How Music Works

David Byrne

Sep 2012 · Canongate Books

About this ebook

How Music Works is David Byrne's buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. Equal parts historian and anthropologist, raconteur and social scientist, Byrne draws on his own work over the years with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and his myriad collaborators - along with journeys to Wagnerian opera houses, African villages, and anywhere music exists - to show that music-making is not just the act of a solitary composer in a studio, but rather a logical, populist, and beautiful result of cultural circumstance. A brainy, irresistible adventure, How Music Works is an impassioned argument about music's liberating, life-affirming power.

Ratings and reviews

Like having David Byrne over for dinner well several dinners but all refreshing enlightening and inspiring

I want song

About the author

Known as the force behind Talking Heads and later as the creator of the highly-regarded record label Luaka Bop, Scottish-born David Byrne also works as a photographer, film director, author and solo artist; he has published and exhibited visual art for more than a decade. He has received Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe awards and been inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.