Would you say that music is a powerful weapon?

 Would you say that music is a powerful weapon?

Music has power. Power to gather, power to wake up, power to celebrate, power to bring courage. Many necessary qualities in times of armed strife.
Indeed war uses music as its advantage, must we consider that music is, in essence, a powerful weapon?
First we will briefly review weapon and music characteristics and will see they are exactly the opposite one to the other. Then we ask the different forms that power could wear and finally what part cultural bias takes on this association between music and weapon.

What’s a weapon ? According to the Cambridge Dictionary weapon is "any object used in fighting or war, such as a gun, bomb, knife, etc". In other words it is an object that someone directs outwards to injure. Arrows and rifle bullets are thrown from the inside to the outside, bomb explodes (the particle "ex" means outwards), etc, The action is both conscious, desired, visible, linear, directed toward a direction (the enemy) and a (destruction) goal.
According to the definition "music is a pattern of sounds intended to give pleasure to people listening it". Music suppose reception and integration. Music doesn't destroy whereas creates a feeling (even a negative feeling), on the listener. Music is a creative force, circular, complex, invisible and absorbed, not necessarily directed towards a purpose other than the music itself. .
Weapon and music refer to radically opposed conceptions. One facing outwards the second inwards, one causing destruction the second expressing creation.
So how could war uses music as a weapon so well ? What do they have in common?

The answer is included on the problematic of the initial asked question.
They have something in common: Both weapon and music are powerful. War uses the power of music to its own advantage. However it relates to very different forms of power, perhaps even opposed, as we will review soon.
Power is "the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events". Strength is a form of power, certainly the most common, it is even one of the first words that come in mind when we think about power and it also relates to men : There is a strong cultural and symbolic triangle between war, power and masculinity.

1.  First between war and power. War is a balance of strength between two armed forces. The tool used must be aggressive, effective, destructive. Weapon brute force is used and the must powerful, the stronger one, win
2. Then, between masculinity and war: That's men who make war. Women and children are either part of the conquest or are to be protected. In our modern occidental culture which no longer living in war context for a few years culture, all that relates to war is still associated to virility. For example a little girl playing with a plastic gun will quickly be qualified as a tomboy.
3. And the next side of the triangle, between masculinity and power. Our society is still patriarchal, dominated by men. Positions of power are occupied mostly by men, whether in public or private sphere, in politic, art, street etc. If the last little girl playing with a plastic gun (that remembers war and power so men) is looked with some amused affection (« What a tomboy! »), a little boy playing with a doll doesn't enjoy the same tolerance. In a patriarchal society a woman who behaves like a man rises a rank, win something. But a man having behaviors usually attributed to female gender loose something (his power) and the respect of his pairs.

We saw that men often express power by strength, domination. duel and duality, re-blooded characteristics we also find in war.
There is an other expression of power, which music is part, not less potent but more forgotten: might.
According to the dictionary might is a synonym of strength and power and expresses the same signification, but might is more collective, and is often used to describe the forces of nature. Strength and might both means power, force, potent ; they are the same thing theoretically but in facts might is much less used.
Perhaps because might is also a modal verb which expresses an uncertain possibility, implies that, for a English speaking ear, the possibility for the other to exist alongside, (instead of being crushed by the "strength" ).
And that is exactly the power of music: music is collective, invisible, music doesn't destroy, music wakes up whereas strength is individualistic, dichotomous, visible, aggressive That's you or me. "May the best (man) win!".Weapon send strength on its shipment (which has to be definite and specific), but doesn't control the reception at all. While might like music doesn't claim to dominate but to influence, to control, to have an active (and certainly not passive) reception, to bend other forces ... but ensuring that balanced is still held. Music is not in a dualistic duel balance of power as war and strength are.

It is socially difficult to conceive that power isn't only associated with masculinity, or worse that it also can be opposed to the virile symbolism present in the collective unconscious. And still powerful. Even more powerful.
Owing cultural bias of a patriarchal society having condemned healers, wise women, as witches, we tend to consider power only by manly (if not phallic) attributes. Then we forgot not only the importance but also the existence of another form of power.
Today, in our "war" against the current pandemic we discover that belligerent attitude doesn't work. Demonstration of manly, warlike force, turned towards and against the outside is not the only one. And here is useless. There is another form of power, turned inward, Surround, heal, create, wrap, coexist, integrate, supply, protect, continue the ordinary when everything is extra- ordinary, here for few weeks the real power. Weapons don't help. Music does.

In conclusion it is because music is powerful that its might is used in war which need all forms of power without distinction But might and strength are two essential polarities of power. Its power doesn't make music a weapon. It would be rather its antidote, its negation, what brings solder back to life and creation.

credit picture: Pin by Алёна Alena on music