Award-winning musician Christopher Cerf has composed music for the
famous children’s television show Sesame Street for 40 years. During
this time, he has written more than 200 songs intended to help children
learn how to read and write.
But these innocent children’s songs were abused for inhumane purposes.
“It
is music’s capacity to take over your mind and invade your inner
experience that makes it so terrifying as a potential weapon.“
– Thomas Keenan, the director of the Human Right’s Project at Bard College
In 2003, it transpired that US intelligence services had tortured
detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib with music from Sesame
Street.
Human rights researcher Thomas Keenan explains:
“Prisoners were forced to put on headphones. They were attached to
chairs, headphones were attached to their heads, and they were left
alone just with the music for very long periods of time. Sometimes
hours, even days on end, listening to repeated loud music.”
“The
music was so loud,” says Moazzam Begg, a former detainee at Guantanamo
Bay and Bagram. “And it was probably some of the worst torture that they
faced.”
Stunned by this abuse of his work, Cerf was motivated to fin…
