Shoot the Singer!: Music Censorship Today

Banning music strangles the very soul of a culture. Shoot the Singer! is the first global presentation of contemporary cases of music censorship. It examines the causes, methods and logic behind contemporary attempts by governments, commercial corporations and religious authorities to prevent people from hearing certain kinds of music (gangsta rap and narco-corrigos are two prominent examples) and the content of particular songs.

The cases come from a surprisingly wide diversity of countries, including Afghanistan, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, North Korea, Burma, France, Algeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Cuba and the United States. What is startling is how worried such very different authority structures all are about music, and the range of techniques used to repress it. The contributors also explore the logic behind these concerns (including two instances where censors explain themselves what they were doing), and the implications of a digital world for music censorship in future.