War Song

A war song is a musical composition that relates to war, or a society's attitudes towards war. They may be pro-war, anti-war, or simply a description of everyday life during war times.

It is possible to classify these songs by historical, conflict: "First World War songs", "Second World War songs", "Vietnam War songs", and so on. There is also a miscellaneous category of recruiting songs, anti-pacifist songs, complaints about mess rations, excessive drilling and so on. Many national anthems are either a call to arms, or a celebration of military victories and past glories. There were a handful of anti-war songs before 1939, but this category has grown enormously since the start of the Vietnam War. On the other hand, new songs that are pro-war are becoming less common. Some national anthems have been adapted to be purely instrumental, or less bellicose in sentiment.

Nobody knows when the Maori first saw fit to compose the combination song and dance known as the Haka. The haka is generally composed by a chief, or high-ranking warrior to build up the spirits of warriors and their tribe, whilst striking fear into the enemy. The most famous Haka was composed by Te Rauparaha, the chief of Ngati Toa, a tribe based in the lower North Island. Te Rauparaha was known to Maori and early Europeans as "The Maori Napoleon, and his Haka, Ka Mate, was a dance and ode to both the living and the dead. It is still in use today, and is regularly performed by international sports teams from New Zealand, including the All Blacks rugby union team.

In England songs about military and naval subjects were a major part of the output of ballad writers from the 16th century onwards. Most of these fell into two groups, those that lamented the cost of war for the participants, and which can therefore be seen as early protest songs and those that were generally patriotic in nature an often veered into propaganda. Narrative descriptions, which had an important function in distributing news before the development of modern newspapers, fell into both camps, occasionally at the same time.

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