STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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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
PICKING UP THE PIECES: A music instructor with recovering soldier in a session of neurologic music therapy at a US Naval Medical Center in San Diego
[USMC/Public domain]
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
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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Two books and a film that examine cultural excavation and the impact of place on behaviour