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Music and Resistance in War and Other Conflicts
War, occupation, and oppression cannot silence music. Contributors trace how sonic acts of resistance—whether Nigerian protest songs and dances, Holocaust compositions, singing during the Civil Rights movement, or the current resignification of Ukrainian songs—rally communities, defy violence, and assert cultural survival.
Authors were asked to examine instances where music and sound have served as a form of resistance or protest during periods of conflict, war, and/or occupation.
I would like to highlight just one, yet deeply powerful example. On 12 June 2022—Russia Day—residents of occupied Kherson played recordings of the Ukrainian national anthem in public spaces. It was an unmistakable act of protest, asserting that Kherson remains part of Ukraine. In the face of military occupation, this gesture of sound became a potent symbol of resistance and national identity.
I know of no more profound or liberatory instance of musicking–in or out of wartime, in or out of occupation, in or out of oppression–than the communal singing that took place during the US Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. The crowds who would gather together in protest of segregation and racial violence drew upon the radical creativity and strength of a singing tradition developed by enslaved Black people, people in bondage who heard in the Christian gospels a philosophy of survival and liberation.1 The spirituals that they created and passed down, along with the practice of singing together, performed multiple labors: they synchronized marches, sacralized space, amplified emotions, galvanized crowds, and infused the protests with an ethical charge that drew from the Christian church among other sources. And they sounded good! And they felt good to sing! There’s a popular story—I believe I first heard Bernice Johnson Reagon tell it—about a voter registration meeting taking place in a church in the South. The town’s sheriff and his deputies, armed with guns and with dogs, burst in, intent on dispersing the crowd. In the terrified silence that ensued, one young man began singing. The group joined him, singing loudly, all together—calming their fear and posing a peaceful challenge to the policemen as they did. Eventually, the sheriff and his men, unnerved, left the building.
The songs of the Civil Rights movement were powerful, but the power of music never resides exclusively in the music itself. The spirituals sung during that period derived much of their power from people who had spent their lives singing in Black congregations, and from a social movement that had been cultivated, slowly and carefully, over the course of many years. In order for music to become a form of resistance, or protest, or even solace, cultural preparation is key. And some situations are so violent for so long that they end up overpowering music’s efficacy for many. I have never gotten over the stories some of the people I talked to in Iraq told me: stories about how they used to love music before the war, but how at some point they became so exhausted and demoralized and overwhelmed that the music they loved no longer helped them, no longer even sounded like music. There are people on this earth who are placed in conditions that push them beyond the territory of music’s efficacy. This is a humbling fact that is important for music scholars to understand.
One of the more powerful examples of both the act of composing, and the act of performing, music serving as a form of resistance (or perhaps more accurately in this case, as a form of defiance), is that of the music-making that occurred in the Nazi-created Jewish ghetto-camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt) during the Second World War. While many of the composers who were imprisoned there did not survive, remarkably some of their scores did. Owing to growing interest from both scholars and performers over the past half-century, we also now are better able to appreciate at least something of how that music may have been intended to be received by its similarly incarcerated audience. The final aria of composer Viktor Ullmann and librettist Pietr Kien’s extraordinary opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The emperor of Atlantis) drew, for instance, on an anti-war text by Felix Braun from 1917 which Ullmann had first set as a (now lost) Symphonic Fantasy (1925). Other parts of the score were likely coded protests against Nazi occupation; a ubiquitous “Hallo, hallo” motive which appears throughout the work derives from Josef Suk’s Asrael Symphony and was also a signifier of Czech self-determination. We also encounter ironic settings of the German national anthem (the Deutschlandlied) and the Lutheran chorale Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.
From today’s perspective, simply by surviving and thus defying the fate the Nazis had intended both for the creators themselves and also for their very culture, the music has gained a further level of resistance, while also challenging performers and audience alike not to forget the circumstances of its creation.
