Since the Civil War, music has coursed through the United States military. Soldiers have sung while marching, listened to phonographs and armed forces radio, and packed the seats at large-scale USO shows. 

“Reveille” has roused soldiers in the morning and “Taps” has marked the end of a long day. 

Whether the sounds came from brass instruments, weary and homesick singers, or a pair of heavily used earbuds, where there was war, there was music, too. 

Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America's Soldiers (University of Chicago Press, Nov. 2024) is a first-of-its-kind study of music in the lives of American soldiers. 

Although musical activity has been part of war since time immemorial, the significance of the U.S. military as a musical institution has generally gone unnoticed. Historian David Suisman, associate professor in the University of Delaware Department of History, traces how the US military used—and continues to use—music to train soldiers and regulate military life, and how soldiers themselves have turned to music to cope with war’s emotional and psychological realities. 

Opening our ears to these practices, Suisman reveals how music has enabled more than a century and a half of American war-making. Instrument of War unsettles assumptions about music as a force of uplift and beauty, demonstrating how it has also been entangled in large-scale state violence. 

Whether it involves chanting “Sound off!” in basic training, switching on a phonograph or radio, or cueing up an iPod playlist while out on patrol, the sound of music has long resonated in soldiers’ wartime experiences. Now we all can finally hear it.