How Music Works – Class is in Session with David Byrne

I spend varying fractions of all of my days over-thinking music… Just music, it’s influence, it’s history, it’s evolution, it’s devolution, how we listen, why we listen, how we make it, why we make it…enjoyment, revulsion, integrity…

Until now, I’ve not found an investigative book so engaging, relatable, poetic and enlightening as How Music Works.

I’m all too self-conscious that I come off as hero-worshiper, bowing more to the already-bowed-to art-sultan, David Byrne. But while Oliver Sacks (Musicophelia) could be very endearing and strike a novelist-esque narrative, he’d ultimately bring it back to the denser drawing boards of psychology and Daniel J. Levitin (This Is Your Brain On Music) affected a chilly classroom aesthetic with his still-commendable expounding upon the neurosciences of musical arrangement.

But Byrne’s book puts it all in language that, pardon these poor puns, resonates in my heart. “Music’s a slippery beast…and that’s part of it’s appeal.” Byrne’s a singer, and with his writing, he sings. But he’s also a poet, an extravagant and curious and visionary artist, a weird and wonderful man striving to be in-touch with multiple realities and perceptions. He presents himself not as an authority, not out for cold compartmentalization or disillusioning breakdowns, but as a bit of a hybrid reengage/student, iconoclastic-somewhat towards shrewdly held schools of thought yet completely free of snide irreverence.

For a pupil of post-punk like myself it’s equivalent to a soft-spoken father figure comfortingly cooing and grasping your shoulder as he sits down beside you after your burst of pencil-snapping-paper-crumpling and says, “Here, let’s look at it together…” And together, with charming spurts of raconteur-ish refrains to CBGB’s girded by the erudite elucidation upon the social/mechanical/geographical/architectural effects (but more importantly, causes) of music – it’s impact and it’s chain-reactions and it’s unintended or uncontrollable outcomes of wonder – you upon just HOW it works, how, in very many ways it works, works its wonders, why it does what it does to YOU AS THE LISTENER…and sometimes: how.

Just as if he’s showed you how to solve a quadratic equation – he lays it out for you in a new language, one free of numbers, codes, boxes or tables – solved, with the work shown, in a musical language.

Best of all – this awesomely-overwhelming textbook-ish trip (leather-bound design by McSweeney’s chieftain Dave Eggers and decorated with illuminating graphics and demonstrative photos throughout) – has an entire chapter on:

“How To Build A Scene…” – laid out with 8 crucial rules (or guidelines)… “Not definitive,” Byrne writes, “but, a start…”

“It’s a real testament to how much creativity we all harbor that scenes emerge the way they do. People and neighborhoods that were never suspected of being huge creative hubs – Detroit, Manchester, Sheffield, Seattle, exploded when folks who didn’t even know they had it in them suddenly blossomed and inspired everyone else around them.”

I won’t go spoiling the 8-points for you – I’m sure McSweeney’s wouldn’t like that but more so I’d rather you go and get the book yourself so that you can read the multitude of astounding musings Mr. Byrne presents and unpacks.

“What’s important is that local talent of any type is given an outlet.”

It should go without saying, at this point in the column…(hell, at this point in my somewhat-long-held vocation of covering local music) that I assuredly assuage our own “scene” to have impressively flourished in ways I could never imagine and for which, in various displays be they outdoor festivals or basement blowouts, unconventional multimedia presentations or throwback acoustic recitals, has effectively sprung an air of inspiration…enough, at least, to keep us slogging through our day jobs so that we could wrap that song-back-home in the basement at the end of the shift. (And sing it the next weekend).

But it was music, right? Music caused this… Community, a kind of community, onto-itself, “work-ed” together, or cooked-up, or affixed, or realized…through a confluence of music, musical expression, musical performance. Music…encouraging “the latent talent in a community to flower.”

Full disclosure: I’m a huge Talking Heads fan.

That said: Read this book.

Scope the local shops…