About the Book

Banning music strangles the very soul of a culture. Shoot the Singer! surveys contemporary cases of music censorship worldwide for the first time. It also examines the causes, methods and logic behind contemporary attempts to prevent people from hearing certain kinds of music by governments, commercial corporations and religious authorities

Freemuse, the compilers of this worldwide survey, is the only organization dedicated to uncovering present day cases of music censorship - affecting both performers and composers - and to developing a global network in support of them.

In this volume, cases come from a surprisingly wide range of countries, including Israel, Turkey, North Korea, Mexico, France, South Africa, Afghanistan, Burma, Cuba and the United States. It is particularly striking how different authorities, in diverse societies, worry enormously about music, and use a broad range of techniques to repress it.

As well as presenting particular cases, this volume also explores the logic behind these concerns (including two instances where censors themselves explain what they were doing). Contributions are from scholars, journalists and the testimony of musicians themselves.

Commendations

"True censorship is something that we are not really aware of on a day-to-day basis; it‘s something that‘s inherent in the system. There‘s an ever increasing element of that censorship, a sort of covert censorship going on everywhere. Read this book!" - Damon Albarn, Blur

"Governments have tried again and again to censor my music and my ideas. In Shoot the Singer! Freemuse shows how governments all over the world will go to great lengths to silence the people. Freemuse speaks the truth side by side with me, standing up for my right, as well as every musician‘s right to speak." - Thomas Mapfumo, Zimbabwe

"The censorship of music is a token of music‘s power and the freedom it offers. In Shoot the Singer! both censors and the censored describe their experiences, and in different ways express music‘s unique capacity to build community, stimulate feeling, energize and lift people out of themselves and transcend all barriers by speaking directly to the heart. This is a wonderfully vivid and thought-provoking book." - Jane Spender, International PEN

"Freemuse sets an entirely new agenda with Shoot the Singer! For all too long the plight of those musicians who are denied their right to perform or record (and that of their audience to enjoy) their music and their messages has been ignored. We have hardly considered that the performing of music and song could endanger the life and freedom of the performer. This book is rare and impressive testimony to a part of life and art that desperately needs our attention." - Morten Kjærum, Director, Danish Institute for Human Rights

ON CENSORSHIP

"One can never censor the power of truth.
It is beyond the control and manipulation
Of bureaucratic clerks." -
yoko ono, 2004

Contents

1. What is music censorship? Towards a better understanding of the term - Martin Cloonan
2. Music as a parallel power structure - Alenka Barber-Kersovan
3. Music as a useless activity: conservative interpretations of music in Islam - Jonas Otterbeck
4. Music censorship in Afghanistan before and after the Taliban - John Baily
5. Music for the great leader: policy and practice in North Korea - Keith Howard
6. Burma: music under siege - Aung Zaw
7. Uirghuristan: politics and art - Kurash Sultan and Marie Korpe
8. Stopping the music: censorship in apartheid South Africa - Roger Lucey
9. Roger, me and the scorpion: working for the South African security services during apartheid - Paul Erasmus
10. Encounters with a South-African censor: confrontation and reconciliation - Ole Reitov
11. Remembering subversion: resisting censorship in apartheid South Africa - Michael Drewett
12. Playing with fire: manipulation of music and musicians in Zimbabwe - Banning Eyre
13. Guerilla pop: Matoub Lounes and the struggle for Berber identity in Algeria - Andy Morgan
14. Singing in a theocracy: female musicians in Iran - Ameneh Youssefzadeh
15. Defending freedom: blasphemy trials and censorship in Lebanon - Marcel Khalife
16. Songs of freedom: cultural resistance in Palestine - Rania Elias-Khoury
17. The sound of silence: conformist musicians in Israel - Noam Ben-Zeev
18. Crash into me, baby: America‘s implicit music censorship since 11 September - Eric Nuzum
19. Havana and Miami: A music censorship sandwich - Eric Silva Brenneman
20. Mexico: drug ballads and censorship today - Elijah Wald
21. Responses to censorship in the US: acquiescence, withdrawal and resistance - Ian Inglis
22. Turkey: censorship past and present - Sanar Yurdatapan
23. Rap and censorship in France - Daniel Brown

About the Author

Marie Korpe is the Executive Director of Free Muse (Free Musical Expression), and is a Swedish journalist of many years of varied international experience. In August 2000 she founded, with Danish government aid, the only organization to concern itself with the censorship of music.