Combs’ on-and-off partner Kim Porter. During the alleged incident, which occurred in 2000 at music mogul L.A. Reid’s wedding, Combs is accused of seeking out Stewart in his hotel room and assaulting him. Stewart’s mother, Portia Labrie, as well as two of his close friends, said that Combs broke a chair over Stewart’s head. “He left him bleeding on a hotel floor in Italy,” Labrie said. “He had to have stitches and then [Combs] threatened him … ‘I’m going to kill you’ … That’s when I said, ‘You need to get out of this business. This man is crazy.'”

Also on Wednesday, CNN and the L.A. Times reported that federal investigators are preparing grand jury subpoenas for witnesses to testify in the sex-trafficking investigation. The latter report noted that little is known about the federal probe, including the identities of alleged victims. Combs has previously called the probe “nothing more than a witch hunt” via his lawyer . ( The Hollywood Reporter has reached back out to reps for Combs.)

Despite settling the suit with Cassie, Combs has denied assaulting her and also denied the claims in the other sexual assault suits. But he faced further intense scrutiny earlier this month after a 2016 surveillance video that showed him violently assaulting Cassie in a hotel was obtained and released by CNN .

Notably in the Rolling Stone report, three of the women who have accused Combs of sexual assault in recent lawsuits have spoken publicly for the first time and reveal that once they learned of Combs’ alleged pattern of abuse, they came forward in hopes of holding the mogul accountable for his actions. Joi Dickerson-Neal, Crystal McKinney and an anonymous “Jane Doe” spoke about their individual experiences.

Rolling Stone  notes in the report that the magazine sent Combs a detailed list of questions about the new and pending allegations, but that he did not specifically address them. “Mr. Combs cannot comment on settled litigation, will not comment on pending litigation, and cannot address every allegation picked up by the press from any source, no matter how unreliable,” said his lawyer, Jonathan Davis, in the piece.   “We are aware that the proper authorities are conducting a thorough investigation and therefore have confidence any important issues will be addressed in the proper forum, where the rules distinguish facts from fiction.”

THR has also reached out to lawyers for Combs.

May 29, 9:35 a.m. Updated to include reports of possible grand jury subpoenas.

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In the ‘Demandingly Joyful Company’ of Socrates and Plato

More from our inbox:, wrong, tim scott, political violence: lessons from northern ireland, saving marilyn monroe’s house, fafsa mishap.

To the Editor:

Re “ Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato ,” by Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, May 19):

I applaud Professors Emanuel and Küçük and their call for “more Socrates and Plato” in higher education. I add only that their proposals have long been followed at St. John’s College, which I had hoped would merit a mention, since our practices are uncannily similar to what the professors suggest.

To borrow the words of the professors, we offer a “broad-based” education that spans disciplines and is rooted in Great Books. We do so as preparation for “democratic citizenship,” which we embody in “small seminar discussions” led by teachers who function as guides, not experts.

We even give our students, before their first class, a document that outlines the virtues of brevity, “listening at length” and “being willing to go where the argument leads.” That document, “Notes on Dialogue,” was written by Stringfellow Barr, whose close reading of Plato led him to create the unique program of instruction St. John’s College has offered the American republic for nearly 100 years.

We welcome more Socrates and Plato, but our students have been learning in their demandingly joyful company for quite some time.

Brendan Boyle Annapolis, Md. The writer is associate dean for graduate programs at St. John’s College.

What Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük should have highlighted in their otherwise thoughtful argument for renewing higher education’s commitment to “the liberal arts ideals that have made them great” is a more directed focus on what it means to educate students to be intellectuals.

What Socrates, Plato and all the other philosophers and writers whom the authors mention represent are examples of what is historically called “the intellectual.”

Different in form, yet consistent in their desire to know, to learn, to understand, to engage with the hard problems of their day, to discuss, to challenge, to inquire, to provoke, to awaken, to read, to analyze, to reflect: These are the qualities of the intellectual, and we should be educating our college students to embody and practice these dispositions and habits of mind and body from Day 1.

Civic education, as the authors discuss it, should start in early childhood. But anti-intellectualism has so rooted itself in the fibers of higher education that to argue for a liberal arts education is controversial. To argue for educating students to be intellectuals is radical.

