How Music Became an Instrument of War (David Suisman)

University of Delaware historian David Suisman is known for his research on music and capitalism, particularly his excellent book Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Harvard UP, 2009), which won numerous awards and accolades. Suisman’s new book, Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers (U Chicago Press, 2024), brings that same erudition to the subject of music in the military. It is the most comprehensive look at military music to date, full of fascinating historical anecdotes and insights on what music does for military states and their soldiers. Our conversation explores music as a martial technology, used for purposes of morale, discipline, indoctrination, entertainment, emotional relief, psychological warfare, and torture.In the public episode David and I talk about the military’s use of music from the Civil War through World War Two. Our Patrons will also hear David’s critique of how we think about music in the Vietnam War–he says Hollywood has completely misinformed us on the role of music in that conflict. We’ll also talk about the iPod and our more recent conflicts in the Middle East, and hear a detailed discussion of David’s research and writing methods, plus his reading and listening recommendations. If you’re not a Patron, you can hear the full version, plus all of our other bonus content for just a few bucks a month–sign up at Patreon.com/phantompower. 00:00 Introduction04:20 The US Military’s Investment in Music05:30 Music’s Role in Soldier Training and Discipline12:32 The Evolution of Military Cadences23:22 The Civil War: A Turning Point for Military Music28:21 Forgotten Brass Instruments of the Union Army29:38 The Role of Drummer Boys in the Civil War33:32 Music and Morale in World War I35:48 Group Singing and Community Singing Movement37:28 The YMCA’s Role in Soldier Recreation38:41 Racial Dynamics and Minstrel Shows in Military Music41:47 Music Consumption and the Military in World War II45:27 The USO and Live Entertainment for Troops49:56 Vietnam War: Challenging Musical Myths50:26 Conclusion and Call to Support the PodcastTranscript ​[00:00:00]  David Suisman: I describe music as functioning in some ways as a lubricant in the American War machine. It makes the machine function or allows the machine to function. It enables the machine to function.  Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I just noticed that this month makes seven years that we’ve been doing this podcast, which feels like a pretty nice milestone. And in that time, we’ve really tried to keep the focus on sound as opposed to music. There are a lot of fantastic podcasts about music, not nearly as many taking a really deeply nerdy approach to [00:01:00] questions about sound. And so that’s been our lane. That said, no one has managed to build a wall or police the border between sound and music. It’s a pretty fuzzy boundary and we’ve definitely spent a lot of episodes exploring that fuzzy boundary between the two. And I guess the reason I bring this up is that this season has actually been Pretty musical so far. Our first episode this season was with Eric Salvaggio. We were talking about AI and its implications for music and then our second episode, with Liz Pelley, looked into the effects of Spotify on how we listen to music. So two shows about how new sound technologies are reshaping music. Today’s show puts a slightly different spin on the relationship between music...