Music and the Mediation of War and Other Conflicts

Music’s association with the embedding of ideological messages, now mediated through algorithmic amplification, challenges the enduring belief that certain forms of cultural expression are untouched by politics. An opera performed, a pop song streamed, a cover version gone viral—each can advance a specific cause during times of conflict, revealing music as a potent form of “soft power.”

Part 1

Authors interrogate the ethical implications of cultural boycotts versus strategies for programming and contextualizing music from composers or traditions associated with contentious political histories.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, we—representatives of Ukraine’s art music scene—were remarkably naïve. We believed the world would not only turn its back on the aggressor state, but also put performances of Russian music on pause. Let me emphasize: not boycott, but pause. We even published a “Statement from the Musicological Community of Ukraine to Musicians, Musicologists, Cultural Institutions, and Public Organizations Around the World.” In addition to Ukrainian media, the statement was circulated in Poland and Lithuania. Now, in the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, our naïveté has turned into a weary astonishment. Not only has the world not distanced itself from Russian music—it is being performed more and more frequently. In the 2024/25 season, works by Russian composers were programmed by numerous orchestras and opera houses. Is this due to a lack of understanding that culture is a form of soft power and a soft weapon? That art is often used to advance political narratives? That supporting Pushkin is tantamount to supporting Putin? At least in Russia, this is clearly understood and openly articulated. In his 2022 interview in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Mikhail Piotrovsky—the director of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg—stated: “Our recent exhibitions abroad are just a powerful cultural offensive. If you like, a kind of ‘special operation’ [the term special operation or special military operation is the name Russia has given to its invasion of Ukraine] that many people do not like. But we are coming. And no one must be allowed to interfere with our offensive. . . . Shchukin and Morozov’s exhibition in Paris is the Russian flag over the Bois de Boulogne.” Is it ethical to watch Russians destroy Ukrainian museums, schools, and universities—and still perform Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich?

I hear you, Iryna! A few weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, was asked if the Met leadership had considered halting the production of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s opera based on Alexander Pushkin’s long poem Eugene Onegin in response to the war. Gelb spoke unequivocally: “By no means,” he said. “We will continue to honor Russian art and artists. We’re canceling Putin, not Pushkin.” Of course, it’s not really possible to “cancel” Putin, given that he wasn’t scheduled to sing at the Met that season. The Met did sever its ties with the (pro-Putin) Bolshoi opera, and announced that it would not work with artists who support the Russian president. (In the wake of this ultimatum, Russian soprano Anna Netrebko’s upcoming Met performances were canceled; her name was also struck from the bills of opera houses throughout Europe. In the years since, she has been welcomed back to many venues in Europe and elsewhere, but has not been invited to resume performing at the Met.) In advance of the 25 March 2022 Onegin premiere, the Met chorus hastily rehearsed an arrangement of the Ukrainian national anthem to sing before the overture. I don’t know whether this practice continued throughout the season. In the ensuing years, Gelb has continued to program works by Tchaikovsky, including Queen of Spades (in the 2024/25 season) and Onegin (in 2025/26). 

It is true that Russian culture is significantly older and more complex—aesthetically, ideologically, spiritually—than Putin’s Russia, and therefore cannot be reduced to the crass sensibilities of his regime. It is also true that many of the great works of Russian literature deliver a forceful rebuke to the kind of authoritarianism that Putin (along with most of his predecessors) embodies. At the same time, it is undeniable that a powerful strain of chauvinism runs all the way through the history of Russian culture, and that this ideology has always ended up belittling and marginalizing Ukraine and the other non-Russian republics.1 And to complicate matters further, as you (Iryna) point out, the Russian government is actively deploying its nineteenth-century canon in an attempt to strengthen the regime’s global reputation and draw attention away from their vicious invasion of the sovereign state of Ukraine.
 