Music can remediate the sentiments of the marginalized and help form coalitions capable of challenging hegemonic power. During Nigeria’s colonial period (1861–1960), two poignant examples led by women illustrate music’s role in anti-colonial protest: the Aba Women’s War in Igboland (1929) and the Abeokuta Women’s Revolt in Yorubaland (1946). In both cases, women resisted new taxation laws and protested the corrupt, self-interested leaders imposed by British colonial authorities. These institutions uniquely marginalized women, who could not publicly challenge male leaders installed through indirect rule and whose market-based livelihoods made them especially vulnerable to taxation. Song and dance were used strategically to ridicule leaders and denounce colonial policies. Although both movements were suppressed with deadly force, they resulted in the revocation of the tax laws and the resignation of some colonial appointees.
In Nigeria’s Fourth Republic (1999–), the #EndSARS protests offer a clear example of music’s role in political resistance. The movement, launched in 2017 by Nigerian human rights activists, aimed to expose abuses by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the Nigerian Police Force. It gained momentum in October 2020, when youth filled the streets of Lagos and Abuja to protest extortion, torture, rape, and retaliatory killings by police. On 20 October 2020 the army opened fire on peaceful protestors at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, killing at least twelve people and injuring hundreds. The shooting quelled months of unrest across Nigerian cities. To this day, the government and security forces deny that the shooting occurred. Nine days later, Grammy-winning Afropop artist Burna Boy released “20:10:20” (2020), a tribute to the victims. The song remediated the traumatic event by incorporating audio from the shooting, challenging official denial and reinforcing solidarity among protestors. This collectivization contributed to the disbandment of SARS and the compensation of victims’ families.
Although not technically music, bell ringing (Christian) and calls to prayer (adhān, Muslim) have served as sonic talismans for hundreds of years—unifying communities, folding bodies in rhythmical supplication, circumscribing neighborhoods, asserting religious identity, and marking time.2 Yet war generates special circumstances that shape human perception of sound and heighten sound’s role.3 Bells and prayer calls not only communicated the rhythms of the day, but called people to arms or asserted victory.4 For example, Nil Basdurak has shown that Qur’anic recitation was leveraged by authorities in Istanbul to foment public resistance towards the (failed) 2016 coup attempt.5 Yet the history of such strategic use of prayer calls stretches back hundreds of years. During the Thirteen Years’ War (1593–1606), between the Austrian Habsburgs and Ottomans, fortresses and cities along the Central European borderlands changed hands several times. Following Ottoman conquests some churches were burned, and others converted into mosques.6 The victors destroyed bells, burned rope-girdles, and dismantled belfries, replacing them with minarets. From these refashioned structures, the adhān was recited, and huṭbe (sermons) were given in the name of the reigning sultan. A seventeenth-century account by the poet Yusuf Nabi regarding a church in Poland describes how “in place of crucifixes, [they added] low reading desks for the Qur’an; in place of organs, the sounds of the reading of the verses of the Lord; and in place of crosses and censers, an imperial gallery [mahfi], a niche indicating the direction of Mecca [mihrab], and a pulpit [minbar].”7
Christians undertook similar practices. After repelling the Ottoman Siege of Vienna (1683) they melted down Ottoman cannons, refashioning them into a bell for St. Stephan’s Cathedral.8 Further, a 1601 letter sent to Rome from a military encampment in Hungary reports on a Habsburg victory: “The altar and cathedra in that church, where previously the Turks had practiced their abominable Mohammedan rites, were restored with the arrival of the Most Serene Archduke Mathias. . . . A sermon was held by our priest, followed by a Te Deum sung with trumpets and music. Afterward, a Mass was read, and the immunity of that church was secured by the Archduke.”9
The sonic assertion of dominance through prayers, bell ringing, and calls to prayer, and the reconfiguration of the very structures that gave shape and place to such utterances comprised key religious–political strategies of both the Ottomans and the Austrian Habsburgs10 Though these wars left devastating visual traces, assertions of sovereignty were a sonic affair.
