RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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What is music for?
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in an open-minded exploration of music that provokes reflection on the determinants of musical taste
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Listen (On Music, Sound and Us)
Michel Faber, Canongate, £20
MICHEL FABER has near-perfect recall of the lyrics and contributing musicians of Leo Sayer’s Just a Boy, an album he hasn’t listened to for 45 years. On the other hand, he forgets the names of outstanding artists he has heard more recently.
Listen is not a book of music criticism, nor does its author want to influence your taste. His focus is the psychology, sociology and phenomenology of our engagement with sound as a mode of expression.
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