So how, in the end, should one treat artistic works that come from violent regimes? I certainly think the Ukrainian call to pause Russian performances makes sense under the circumstances that Iryna articulates above. I would also be open to thinking about contextualization strategies moving forward. I will close by observing that my own country (the United States) is responsible for an enormous amount of historical and contemporary violence around the world. If anyone needs to have their cultural works contextualized, it is us. 

When considering the ethical implications of a cultural boycott, the primary issue is that ethics can vary between and within societies. As witnessed in the multilayered conflicts that exist and persist to this day, there is no commonly understood code of ethics. The second issue concerning the ethical implications of a cultural boycott is that usually, there is nothing to replace or subvert the societal relevance of that which is boycotted. With this in mind, I suggest that answer songs may work to culturally re-associate politically contentious music with new restorative themes. 

Blackface minstrelsy was a systemic and commercialized racist entertainment practice that incorporated song, dance, and skits to make fun of enslaved Black people in the American South. Northerner and Ohioan Dan Emmett (1815–1904) is best known for his creation of the first blackface minstrelsy troupe (1843), the Virginia Minstrels, as well as his composition of “Dixie” (1859), the anthem of the short-lived Confederacy (1861–65). While Emmett’s “Old Dan Tucker” is remembered affectionately regardless of its racist themes, the song was answered by the Hutchinson Family Singers’ “Get off the Track!” (1844). The Hutchinson Family Singers were a popular singing group in the 1840s, started by John Hutchinson and his three brothers. The group was progressive and promoted abolitionism among other important social issues of the nineteenth Century. “Get off the Track!” is an abolitionist anthem that was sung often in retort in debates and public forums against slavery. The song uses the exact same melody as “Old Dan Tucker” while featuring lyrics that tell those blocking progress to get out of the way or be hit by the train. Unfortunately, in this case, as evidenced by Bruce Springsteen’s 2006 performance of “Old Dan Tucker” and its continued performance by folk/Americana musicians, the popularity of the song hasn’t been supplanted by its answer song “Get off the Track!”

While the effect of performing music from a country engaged in violent military aggression on international stages is almost always political—since it offers a platform for cultural products associated with that regime—the current situation demonstrates that the effectiveness of soft power is so strong that such songs can promote the regime while still being perceived by many as apolitical. This often hinders critical engagement with the problematic aspects of such content, yet simultaneously highlights them, as many questions inevitably arise.

Russia actively promotes its cultural narrative abroad, especially in countries that are crucial for Ukraine’s political and humanitarian support during the ongoing war. Joseph Nye’s theory of soft power is relevant here: cultural performance becomes a non-coercive way to shape international opinion and national image. Russian state-aligned musicians often perform on European stages, bypassing sanctions and restrictions, disseminating ideological messaging through seemingly apolitical pop culture. The pop song “Sigma Boy,” for example, which was widely played in the EU, contains coded ideological content that aligns with Kremlin narratives; the European Parliament issued warnings about its influence.2

Similarly, when famous American performer and TV host Kelly Clarkson covered the song “All the Things She Said” by the controversial Russian duo t.A.T.u.,3 it sparked a new wave of the song’s and band’s popularity. In light of the band’s recently announced reunion and its planned concert in Yalta, Crimea, on 17 July 2025—Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia—Clarkson’s cover served as a powerful promotional boost. Clarkson posted the video on 25 June 2025, and within just six days, it reached 3.5 million views on Instagram and 1.4 million views on TikTok. However, Clarkson did not comment on the broader context surrounding the duo, including open current alignment with Putin’s regime4 or their homophobic statements. The video elicited a notable wave of Russian patriotic sentiment. Numerous comments under this video posted on social media displayed Russian flags and expressed nostalgic, favorable reflections on Russia or the commenters’ positive personal experiences associated with the country. However, when Ukrainian producer Vlad Darwin criticized Clarkson’s choice by commenting under her video—highlighting the band’s support for Putin and their history of homophobic statements—many viewers appeared unwilling to acknowledge or engage with these political implications of the performance. The Instagram post where he commented received backlash, with users replying with comments like: “What does the song have to do with politics? You have no idea what you are talking about,” and “He is saying this only because he is Ukrainian—everything is political to him, probably even potato.”
 