Eric J. Weiner East Hampton, N.Y. The writer is a professor of education at Montclair State University.

As a lifelong educator, I think the great books and the great debates over the great questions should be done in high school or even earlier. Why wait until college to engage young people in citizenship? This way when students graduate the foundation is there already, no matter what path they decide on — college or no.

Wasn’t that the idea of public schooling to begin with? Don’t we want to teach to the imagination of students and not just equip them with functional skills?

Julianne Sumner Lenox, Mass.

Re “ Election Updates: Tim Scott Says That Black Americans Would Be Better Off Under Trump ” (nytimes.com, May 26):

I want Senator Tim Scott to explain how Black Americans would be better off under another Trump administration. Mr. Trump has said that he wants to cut back on federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that a large number of Black Americans rely on. He wants to replace Obamacare — again a program that many Black Americans rely on — with what is not exactly clear. He wants to end diversity and inclusion programs.

The White House Office of Environmental Justice will surely be closed. I can’t even begin to list examples of Mr. Trump’s history of racism, starting with refusing to rent to Black tenants , wanting the death penalty for the Central Park Five , etc., etc.

What is good for Black Americans about this? Does Senator Scott think they are as gullible as he is?

Daniel Fink Beverly Hills, Calif.

“ Threats and Fear Are Transforming U.S. Politics ” (front page, May 20) does an important job of highlighting the “steady undercurrent of violence and political risk that has become the new normal” for our public officials.

I just returned from Northern Ireland, a place that experienced decades of civil war; this spring marks 26 years of peace. I was there with a cross-partisan group of U.S. faith leaders and former politicians to learn how Northern Ireland overcame seemingly intractable, violent, identity-based division.

Three main lessons came through. First, when you hold a mirror to American society, we are much further along the path to normalized violent conflict than we know. Second, prolonged violent conflict leads to immense suffering and destruction. Third, a return to peace is never quick.

And the hopeful lesson is that people who used to hate, bomb and maim one another could find common ground. They found this in exhaustion from the killing and pain, a desire for better lives for their children and a sense of common humanity. By painstaking and determined conversation, they found a way to agree. We, in the U.S., need to do the same.

Tom Crick Atlanta The writer is a project adviser with the Carter Center’s Conflict Resolution Program.

Re “ Homeowners Who Planned to Demolish Marilyn Monroe House Sue Los Angeles ” (news article, nytimes.com, May 8):

Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper once said that her Brentwood home, with its thick beams and walls, made the actress feel safe. It became her refuge, a place where she could go when the world became too much. It was also the place where Marilyn kept her beloved collection of books and other items she treasured.

The house wasn’t fancy by Hollywood standards, but it was solely hers, and she loved it. If her “spirit” resides anywhere today, it’s there. Marilyn herself has become a global symbol of not only glamour and sex, but also personal perseverance and courage in the face of great odds. All good reasons to save her beloved Brentwood home from the wrecking ball.

Joe Elliott Arden, N.C.

Re “ Documents Show Missteps in Overhaul of College Aid ” (news article, May 21):

I’m grateful for The Times’s investigation into the yearslong struggle to update the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

I serve as the vice president of programs at Chicago Scholars , a nonprofit that serves students from low-income households or who will be first-generation students and want to attend a four-year college. The FAFSA mishap upended the college decision season for everyone in our organization, and finding workarounds has unfairly fallen to our students and counselors.

Roadblocks like this forced students to choose between a provisional financial aid package and a gap year. Unfortunately, we find that Chicago Scholars students who take a gap year are far less likely to earn a degree. For many of our students, a college degree is the most attainable path to economic mobility, and it is a path they have worked hard to access.

Our students deserve more than they’ve been given in this situation. This latest misstep is only further evidence that they continue to be left behind.

Tamara Hoff Pope Chicago

EU foreign chief says Israel must respect UN court, control settler violence in the West Bank

B RUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's foreign policy chief insisted Sunday that Israel must abide by the U.N. top court's rulings and end its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and, at the same time, questioned the possible involvement of authorities in the settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

On a day that visiting Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa basked in the attention after two EU nations and Norway pledged to recognize a Palestinian state, Josep Borrell further pressured Israel to take immediate actions to make sure that tax income meant for the Palestinian authorities is no longer stopped.

