The title of this edited volume, Music, Politics, and Violence, offers rich potential in originality and contribution to understanding of the oft-neglected ‘dark side of the tune’ (I borrow here the heading of Bruce Johnson and Martin Cloonan's book on popular music and violence, Reference Johnson and Cloonan2009). The editors, Susan Fast and Kip Pegley, purport to go further, with this focus on violence, than other books of influence, such as John Morgan O'Connell and Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco's Music and Conflict (Reference O'Connell and Castelo-Branco2010) and the exploration therein of music's ‘paradoxical’ positions in conflict. In so doing, they also argue that their work addresses an area of neglect, given critical studies of violence and the arts that overlook music. But does it?

The book is organised into three parts: Objective and Subjective Violence; Violence and Reconciliation; and Musical Memorialisations of Violent Pasts. This structure corresponds to the editors' three critical trajectories: Slavoj Žižek's categorisation of violence; belonging and ‘otherness’ in relationship to the nation-state; and memorials and postmemorials. Fast and Pegley make no claims of exhausting the subject at hand, but instead offer case studies that sample sites vastly separated by time and geography. The first section invokes: Germany 1914–1918 through the coverage of war in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik; the changing reception of Neda Ukraden during the fall of Yugoslavia 1990–2008; the competing claims on ‘Lili Marlene’ during World War II; as well as the music of television news in the United States from Vietnam to Iraq. The last section consists of only two topics: official and unofficial efforts of musical reconciliation in Peru; and the Holocaust Cantata Jüdische Chronik (1960/1961) as a contested site of postmemorial in a divided Germany. The middle section boasts the most cohesion, in some ways, with a focus on nations and national identity in flux – Palestine, Turkey and Fiji – and the related roles of music.

The volume's strength is on display in essays that underscore the various roles of music in negotiations of nation. In ‘Revivals and New Arrivals: Protest Song in the Al-Aqsa Intifada’, in the second section, David A. MacDonald explores the competing images of Palestine in music – from the more cosmopolitan in Arab pop intifadiana to reassertion of fundamental Islamic principles in the popularity of the young singer Mais Shalash. Likewise, in ‘The Afterlife of Neda Ukraden: Negotiating Space and Memory through Popular Music after the Fall of Yugoslavia, 1990–2008’, Catherine Baker disentangles the multiple uses of a single vocalist in the reworking of nation.

However the book's focus is not solely on nation building or politics, which brings me to my main issue with this volume – its integration of violence. Fast and Pegley, in the introduction, indulge in a lengthy critique of the work of Žižek, and still they rely on his definition of violence as objective and subjective: ‘if subjective violence is empirical, visible, and quantifiable (war, genocide, terrorism), its condition of possibility is objective violence, the “non-violent zero level”’ (p. 4). Within subjective violence, there are two categories: ‘symbolic’ – violence embedded in discourse, particularly language – and ‘systematic’ – the repercussions inherent in economic and political systems, such as capitalism. This rather broad understanding of violence – which includes racism as well as inequities of class and gender – functions for the editors as a key means of thematic unity. Still, despite the editors' efforts in this regard, with such a broad conception of violence, it is perhaps hardly surprising that the chapters are often unlinked with no citation of one another or inner anchoring around Žižek's all-encompassing idea of violence. Not only that, but the chapters focus too often on the positive, ignoring needed contextualisation of music's alliances with violence or even the negative in nation building. For example, in ‘Choreographing (against) Coup Culture: Reconciliation and Cross-Cultural Performance in the Fiji Island’, Kevin C. Miller explores music's fascinating functions in bridging the gap between indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian individuals and organisations. But music surely also has a role in the segregation and general distance between these two groups. Could he have explored both of these competing roles – the positive and negative in music? In the last section, on memorials and postmemorials – a topic which invites the lauding of music and its lofty functions in the face of violence – Jonathan Ritter writes, ‘Music occupies a uniquely powerful niche within the realm of possible acts of resistance’ (p. 205). Could music occupy an equally powerful role in violent collaborations?

The Afterword, ‘From Voice to Violence and Back Again’, by J. Martin Daughtry, addresses most directly the varied potential of music in violence. He mentions music's operation in Iraq and Rwanda in order to point out ways in which the voice, in both musical and declamatory contexts, can be utilised as a trigger for violence, or as an instrument of violence in its own right. He continues, ‘In the light of these and countless other events, it is clear that we need a definition of violence that does not put it in opposition to voice, or to music’ (p. 257). Furthermore, Daughtry writes, ‘In the context of the violent acts that the authors describe, it is clear that we can no longer afford the luxury of a purely celebratory attitude toward music or voice. I doubt that we ever could’ (p. 259). Pegley and Fast's edited volume offers rich descriptions of the nuanced histories of music in nation building and identity politics in particular places and time spaces. But there is still much to do to address the topic of violence – explored with attention to music's duality in Johnson and Cloonan's book. Perhaps Music, Politics, and Violence will inspire new work in this direction – work that may fill the gaps created by certain case studies, thus responding to the challenging provocations of Daughtry's afterword.