Examples like these demonstrate the problems associated with performing content that carries controversial ideological and political contexts without addressing them. In this case, the song—viewed as a tool of soft power in Joseph Nye’s sense, or even as a form of cultural weaponry—achieved its goal by generating a wave of positive attention. This attention extended not only to the song itself, but also to the band t.A.T.u., to Russia, and to the broader cultural narrative, gaining increased visibility through its presentation in a prestigious media context. By featuring it on her widely popular show, Clarkson effectively affirmed the song’s place on global stages of popular music, further legitimizing it without acknowledging its problematic background. However, ignoring the context in which such songs are embedded does not neutralize the problematic—rather, it amplifies it by highlighting it without critique. The lack of contextual framing signals tacit approval and legitimizes problematic narratives. The reaction of the public, aggressively rejecting Darwin’s critical stance and insisting that music and politics are unrelated, illustrates the effectiveness of this soft power in action. It also demonstrates a broader failure to recognize and engage with multiple sides of political dimensions embedded in musical contexts. These incidents underscore the necessity for critical curatorial practices in music programming. Furthermore, a critical aspect of this issue is the fact that streaming Russian music directly contributes5 to the Russian state budget through royalties and taxes collected from those streams. While there is a significant international effort to eliminate Russian military aggression by sanctioning its financial sources, listening to such music effectively bypasses these sanctions and continues to fund the state, which funds military equipment. This is a clear example of how soft power transforms into hard power. Furthermore, the fact that even a temporary boycott (as mentioned by Iryna earlier) of this form of soft power meets significant resistance—despite the fact that music clearly serves as a source of political promotion and even financial support for these regimes—reveals the immense influence and lobbying power behind these cultural products, as well as the vested interest of political actors in ensuring that such performances continue.

It is at best naive for us to pretend that musical culture cannot serve to deflect critical attention of or even inoculate governments when they are behaving badly. Classical music has a particular culpability (if you like) here, because it traditionally has been received as an art form that actively invites us to put our politics to one side when we engage with it. We are invited to contemplate more otherworldly, elevated qualities or ideas, such as formal beauty, objectivity, nobility, or gravitas. But here is precisely also where its innoculatory, whitewashing, capacity lies. 

Our ears should especially prick up (as it were), when- or wherever we hear someone claim that their musical work is “above politics,” as that is almost certainly a political claim in and of itself. And, for precisely the same reason, musicians (and music promoters) should also expect push-back when they do make such an assertion. A good recent example of this was the furore that erupted in Australia last year when the British-Australian pianist Jayson Gillham performed a solo piano recital for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) that included the world-premiere of a short piece, Conor D’Netto’s Witness, which is “dedicated to the journalists of Gaza.” During the recital, Gillham elaborated on the dedication by drawing the audience’s attention to the more than 100 Palestinian journalists who have been killed in the current conflict.

The reaction from the orchestra’s management was swift and decisive. They canceled the rest of Gillham’s engagements and emailed their subscriber base to say that Gillham’s remarks had been made “without seeking the MSO’s approval or sanction” and were “an intrusion of personal political views on what should have been a morning focused on a program of works for solo piano.” But if the MSO sought to distance itself from the perception that it had taken a partisan position on the Israel–Gaza conflict, or to affirm classical music’s right to be considered above politics more generally, it comprehensively failed to do so on both counts. 