The demands came at the end of the week that saw the international community put increasing pressure on Israel to fundamentally change the course of the war it wages on Hamas in the Gaza Strip through international court action and diplomatic maneuvering.

Borrell insisted Israel had driven the Palestinians to the edge of a catastrophe because “the situation in Gaza is beyond words. The occupied West Bank is on the brink, risking an explosion any time.”

While most of the global attention is centered on Gaza, Borrell said that “we should not forget what’s happening in the West Bank,” where the seat of the Palestinian Authority is based.

“There we see an intensified spiral of violence. Indiscriminate and punishing attacks by extremist settlers, more and more targeting humanitarian aid heading to Gaza. And they are heavily armed. And the question is, who is arming them? And who is not preventing this attack from happening,” Borrell said.

Rights groups and Palestinian residents have said that Israeli forces often provide an umbrella of security to armed settlers attacking Palestinian towns and nomadic communities.

Such settler violence, Borrell said, "is coupled with unprecedented Israeli settlement expansions and land grabbing.”

Borrell also countered Israeli threats to hit the Palestinians financially. On Wednesday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he would stop transferring tax revenue earmarked for the Palestinian Authority, a move that threatens to handicap its already waning ability to pay salaries to thousands of employees.

Under interim peace accords in the 1990s, Israel collects tax revenue on behalf of the Palestinians, and it has used the money as a tool to pressure the PA. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the war in Gaza, Smotrich froze the transfers, but Israel agreed to send the money to Norway, which transferred it to the PA. Smotrich said Wednesday that he was ending that arrangement.

“Unduly withheld revenues have to be released,” said Borrell, with Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide standing next to him.

Eide was in Brussels Sunday to hand over diplomatic papers to Mustafa ahead of Norway's formal recognition of a Palestinian state, a largely symbolic move that has infuriated Israel.

The formal recognition by Norway as well as Spain and Ireland — which all have a record of friendly ties with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, while long advocating for a Palestinian state — is planned for Tuesday.

The diplomatic move by the three nations was a welcome boost of support for Palestinian officials who have sought for decades to establish a statehood in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and still controls.

“Recognition means a lot for us. It is the most important thing that anybody can do for the Palestinian people," said Mustafa. "It is a great deal for us.”

Some 140 countries — more than two-thirds of the United Nations — recognize a Palestinian state but a majority of the 27 EU nations still do not. Several have said they would recognize it when the conditions are right.

The EU, the United States and Britain, among others, back the idea of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel but say it should come as part of a negotiated settlement.

Belgium, which holds the EU presidency, has said that first the Israeli hostages held by Hamas need to be freed and the fighting in Gaza must end. Some other governments favor a new initiative toward a two-state solution, 15 years after negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed.

Sunday's handover of papers came only two days after the United Nations’ top court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in the latest move that piled more pressure on the increasingly isolated country .

Days earlier, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Hamas officials.

The war in Gaza started after Hamas-led militants stormed across the border, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage. Israel’s ensuing offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and has caused a humanitarian crisis and a near-famine.

Cassie says Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ violence ‘broke me down’ after assault video surfaces

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For Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, who sued ex-boyfriend and embattled music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs for alleged assault and abuse, “it takes a lot of heart to tell the truth out of a situation that you were powerless in.”

The 37-year-old singer on Thursday opened up about her experience with domestic violence and the support she has received since video of Combs assaulting Ventura surfaced last week . She wrote in an Instagram statement that the “outpouring of love has created a place for my younger self to settle and feel safe, but this is only the beginning.”

She added: “Domestic Violence is THE issue. It broke me down to someone I never thought I would become.”

Last week, CNN published security footage from 2016 of Combs kicking, grabbing, dragging and throwing a glass vase at Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel. Months before the damning footage came to light, Ventura detailed the assault in a lawsuit filed in November 2023. In her complaint, filed in U.S. District Court, Ventura alleged that Combs “became extremely intoxicated and punched” her in the face, “giving her a black eye” during an attack in March 2016. Combs denied her allegations and the lawsuit was settled a day after it was filed.