Music in Ukraine and its diasporas has assumed a significant function as a form of protest and resistance, particularly since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and increasingly during Russia’s full-scale invasion initiated in 2022. Contemporary songs often echo the revolutionary sentiments characteristic of earlier Ukrainian uprisings, thereby establishing a continuum in the nation’s historical resistance to Russian oppression. An illustrative example is the song “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna,” referenced by Iryna Tukova, which is part of the broader corpus of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen Songs.
This song, originally rooted in historical resistance, has been revived during the current war and gained international recognition through a version performed by Andriy Khlyvniuk, the front man of the Ukrainian band Boombox. Khlyvniuk recorded a short Instagram video singing it as he announced his decision to go to the front at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That video inspired South African artist The Kiffness to create a remix. This version, with melodic and harmonic variations derived from the Sich Riflemen version, has become the foundation for many post-2022 artistic expressions of solidarity with Ukraine.
Furthermore, in Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied by Russia, Ukrainian songs often serve as a coded modality of communication and messaging between occupied and unoccupied regions. References to patriotic songs act as signals of resistance, solidarity, and moral resilience, often disseminated through encrypted social media channels (mostly Telegram) and platforms, and occasionally performed discreetly in public spaces. These acts serve as subtle forms of protest within environments where overt resistance poses significant risks. In the Ukrainian diaspora, performances of such songs at the same time serve to reinforce collective memory and transnational resistance, effectively establishing a musical front extending beyond the physical battlefield.11 Ukrainian and pro-Ukrainian communities—including members of the diaspora and displaced Ukrainians—have organized numerous events in cities such as Toronto, New York, Berlin, Vienna, and many others. These protest performances, often held near embassies or during commemorative gatherings, usually feature traditional Ukrainian songs as acts of cultural resistance and solidarity.
Featured image: Illustration for “The Trumpeter Taken Prisoner” from Baby’s Own Aesop,
a children’s edition of Aesop’s fables.
References
- See Reiland Rabaka, Civil Rights Music: The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
- Alain Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside, trans. Martin Thom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Abdurrahman Çetin, “EZAN الأذان,” in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, 12:43–45 (Ankara: TDV İslâm Araştırmaları Merkezi, 1995); Nina Ergin (Macaraig), “The Soundscape of Sixteenth-Century Istanbul Mosques: Architecture and Qur’an Recital,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 67, no. 2 (2008): 204–21; Alexander J. Fisher, Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation Bavaria (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- J. Martin Daughtry, Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma and Survival in Wartime Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
- Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Ali Kozan, “Gazâ ve İlahî Meşruiyet: Erken Dönem Osmanlı Sultanlarının Sefer Duaları [Ghaza and divine legitimacy: Campaign prayers of early Ottoman sultans],” İSTEM 41 (2023): 33–54; Hasan Baran Fırat, “Call to Piety: The Role of Adhan in the Shaping Rumi Identity and Governmental Authority,” Journal of Urban History 51, no. 4 (2024): 818–52.
- Nil Basdurak, “The Soundscape of Islamic Populism: Auditory Publics, Silences and the Myth of Democracy,” SoundEffects: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience 9, no. 1 (2020): 132–48.
- Rossitsa Gradeva, “Ottoman Policy Towards Christian Church Buildings,” in Rumeli Under the Ottomans, 15th-18th Centuries: Institutions and Communities, 339–68 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2019); Kemal Sılay, “Exegesis,” in Origins of the Ottoman Dynasty: A Philological Exploration of Its Earliest Account, 1–50 (London: Anthem Press, 2024).
- Yusuf Nabi, “Fethname-i Kamaniça,” Topkapı Palace Museum Library, ms. Hazine 1629, fol. 46a; Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 174.
- Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam.
- Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Assistentia Germ. 171 Epp. ad Gen. 1601, fol. 51r.
- D. Linda Pearse, The Sonic Machine: Sound and Music in the Habsburg–Ottoman War (1593–1606), in progress.
- Olga Zaitseva-Herz, “Soundscapes of Defiance: Resistance in Ukrainian Pop Music After the Onset of Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion,” Ethnomuzyka 20, no. 1 (2024): 106–21.