melodic terrorism as motif & beyond

What role has music played in the history of terrorism? This is a topic we don't have much research about despite it not being insignificant. I would argue that there are at least three different ways of thinking about 'musical terrorism', as motif, motivation and means.
As motif for musical artists there are some very notable examples in classical as well as in popular music. Various forms of terrorism has been a recurrent motif in the work of one of todays foremost classical composers, the American John Adams. In 1991 he wrote the opera The Death of Klinghoffer which depicts the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murder of the American hostage Leon Klinghoffer. His depiction and choice of this event as motif created a controversy connected with its premier. The criticism against Adams continued after 11 September 2001 and Adams in 2008 claimed that this opera led him to be followed by the US Department of Homeland Security: "I can't check in at the airport now without my ID being taken and being grilled. You know, I'm on a homeland security list, probably because of having written The Death of Klinghoffer, so I'm perfectly aware that I, like many artists and many thoughtful people in the country, am being followed." His terrorism related interest can also be seen in the choral piece On the Transmigration of Souls (2002) commemorating the victims of 11 September 2001 and which won him the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Finally, his opera Doctor Atomic (2005) also deals with what many people consider to be an act of state terrorism, the development of the atomic bombs that was later used by the US on Japan. The role of terrorism in Adams' art is well worth a more academic study.

Terrorism are more prevalent as a motif in popular music. One such example is music connected to the German Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) also known as the Baader-Meinhof group. Marianne Faithfull is one of several artists with an artistic debt to this terrorist group. Faithfull has said that the title song of her album Broken English (1979) was "inspired" by the "terrorist Ulrike Meinhof". She was a member of the Baader-Meinhof group and was arrested in 1972 and Faithfull supposedly saw something about the arrest on TV as "the phrase 'say it in broken English' came from something that flashed on the TV screen, this mysterious subtitle: 'broken English . . . spoken English. . . .' I don't know what it was in reference to, but I wrote it down in my notebook." Meinhof was found hanged in her prison cell in 1974 and Faithfull being a drug addict said she "identified" with but did not accept Meinhof and her "form of idealism" and that the "same blocked emotions that turn some people into junkies turn others into terrorists."(Faithfull quoted in Marcus, 88)
This video clip of faithfull performing her song is in itself an historically interesting document as it is from a performance in Germany in 1980, the year after the group had made a failed assassination attempt on Alexander Haig, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO . The Baader Meinhof group has inspired other British musicians like Luke Haines who used the groups name as a pseudonym and title for the album Baader Meinhof (1997), with song titles such as "Meet me at the airport", "There's gonna be an accident", "Mogadishu" and "...Its a moral issue". The album was supposed to be seen "as the soundtrack to an imaginary film" about the group. That movie never appeared and the Baader-Meinhof movies had to wait for Baader (2002) and the Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008), but instead Haines a few years laters wrote the soundtrack for another terrorism inspired movie, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (2000).

Music also plays more indirect and direct roles for terrorism as motivation and means. There are several examples of how music has been used as an motivational tool for appearingly encouraging terrorist activities. Examples abound within so called "white power music" and a well known contemporary example within jihadist culture is the Dirty Kuffar (2004) rap music video. This video had supposedly been watched by the attempted 21 July 2005 London bombers beforehand, although how influential that was in motivating them are not known. Finally, music are also used as means for terrorism - for mediating ideologically motivated violence with the aim of causing psychological terror and communicating a message - in actual terrorist propaganda deeds. Here the most striking example are such songs and music that are used to accompany the horrific jihadi beheading and bombing videos. Much more can be and deserve to be said about such artistic means of terror.