Can Music Stop War? by Kevin Patrick Fitzgerald.  Originally posted on Medium, May 2025; reissued by Mnoty Press, October 2026.

I believe that music can be used to prevent war. It can bring people together emotionally and spiritually across borders of nation, language, and religion to build transcendent community, and thereby make war between these people, and the dehumanization that is so often a part of justifying war, harder to attain by the various greedy factions.

I also believe that after the trauma of war, music can facilitate deep spiritual healing in a variety of ways. It can help victims, citizens and soldiers alike, struggle with their internal emotions as well as connect with others in sympathetic ways that can sooth and help work through the trauma.

What I will tentatively suggest here, moreover, is that music can be used against a war that has already started. I'm not as convinced as I am about my other assertions, and I kind of had to stretch my neck to get to the conclusion that, while music does not seem able to sway the politicians, generals, and jingoist civilians determined to wage war, music can be used to inspire resistance to the war.

In the Hebrew Bible, Saul was the first king of the Israelites, and he kept having fits of madness, and during those fits, he would start violence without cause. Recognizing that he had a problem, he enlisted a shepherd named David to play his lyre, which would sooth Saul's mental illness, making him less likely to start wars. Eventually, Saul started wars anyway, yet it's a story that has merit and shows how music can help make peace in a monarchy.

With democratic regimes it seems to take more effort to start a war, and likewise more effort to stop one. Once the politicians have invested their careers on a pro-war footing, the military-industrial elites have felt the potential power of the venture, and a significant portion of the people have been convinced not only that the war is just; also that those who struggle for peace are in league with the enemy, war is a hell of a thing to stop.

When I started to hatch this idea for a paper, I was thinking about the Vietnam War, as it's called in the US, or the American War, as it's called in Vietnam. The peace movement in the US definitely had a musical aspect, and music festivals often became rallies for peace, and vice versa. The radio broadcast a bunch of anti-war songs, and they could even be on mainstream pop music tv shows.

So, it wasn't just the music, or the music in isolation. There was also institutional support from the media and a lot of work from activists who saw the value of music in inspiring participation.

Still, I'm not convinced that the anti-war movement actually hastened the end of the war. Nixon got caught spying on his political opponents and resigned, and Ford ordered the evacuation of Saigon, and it seems like the war was already played out by this point.

While I do believe the protest has had a lasting cultural effect that helps build peace in the aftermath of the war, and has helped encourage people to resist war in the following decades, I don't believe they actually helped stop the war. So, the way I see it, musical resistance was worth it for future generations, even though it was unable to have an immediate effect on policy.

It does not necessarily follow, however, that music can not stop a war that has already started in a democratic regime. Rather, it suggests to me that a musical peacemaking movement has to be far more broad and diverse in its appeal, and perhaps such a broad and diverse musical peace movement is possible. And perhaps such a movement can also be leveraged to help secure lasting peace in the long run.

So, basically, at this point I'm thinking every little contribution helps, and every musical offering in pursuit of peace is worth celebrating. Sometimes I get concerned, even perhaps a bit hostile, to music that seems designed to lull us to sleep while the war machine keeps turning, and I kind of think we need wakeup music to motivate our resistance, I don't know… maybe soft music helps some people focus on their peace-work, or rest up so they can continue the struggle later, so maybe that's an example of diversification of the movement I should celebrate as well.

Maybe my conclusion is that maybe music can't stop war, but it's worth a shot? I mean, not instead of mobilization for legislation and accountability and litigation for justice and all that, and passive resistance and media campaigns of various sorts, and yes, protests in the streets. Music not rather than these: music as part of these and music as a spiritual vehicle to help us transcend our differences so we can better work together in cultivating a long-term peace movement.

Peace.