Entertainment & Arts

‘Pathetic’: Cassie slams Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ apology for 2016 assault caught on video

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ weekend apology related to 2016 video footage showing him assaulting Casandra ‘Cassie’ Ventura ‘is more about himself,’ her attorney says.

May 20, 2024

The video “further confirmed the disturbing and predatory behavior of Mr. Combs,” Douglas H. Wigdor, Ventura’s lawyer, told The Times in a statement last week.

Despite his initial denials, Combs issued an apology Sunday, saying in an Instagram post, “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video.” He faced more backlash as critics, including Ventura’s legal team and Combs’ ex-bodyguard , questioned his sincerity.

Behind the calamitous fall of hip-hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

In the wake of multiple lawsuits filed against him, former members of Combs’ inner circle told The Times that his alleged misconduct against women goes back decades.

Dec. 13, 2023

Ventura said that despite the “hard work” she has done to move forward from the 2016 incident, “I will always be recovering from my past.” She also urged her followers and supporters to “open your heart to believing victims the first time.”

Roger Bonds, who served on Combs’ security staff from 2003 to 2012, said in a recent interview that he witnessed the Grammy-winning hip-hop star get violent with women “around four or five times” during his tenure. Ventura’s lawsuit names Bonds as someone who “tried to stop” Combs from beating his then-girlfriend in a 2009 incident.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs seen on video chasing, kicking, dragging then-girlfriend Cassie at L.A. hotel

Surveillance video of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs confirms singer Cassie’s allegations that he brutally assaulted her as she tried to leave a hotel in Los Angeles.

May 17, 2024

Bonds, speaking to Piers Morgan earlier this week, also said Cassie was not the only woman to suffer physical violence from Combs. He alleged that Combs was also physically violent to the late model and actor Kim Porter, with whom Combs shares three children.

In her Instagram post, Ventura did not name her former on-again, off-again partner of 11 years, but she extended a hand to “those that are still living in fear.” She encouraged victims to “reach out to your people, don’t cut them off.”

“No one should carry this weight alone,” she added, before noting that “this healing journey is never ending.”

Ventura is one of six people who have sued Combs for sexual assault, among other allegations, in recent months. On Tuesday, model Crystal McKinney sued Combs , alleging he forced her to perform oral sex at his music studio in 2003.

A timeline of allegations against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

Hip-hop mogul and entrepreneur Diddy has been accused of physical and sexual violence dating back to 1990. Here’s a timeline of the allegations.

May 21, 2024

Amid all the lawsuits, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents conducted searches of Combs’ Holmby Hills and Miami mansions in March as part of a federal inquiry into sex trafficking allegations involving Combs.

Aaron Dyer, one of Combs’ lawyers, called the raids a “witch hunt” in a March statement.

Times staff writers Nardine Saad and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

More to Read

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Witnesses in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ sex-trafficking probe prepare to testify before grand jury, source says

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Alexandra Del Rosario is an entertainment reporter on the Los Angeles Times Fast Break Desk. Before The Times, she was a television reporter at Deadline Hollywood, where she first served as an associate editor. She has written about a wide range of topics including TV ratings, casting and development, video games and AAPI representation. Del Rosario is a UCLA graduate and also worked at the Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap.

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Don McLean’s appearance at White House dinner sends ‘dangerous’ message about domestic violence, ex-wife says

Patrisha McLean criticizes the Biden administration for inviting the singer.

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Singer Don McLean’s appearance at a White House dinner last week was “outrageous” and sends a “dangerous and confusing” message to the world about American attitudes toward domestic violence, McLean’s ex-wife told the Press Herald Wednesday.

Patrisha McLean said the fact that her ex-husband was invited to the prestigious event, despite the fact he pleaded guilty to charges connected to what she calls “a four-hour violent rampage” against her at their Camden home in 2016, sends a signal to the world that a “convicted domestic abuser” is welcome at the White House.

“It’s a dangerous and confusing signal. How can President Biden say he supports women and then give (McLean) this honor, by inviting him?” said Patrisha McLean, founder and CEO of the group Finding Our Voices, which works to support domestic violence survivors in Maine. “It’s a very scary climate we’re in when the president welcomes a convicted domestic abuser and parades him in front of world leaders.”

