Baker, Catherine. Music as weapon of ethnopolitical violence and conflict: processes of ethnic separation during and after the break-up of Yugoslavia

Music can be employed as a weapon during and after nationalist and ethnopolitical conflict, such as the Yugoslav wars. Baker identifies three uses of music as weapon during the war: as morale booster for friendly troops; as “direct form of aggression” (418), that is, to torture in prison camps; and as tool of ethnicization, postulated by Baker by drawing on poststructuralist theory to illustrate how music can function to “define the Other symbolically” (421). After the war, the discourse on music as a weapon in Croatia shifted to a focus on the Serbs’ use of music as weapon, which led to an argument against playing Serbian or even “against ‘eastern’-sounding folk music in general, whether or not it was Serbian” (422) in post-war Croatia. This again functioned as a way to exacerbate ethnic differences with the goal of preventing “any new [Yugoslav] shared cultural space from coalescing” (423), which “lengthened the ethnic differentiation process and thus reconfirmed the goals of ethnonationalist actors” (426). Hence after the war, music was still used as a weapon, albeit differently from during the war.

Baker postulates that “popular music must be taken seriously in understanding ethnopolitical conflict” (427-8), but not without caveats. She shifts her focus to a broader perspective to investigate questions of complicity of musicians in (facilitating) ethnic conflict, and what harm or good it would do to indict them on charges of inciting ethnic cleansing. She concludes that “ascribing musicians a collective complicity in ethnopolitical conflict would have detrimental effects” (429) on creating a post-war shared cultural space, which is necessary for reconciliation. Hence music should be understood as part of ethnopolitical conflict—and as such should be taken seriously in the study of such conflicts—but it should not be used as a framework for musician complicity.

Although music is central to Baker’s article, it does not require a deep understanding of musicology to grasp her argument. Her reliance on poststructuralist theory, political science, history and law position it agreeably within existing perpetrator scholarship; which is simultaneously challenged by her central claim in an engaging way: there should be more room for music in understanding ethnopolitical violence. The article is thus very productive for those interested in the use of music in ethnopolitical conflict specifically, and for those interested in perpetrator studies in general.

Author of this entry: Martijn Loos.

Baker, Catherine. “Music as a weapon of ethnopolitical violence and conflict: processes of ethnic separation during and after the break-up of Yugoslavia.” Patterns of Prejudice, 47: 4-5 (2013): 409-429.