The power that classical music in particular has in our culture to elevate, but also to obscure, our attention or sympathy towards other peoples or cultures represents an ever-present opportunity and risk for performers and audiences alike, especially in times of conflict.6 As such, I do think it is legitimate to argue that we should always be open to accepting instances where it may well be appropriate for not just political commentators and activists, but also musicians themselves, to consider the potential political associations around, say, a particular artist or work, and from there to consider what sort of political response(s) might be appropriate in turn, including boycotts. As Jonathan Blumhofer wrote in 2022, “There are times—and we’ve been living in these for several years now—when boldness is required, especially from artists.”7

Part 2

Authors interrogate the influence of music, media, and digital platforms—social media, YouTube, and other forms of streaming—in shaping local and global narratives about conflict.

Russia’s War on Ukraine has become known colloquially as the “first Open Source intelligence war.”8 Digital platforms have transformed the role of music in wartime by enabling viral dissemination, direct fundraising, and participatory creation. Ukrainian artists have leveraged these platforms to generate funds for military and humanitarian needs. Songs are often purpose-written for campaigns and tailored to platform-specific formats. For instance, Instagram fundraisers by Jerry Heil, Alyona Alyona, and Lesia Nikitiuk demonstrate how digital music-making can target specific causes effectively. Artificial intelligence adds a new layer to this landscape. AI-generated music is increasingly used both by individuals and state-affiliated networks to produce emotionally effective content at scale. In the Russian-Ukrainian context, AI tools have been employed to mimic voices, compose patriotic or propagandistic songs, and generate content tailored to evoke national pride or demoralize the enemy. AI is used to create war-contextualized covers of popular songs or to compose new tributes, as in the recent case where a mother of a fallen Ukrainian soldier used AI to compose music for her poem and share a memorial song devoted to her son. These platforms also allow for emotional immediacy and mass engagement. 

At the same time, the same platforms are exploited for digital warfare. Music videos and pop songs embed ideological messaging through lyrics, visuals, and musical tropes. For example, digital artifacts produced in Russia often reference the Great Patriotic War, Soviet nostalgia, or imperial themes to emotionally connect with audiences by leveraging already established narratives. Also, the intense deployment of Russian-operated chatbots on social media to deny and obfuscate Russian war crimes is now a well-documented phenomenon. Russia has engaged in “LLM grooming”—generating thousands of misleading online texts aimed directly at influencing both AI systems and human audiences. Recent research shows that roughly one third of responses from major chatbots on targeted questions propagated these false narratives.9

Because platforms enable anonymous sharing, such propaganda can circulate undercover and effectively disseminate political messages, reaching wide audiences and shaping public opinions in a very short time. This layered strategy—combining sound, visuals, and narrative—makes musical soft power highly potent. Moreover, recommendation algorithms on streaming and social platforms play a significant role in shaping what users see and hear. This algorithmic filtering affects which songs gain visibility, how narratives around them are framed, and which cultural perspectives are amplified or suppressed. In contexts of war, this can have concrete political consequences—enabling propaganda, reinforcing solidarity, and supporting military mobilization.

Though no digital platforms existed in the Renaissance, this did not stop music—itself a form of media—from having an influence on public opinion during war and conflict. Both oral transmission as well as the revolutionary medium of pamphlet printing sufficed in reaching enough of an audience to trigger the ire of local authorities. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, cities across Europe fought tirelessly to stop the dissemination of songs perceived to be disruptive. A few bans made explained the influence these songs were perceived to have. In 1448 the council of Basel forbade the spread of “provocative songs” in order to restore peace and friendship to the public sphere.10 The city of Nuremberg also regularly chased after poets, printers, and musicians responsible for the spread of such songs in their city. One such ban was enacted in April of 1513, during which the city saw it fit to ban a song about a recent uprising in the city of Cologne, fearing its “poisonous ideas” could lead to public confusion.11 While the reach of these songs was considerably smaller than in today’s digital age, the amplification of information by means of technology was nevertheless a concern.

I think it will be increasingly necessary whenever we come to discuss digital platforms and their role in music creation and distribution today also to discover, describe, and then discuss the content-driving algorithms that now operate within them. Any discussion of music during conflicts now needs to acknowledge that the dissemination and reception are likely to be mediated to a significant degree by non-musical (e.g., corporate or ideological) interests that may otherwise be hidden from individual users. 