Calls and emails to the White House from the Press Herald, asking whether officials knew of the charges McLean pleaded guilty to, were not returned.

In wake of abuse allegations, endurance of ‘American Pie’ singer leaves a bitter taste

McLean, 78, was arrested in January 2016 at the Camden home he shared with his then-wife. The incident led to several charges. McLean pleaded guilty to some of them, including domestic violence criminal threatening, and paid a $3,600 fine, while the other charges were dismissed. The couple divorced in June of 2016 after 29 years of marriage.

McLean, best known for his 1971 hit “American Pie,” has denied that he physically assaulted his ex-wife. His lawyer has said McLean pleaded guilty to provide closure for his family and to keep the matter as private as possible. A 10-year “order for protection from abuse” was granted Patrisha McLean, against her ex-husband, in 2019. A copy of the order, filed in Ellsworth District Court and provided to the Press Herald by Patrisha McLean’s lawyer, states that both parties agreed to the order. Advertisement

Don McLean and Paris Dunn arrive at the state dinner in Washington on May 23.   AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

The state dinner on May 23, held in honor of Kenyan President William Ruto, included about 500 invited guests. McLean was among several celebrities at the dinner, including country singer Brad Paisley, who performed, and author Barbara Kingsolver.

In a reply to questions from the Press Herald, Don McLean said in an emailed statement Wednesday that his ex-wife is a “#MeToo hustler” and is “facing 2 counts of ‘contempt of court.’ ” Don McLean filed a motion for contempt against his ex-wife in August in Knox County Court, claiming that Patrisha McLean violated the divorce settlement by talking about or writing about him in public, according to a copy of the motion sent to the Press Herald by Patrisha McLean’s lawyer, Christopher MacLean of Camden.

MacLean said that as an advocate for domestic violence survivors , Patrisha McLean uses her own story but only mentions things about her ex-husband that are already in the public record or in court documents. In 2019, Don McLean   threatened to sue the Free Press of Rockland, a weekly newspaper, for writing about his ex-wife’s exhibition about domestic abuse, which included her own photos.

In his statement to the Press Herald, Don McLean said he had been invited to state dinners at the White House two other times during the Biden administration. He said he spent time at the dinner last week with former President Bill Clinton, whom he had met at the White House previously, and also talked to Paisley.

Patrisha McLean told the Press Herald Wednesday that she had questions about whether or how her ex-husband was vetted before attending the event last Thursday. Don McLean’s name has been linked publicly with state dinners as early as April 2023, when South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol sang “American Pie.” McLean had been invited to that dinner but was on tour in Australia, he said, and provided a signed guitar, which Biden presented to Yoon.

“You don’t get invited to a state dinner without being vetted. How many people up and down the chain knew about (Don McLean’s record) and were OK with it?” said Patrisha McLean. Advertisement

Patrisha McLean said a board member of Finding Our Voices, whom she did not want to name, had written to the White House after the South Korean president’s visit to tell officials about McLean’s arrest and plea deal and to “urge” he not be invited to a White House function. The letter got no response, Patrisha McLean said.

Don McLean said he did not get a chance to chat with Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who also attended the state dinner last Thursday. He said he wanted to offer to perform in Augusta at the capitol building, “as I am proud to have a home in Maine.” Text messages and emails sent to two of Mills’ staff members, asking what she thought of McLean being invited to the dinner, were not returned Wednesday.

Mills has been a supporter of Finding Our Voices. Her photo and a quote from her appears on the group’s website under the heading “Sisterhood of Survivors.” Her quote reads: “Domestic Violence affects everyone. Years ago, a man I loved threatened my life. Escape from violence is possible.”

Regina Rooney, programming director for the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence​, said Wednesday that Don McLean’s invitation to the White House is a familiar example of people in power giving “cultural permission” for violence against women.

“We ought to be careful how we elevate the profiles of abusive people – and they are everywhere in our lives. There is already so much cultural permission for men’s violence, which has a “letting them off the hook” effect on the one using abuse, as well as a silencing and intimidating effect on their victims,” Rooney wrote in an email to the Press Herald. “When we highlight and celebrate abusive people, we only exacerbate these effects.”

