Offers a brief typology of music’s restricting circumstances in a particular historical moment: the post-9/11 United States. Cases are presented that focus on the intrusive side of music’s inevitable mediating layers, with particular reference to new sites and forms of censorship following the attacks of September 2001, without losing sight of the paradoxical nature of musical censorship–its double voice–in assessing its scope and authority. The essay begins by discussing some cases of relatively overt censorship, with a particular focus on the removal of existing songs from various important broadcasting channels (or the placing of prohibitive obstacles before them in such contexts). Following this general discussion, it examines the removal of music by the Dixie Chicks from many radio stations in 2003 in more detail. The second set of cases presents a more subtle form of censorship: the voluntary removal of musical products or cancellation of events out of forbearance or sensitivity in the context of a current political sentiment. In particular, it examines the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s cancellation of a performance of choruses from John Adams’s The death of Klinghoffer. The underlying justification for this essay is the contention that it is the silent and invisible acquiescence of the cautious and compromised artist that ultimately registers the extent of genuine political power.