COMING THROUGH LOUD AND QUEER: ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL ETHICS OF VOICE AND VIOLENCE IN REAL AND VIRTUAL BATTLEGROUNDS
In Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology, ed. Gregory Barz and William Cheng (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 307-32
eXCERPT
I fought thousands of informants in my first year of fieldwork. In my defense, everyone was shooting and swinging and shouting at me. Guns, flamethrowers, swords, and pipe bombs made the earth run red, day and night.
One afternoon in August 2008, I was hiding out in the sewers, taking a break from the mayhem to write in my journal. Upon preparing to leave this relative safe zone, I stopped to spray-paint Barack Obama’s iconic “Hope” image on a nearby wall. Before I could reach the concrete arch of the exit, however, I heard a faint ploosh, ploosh, ploosh in the distance. It sounded like the crescendoing slap of boots against shallow water in an adjacent tunnel.
Someone was coming. Ally? Foe? A spy disguised as a friend? I couldn’t take any chances.
So I dashed to a corner and activated my cloaking device. The splashy staccatos
grew louder, and the source emerged: yes, combat boots worn by a gigantic enemy soldier with a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder. As the goliath lumbered into view, I could hear him muttering under his breath, a hodgepodge of trash talk, homophobic curses, and misogynist slurs. His voice was gruff, coarse, almost intimidating. At least he hadn’t seen me.
But just as this soldier was about to make his way back out of the tunnel, the Obama poster caught his eye. He paused in front of it . . . then whipped out a metal shovel and began bashing the image. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Each strike of the shovel carved a charcoal scar on the red, white, and blue pensive face. And with each scuff mark, I grew more indignant.
I probably should have stayed put and jotted down observations. Instead, I tiptoed out of the shadows, uncloaked, and inched toward the preoccupied soldier. For a second, I considered saying something — raising my own voice — but ultimately decided against it, and instead plunged the blade of my knife into his back.
The soldier collapsed onto the floor like a rag doll. His movements looked unreal, like some overanimated fatality one would see in a cartoon or a video game.
I stared at the soldier’s corpse, then at the beat-up poster of the would-be president, before abandoning the scene of the crime, probably none the worse for wear.