"You Are in a Place That Is Out of the World ...": Music in the Detention Camps of the "Global War on Terror"

Cusick uses first-person accounts of interrogators and former detainees as well as unclassified military documents to outline the ways that "loud music" has been used in U.S. detention camps during the "global war on terror." Facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Cuba use "loud music" as a component of "harsh interrogation," which is designed to persuade detainees that resistance to interrogation is futile. The military establishment teaches techniques by which "the music program" can be resisted. The first-person account of a young U.S. citizen who endured military detention and "the music program" for 97 days in mid-2006 is offered.