In 2019, the UCLA Student Alumni Association rescinded a lifetime achievement award it had decided to give McLean, after learning from a reporter about his plea deal. In 2021 Taylor Swift sent Don McLean flowers after she broke his record for the longest song to hit No. 1. Many major publications wrote about the gesture , with no mention of his plea deal or allegations against him. And last week McLean was interviewed by Grammy.com about his new album, “American Boys.”

Staff Writer Kay Neufeld contributed to this story. 

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EU foreign chief says Israel must respect UN court, control settler violence in the West Bank

The European Union’s foreign policy chief has insisted that Israel must abide by the U.N. top court’s rulings and end its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s foreign policy chief insisted Sunday that Israel must abide by the U.N. top court’s rulings and end its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and, at the same time, questioned the possible involvement of authorities in the settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

On a day that visiting Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa basked in the attention after two EU nations and Norway pledged to recognize a Palestinian state, Josep Borrell further pressured Israel to take immediate actions to make sure that tax income meant for the Palestinian authorities is no longer stopped.

The demands came at the end of the week that saw the international community put increasing pressure on Israel to fundamentally change the course of the war it wages on Hamas in the Gaza Strip through international court action and diplomatic maneuvering.

Borrell insisted Israel had driven the Palestinians to the edge of a catastrophe because “the situation in Gaza is beyond words. The occupied West Bank is on the brink, risking an explosion any time.”

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While most of the global attention is centered on Gaza, Borrell said that “we should not forget what’s happening in the West Bank,” where the seat of the Palestinian Authority is based.

“There we see an intensified spiral of violence. Indiscriminate and punishing attacks by extremist settlers, more and more targeting humanitarian aid heading to Gaza. And they are heavily armed. And the question is, who is arming them? And who is not preventing this attack from happening,” Borrell said.

Rights groups and Palestinian residents have said that Israeli forces often provide an umbrella of security to armed settlers attacking Palestinian towns and nomadic communities.

Such settler violence, Borrell said, “is coupled with unprecedented Israeli settlement expansions and land grabbing.”

Borrell also countered Israeli threats to hit the Palestinians financially. On Wednesday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he would stop transferring tax revenue earmarked for the Palestinian Authority, a move that threatens to handicap its already waning ability to pay salaries to thousands of employees.

Under interim peace accords in the 1990s, Israel collects tax revenue on behalf of the Palestinians, and it has used the money as a tool to pressure the PA. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the war in Gaza , Smotrich froze the transfers, but Israel agreed to send the money to Norway, which transferred it to the PA. Smotrich said Wednesday that he was ending that arrangement.

“Unduly withheld revenues have to be released,” said Borrell, with Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide standing next to him.

Eide was in Brussels Sunday to hand over diplomatic papers to Mustafa ahead of Norway’s formal recognition of a Palestinian state, a largely symbolic move that has infuriated Israel.

The formal recognition by Norway as well as Spain and Ireland — which all have a record of friendly ties with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, while long advocating for a Palestinian state — is planned for Tuesday.

The diplomatic move by the three nations was a welcome boost of support for Palestinian officials who have sought for decades to establish a statehood in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and still controls.

“Recognition means a lot for us. It is the most important thing that anybody can do for the Palestinian people,” said Mustafa. “It is a great deal for us.”

Some 140 countries — more than two-thirds of the United Nations — recognize a Palestinian state but a majority of the 27 EU nations still do not. Several have said they would recognize it when the conditions are right.

The EU, the United States and Britain, among others, back the idea of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel but say it should come as part of a negotiated settlement.

Belgium, which holds the EU presidency, has said that first the Israeli hostages held by Hamas need to be freed and the fighting in Gaza must end. Some other governments favor a new initiative toward a two-state solution, 15 years after negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed.

Sunday’s handover of papers came only two days after the United Nations’ top court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in the latest move that piled more pressure on the increasingly isolated country .

Days earlier, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Hamas officials.

The war in Gaza started after Hamas-led militants stormed across the border, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage. Israel’s ensuing offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and has caused a humanitarian crisis and a near-famine.