February Collaborative Blog: Essential Reading List for Music Lovers

2/3/2021

Need some books to add to your quarantine reading list? For the February collaborative blog, the collective recommend some of their favorite books for any music lover. The list ranges from autobiographies, music history, scientific theory, and beyond.

Brandon's Picks

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Written by Oliver Sacks

The late Oliver Sacks was a world-renowned neuroscientist, historian, naturalist, and advocate in the now flourishing field of music therapy. This book goes into many interesting case studies of people who have highly unique relationships with music. He goes into riveting detail regarding one patient who survived a lightning strike only to wake up to discover they could play classical piano pieces without any prior musical training. Another patient who had a song stuck in their head for decades to maddening results. There are even detailed accounts about the cross-wired sensory experiences of those with synesthesia, which along with other symptoms, can experience visual associations with music in the form of abstract colors and shapes. In short, this book is a fascinating peak into what our brains our capable of and only reaffirm Sacks’ lifelong belief that the brain is “the most incredible thing in the universe”.

How Music Works
Written by: David Byrne
Formerly of Talking Heads’ fame, David Byrne’s half memoir, half music theory book dissects the influence of music in a non-linear fashion, drawing from a wide variety of personal experiences from his life and music career. Discussing everything from bird songs to the romanticism of local venues in small town music scenes, this book will undoubtedly hold your attention just to see what rabbit hole it will dive down next. Byrne’s writing style is identical to his style of speech and his eccentric personality shines through gloriously in these pages. I would recommend this book not only to fans of David Byrne and the Talking Heads, but anyone who feels stifled in their musical explorations and needs a taste of something “different”.

Miles: The Autobiography
Written by: Miles Davis and Quincy Trope

While this is going to come off as hyperbole to many, this is quite simply one the greatest autobiographies of all time. The late jazz pioneer Miles Davis was considered by many to be the epitome of “cool”. One look at the man’s career and you’re taken down a roster of some of the most skilled jazz musicians of all time. Davis was unapologetically committed to his musical mission and didn’t care who he had to fight on his way up to the top. With a career spanning 40+ years, it’s easy to see why he was such an impressive figure to even people outside of jazz circles. This book is not for the easily offended, as Davis’ foul-mouthed, drug-induced social commentary saturates all 936 pages. It’s an incredible look into one of the few truly American art forms called jazz, its huge impact on society at large, and a peak into one of the most charismatic and immensely talented figures in the 20th century. Highly recommended to fans of jazz, African American culture and history in general, and firsthand accounts of writing music under the heavy influence of drugs.

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Written by: Daniel J. Levitin

This book comes highly recommended for anyone even mildly interested in music, neuroscience, and the fascinating places the two often intersect. The author is a resident neuroscientist at public research McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and he is highly passionate about the subject matter here. Music is an inescapable element of our everyday lives, even when we don’t actively pay attention to it. The purpose of the book is to make you aware of all the qualities of music you were otherwise only passively aware of. Levitin goes into the basics of music theory without overly-complex explanations in order to point out how deeply rooted in human culture and upbringing these concepts are. The aim of the book is to “make the latest findings in neuroscience accessible to the educated layperson” and I think it accomplishes this task remarkably well.

A. Iwasa's Pick

This Music Leaves Stains
Written by: James Greene Jr.

A book about The Misfits, title taken from an early review. They were one of my favorite bands in high school. For the most part, that was the pre-Internet era, and this was a band steeped in both mystery because of the cryptic nature of a lot of their lyrics, but also practically urban myth level drama because of the band members themselves. Well written and researched, probably the best possible account since even first hand accounts would clash between the band members.

Joanna's Pick

Meet Me in the Bathroom
Written by: Lizzie Goodman

I was born and raised in NYC in ‘91. Some of my favorite artists ever include The Strokes (the title of the book is taken from their song "Meet Me in the Bathroom"), LCD Soundsystem, and a bunch others written about extensively in this interview style, fascinating book about the NYC music scene in the early 2000s. Being a music junkie for the majority of my life, I have been painfully aware about how close I was to experiencing this scene, which I knew I would have been a part of had I been born ~5 or 6 years earlier (at 9 years old I was blissfully unaware of how much cool shit I was missing). This book made my yearning to be there one million times worse, in the best way possible. If you have any interest whatsoever in any of the things I have just mentioned, please read this beautiful book. It is a completely enamoring page-turner that I know I will be re-reading every so often for years to come.

Parisa's Pick

New York Club Kids
Written by: Waltpaper

This memoir is far more than just personal stories of famed Club Kid socialite Waltpaper. It’s a fully encompassing documentation of the NY Club Kid experience -- the fashion, the photography, the performances, the drugs, the art, and of course, the raves. Where would the Club Kids be without the groovy 60s nostalgic tunes of Deee-Lite, the ballroom resident house DJs like David De Pino, or the outlandish visual aesthetics of Grace Jones and David Bowie? So while this isn’t necessarily a music book, it’s clear that electronic music and Club Kid culture went hand-in-hand. Waltpaper does a fantastic job transporting readers into the thrilling (and oftentimes, tragic) life of the 90s raver, detailing every club and every DJ involved. I would highly recommend this for lovers of house, techno, drum ‘n bass, ballroom, voguing, and the early rave scene. (I also made a mega-playlist of the music featured in this book here if you’d like a preview, but you still gotta read the book and see the photos to get the full fantasy.)

If you're interested in purchasing any of these books, check out this list from
the AALBC of Black owned bookstores across the country:
https://aalbc.com/bookstores/list.php

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