MUSDEWAR · Music in Detention during the (Post) Civil-War Era in Greece (1947-1957)
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-12-01 → 2019-11-30
- EU contribution
- €164,653
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-CAR
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Results in brief
Music in Detention during the (Post) Civil-War Era in Greece (1947-1957)
MUSDEWAR studied for the first time the use of music in situations of detention during the (post) Civil-War period in Greece (1947-57). The main objectives were to investigate, document, and theorize the role of music in this context, producing a cutting-edge empirical and theoretical study. The project focused on the infamous camps at the barren island of Makronissos established in 1947 for communists and leftists soldiers, later also including civilians. It critically analysed the ways in which music was an integral part of ‘re-education’, which essentially consisted of brutal torture, hard labour, nationalist and anti-communist speeches. It documented, mapped and analysed forced singing and forced listening, music by command in official choirs and bands, as well as the prisoners' own music. Drawing on (ethno)musicology, social anthropology, history, philosophy, critical theory, and trauma studies, it developed a theoretical framework, producing results and theoretical tools that went beyond the specificities of the case study. Given music’s transformation into a sonic weapon and its institutionalization in 'enhanced' interrogation techniques and captive environment, this project was timely and crucial. It provided a thorough case study that critically explored such uses and and their potential to damage subjectivity, an awareness still missing from the public sphere and, to a great extent, from music research. Despite music's long standing association with punishment and humiliation, musicology and ethnomusicology were historically founded on the notion, dating back to antiquity, of music as an enlightening and therapeutic artform. It is only in the last two decades that research concerning its damaging effects started to gradually surface. Biases about the ennobling and healing character of music have in fact initiated an opening for its instrumentalization as an ideal weapon of terror, making it difficult for survivors, the general public and even perpetrators to recognize its complicity in torture. Music’s elusive nature has also been reinforced by the fact that it leaves no visible marks on the body, making it hard to prosecute in courts of law. And yet research on post traumatic stress disorder shows that practices aiming to cause fear, anxiety and loss of control (like music) tend to have longer side-effects than 'physical torture', something corroborated by survivors. MUSDEWAR's empirical findings and theoretical analysis challenge and redefine perceptions about music's social function, contributing significantly to this emerging field, but also to political and legal debates concerning the criminalization of such practices.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
MUSDEWAR will investigate the use of music in Greek prison camps in the (post) civil-war era (1947-1957). Despite a recent shift in musicology, which has begun to address music’s potential to damage subjectivity, there are still major gaps in the history of music’s use in mass detention camps. Contributing to the wider history of detention camps in the twentieth century, MUSDEWAR will fill this gap by critically examining: (1) the use of music as a means to ‘re-educate’, punish, humiliate and ‘break’ prisoners; (2) ‘performance under orders’: official camp orchestras and choirs; (3) music compositions, performances, and debates on Greek music by intellectuals-detainees. Analysing these aspects will combine historical and empirical research with a critical and theoretical framework. The project will document and reconstruct the use of music and musical life in the camps through archival and textual research, and interviews with former detainees, composers and intellectuals of the time. An interdisciplinary framework will be developed to analyse and interpret research findings, using tools from musicology, history, social anthropology, philosophy, trauma studies and critical theory. MUSDEWAR will deliver a monograph to a major international academic publisher. Moving beyond the humanistic notion of music as an inherently enlightening art, the monograph will synthesize research into an empirically rich and theoretically grounded account of the multifaceted use of music in the Greek camps. Intermediate aims include a project website and two articles to peer-reviewed journals. Actions for networking and knowledge transfer include research presentations, a workshop, a public outreach event (symposium, exhibition), projects in secondary schools, and a proposal for a European Research Council Starting Grant. Results will contribute directly to trans-national public debates about human rights and current forms of detention, particularly with regard to mass asylum seeking in the European Union.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
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Data: CORDIS, © European Union