David Gray has lambasted American interrogators for allegedly using his music to help extract information from internees in Iraq. Why might his music be chosen and what effect on prisoners is music meant to achieve?
This is not the first we've heard of familiar recordings being used in the "war on terror" - in 2003, Rick Hoffman, a veteran of US psy-ops - "psychological operations" - talked to the BBC about the use of tunes from Sesame Street and Barney The Dinosaur to break the will of Iraqi captives.
And recent reports have added Eminem, the Bee Gees and Neil Diamond to the roster reluctantly referred to by David Gray as "Guantanamo Greatest Hits". But what is it that makes one song more likely than another to be played on a maximum volume loop at terrorist suspects?
I like David Gray’s music but I think tunes from ‘Sesame Street’ and ‘Barney the Dinosaur’ would break me straight away. I’m sure some of the Rap music and garbage (sorry I mean garage….lol) would break a few people as well.