Featured image: AI generated, created by Olga Zaitseva-Herz.

  • J. Martin Daughtry

    J. Martin Daughtry (jmd19@nyu.edu) is an associate professor of music and sound studies at New York University and the faculty director of the Core Curriculum for the NYU College of Arts & Science. His writing and teaching deal with acoustic violence; more-than-human vocality; the auditory imagination; the dynamics of listening and “inaudition” (or “non-listening”); the end of the world; air; and jazz. He is a founding member of the Analogue Humanities Archive and Symposium (AHAS), an enigmatic organization that, by design, has no internet footprint. His first monograph Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq (Oxford, 2015) received a PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers and the Alan Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. His current monograph-in-progress is titled Panvocalism: Atmospheric Transcripts from the End of the World.

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  • Kerobo

    Joshua Adewole Kerobon (kerobo@umich.edu) is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, hailing from Okpella, Edo State, Nigeria, and Cincinnati, Ohio. He holds a BA in both International Studies and Music from American University in Washington DC. As the American-born son of Nigerian immigrants, Joshua’s research centers on the sociopolitical implications of Black Atlantic music cultures among youth communities. His research also explores Black music development in Cincinnati, Ohio, music and Black religious subjectivities, African popular music and social movements, and sonic affect and discursive citizenship in national sporting events. Joshua’s dissertation project focuses on Afropop and youth political engagement in Nigeria’s 2023 presidential and gubernatorial elections.

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  • IMS Musicological Brainfood

    Deanna Pelleranno (dpellera@uni-mainz.de) is a scholar of war, music, and sound in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. She completed her doctoral studies as part of the Research Training Group 2304 “Byzantium and the Euro-Mediterranean Cultures of War” at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz under the supervision of Klaus Pietschmann and Barbara Henning. Previously she received her master’s degrees in musicology and music librarianship at Indiana University. Her dissertation focused on the involvement of the singers of the French chapel during the early-Italian Wars (1494–1515), and recent and forthcoming publications include research on war and sound in the city of Grenoble, German language songs about war, and the role of sound in triumphal entries. She has recently accepted a postdoctoral position at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

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  • Tregear

    Peter Tregear (peter.tregear@unimelb.edu.au) is a principal fellow of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and an adjunct professor of the University of Adelaide. A graduate of the University of Melbourne and Cambridge University, he was subsequently appointed to a Fellowship in Music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and from 2012 to 2015 was professor and head of the School of Music at the Australian National University. Research interests include Australian music history, opera in the Weimar Republic, Beethoven reception, and post-truth culture. Active also as a performer, critic, and arts commentator, he is the author of several books including: Ernst Krenek and the Politics of Musical Style (2013), Enlightenment or Entitlement: Rethinking Tertiary Music Education (2014), and Fritz Hart: An English Musical Romantic at the Ends of Empire (2024), co-authored with Anne-Marie Forbes.

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  • Tukova

    Iryna Tukova (tukova@ukr.net) is an associate professor of music theory at the National Music Academy of Ukraine (Kyiv), and a co-founder of the NGO Liatoshynsky Foundation. In 2024–25 she was the Petro Jacyk non-residential scholar at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto (CA). In 2023–24 she was a non-resident visiting scholar at Indiana University Bloomington (US). Her research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Ukrainian art music, Borys Liatoshynsky, creativity, and the intersection of natural science and art music. Tukova is the author of over fifty articles and the 2021 monograph Music and Natural Science: Interaction of Worlds in the Epochs’ Mental Habits (17th–Early 21st Centuries). Her forthcoming monograph, The Times of the Looking Glass: Boris Liatoshynsky`s Choice, co-authored with Olena Korchova, will be published in 2025. In 2024 she received the Ukrainian State Lysenko award for achievement in musicology. She has presented her work at musicological conferences in Europe, the UK, and the US, and lectured on contemporary Ukrainian art music at the Ljubljana Academy of Music (SI), Indiana University Bloomington (US), and Capital University Columbus (US).

