During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some American soldiers commonly listened to music in order to “motivate” themselves before action. Previous studies have shown that their most frequent choices to this effect pertained to two genres: “gangsta” rap and heavy metal. At another extreme of armed violence, Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik reported listening to a selection of tunes in the preparation of his 2011 massacre and possibly also during its perpetration. His musical choices sounded radically different from metal and rap. Yet, all of these styles of music had previously been associated with graphic violence throughout popular movies and video games. This paper asks how each type of music “worked” in motivating its listener for armed confrontation. The comparison requires going beyond the fact that mainstream media interact with common imaginaries of violence. The hypothesis here is that the differences between the terrorist’s and the soldier’s playlists reflect deeper contrasts in their engagements with the opponent. This case study of musical “motivation” leads to a broader discussion of the interplay between the agency of the listener, as opposed to the agency which he or she sometimes locates in the music itself.

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Cet article porte sur un type de virtuosité qui consiste à imiter des sons non musicaux dans le cadre de performances musicales. Il s'attache à décrire les modalités de ces moments d'acrobatie dans le bluegrass et la country music en Amérique du Nord. Pour mettre en lumière l'évolution historique de ce régime de virtuosité, l'analyse suit les transformations d'une mélodie particulière, connue sous le nom de Orange Blossom Special, qui reste à ce jour l'une des plus fameuses imitations de trains dans la musique nord-américaine.

International audienceThis contribution describes how Roma professional musicians in Romania use electronic sound processing for live performances in various contexts. It focuses on four techniques - amplification, mixing, reverberation and echo - which are intimately linked in the practice of these musicians. The latter two effects are modeled on natural acoustic phenomena, but are used by the musicians to create sound environments with artificial, impossible or paradoxical properties. The article details how these techniques are used, in relation to the typical interactions between the musicians and their audiences. This leads to the argument that artificial echo and reverberation (building upon amplification and mixing) are used by Roma professional musicians as techniques to "enchant" both the performance places and the social relations which they host

Depuis la seconde guerre mondiale, les recherches se succèdent en Europe et en Amérique du Nord pour exploiter les ondes acoustiques à des fins offensives. Dans cet arsenal « non-létal », la musique est convoquée comme un moyen efficace d’atteindre l’intimité psychique des personnes ciblées. Cet imaginaire menaçant est en lien étroit avec la psychologie comportementale, et avec le champ d’étude plus large de la manipulation sonore qui émerge à partir des années 1930 autour du théâtre, du cinéma et de la musique d’ambiance.