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  • Olga Zaitseva-Herz

    Olga Zaitseva-Herz (zaitseva@ualberta.ca) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Kule Folklore Centre and the University of Alberta (CA). She holds a PhD in Music from the University of Alberta, where her dissertation investigated the transcultural singing practices of Ukrainian emigrants from Galicia and Bukovyna to Canada at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Trained in violin performance and sound studies and media in Ukraine, and in vocal pedagogy in Germany, Zaitseva-Herz works at the intersection of musicology and ethnomusicology. Her research critically engages with themes of migration, cultural memory, identity formation, violent conflict, and displacement, drawing on archival recordings, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork. She conducts interdisciplinary projects on digital heritage preservation. In addition to her scholarly work, she is an active composer and performer. Her contemporary opera Bakhmut Rhapsody premiered at the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in New York City in 2024.

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References

  1. See Maria Sonevytsky, “‘What Do We Do with the Artworks of Monstrous Regimes?’ Two Essays and a Playlist for San Francisco Opera’s Staging of Eugene Onegin” (18 October 2022), accessed 15 July 2025, https://mariasonevytsky.com/2022/10/18/what-do-we-do-with-the-artworks.
  2. Max Polonyi, “Sigma Boy: Die unglaubliche Geschichte des Hits ‘Sigma Boy,’” Der Spiegel, no. 16 (11 April 2025), accessed 15 July 2025, https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/sigma-boy-die-unglaubliche-geschichte-des-weltweiten-musikphaenomens-aus-sankt-petersburg-a-26df8cc7-1846-4556-aa88-515252325623.
  3. David Junck and Fred Bronson, “The Inside Story of How t.A.T.u. Captured the World’s Attention: ‘Rockin’ the Kremlin’ Book Excerpt,” Billboard (7 April 2024), accessed 15 July 2025, https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/rockin-the-kremlin-book-excerpt-1235723406.
  4. Brad Hunter, “Lesbian t.A.T.u. Singer Joins Putin’s Team,” Toronto Sun (30 April 2021), accessed 15 July 2025, https://torontosun.com/news/world/lesbian-tatu-singer-joins-putins-team.
  5. Dmytro Kazantsev, „Ukrainian Musicians Call for Blocking Russian Music on Apple Music, Spotify and other Platforms,“ Mezha (23 June 2025), accessed 15 July 2025, https://mezha.media/en/news/zablokuvati-rosiysku-muziku-ukrajinski-muzikanti-zvernulisya-do-vladi-302879.
  6. See, for instance, Shawn Rodgers, “Love for Music and Israel Come Together under the Stars,” Jewish Journal (24 July 2019), accessed 15 July 2025, https://jewishjournal.com/community/302075; Jonathan Blumhofer, “Cultural Commentary: The Gergiev Case,” The Arts Fuse (11 March 2022), accessed 15 July 2025, https://artsfuse.org/251335.
  7. Blumhofer, “Cultural Commentary.”
  8. International Spy Museum, “Spy Museum Launches First Online Exhibition, ‘Open Source: Ukraine & The Intelligence Revolution’” (15 May 2025), accessed 15 July 2025, https://www.spymuseum.org/press/press-archive/2025-press-releases/open-source.
  9. Joseph Menn, “Russia Seeds Chatbots with Lies: Any Bad Actor Could Game AI the Same Way,” The Washington Post (17 April 2025).
  10. Theodor von Liebenau, “Basel verbietet das Singen aufreizender Lieder 1448,” Anzeiger für Schweizerische Geschichte 1, no. 4 (1873): 346–47.
  11. Theodor Hampe, “Volkslied und Kriegslied im alten Nürnberg,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 27 (1928): 251–78.

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