Un recorrido por la biblioteca personal de David Byrne

El músico y enigmático líder de Talking Heads fue invitado a curar el Meltdown Festival de Londres en 2015, instancia que aprovechó para llevar a cabo una generosa acción (y eventual pesadilla logística): montar una biblioteca con 250 libros de la colección personal que posee en su departamento en Nueva York.

Como la muestra tendría lugar en una biblioteca de poesía inaugurada por T. S. Eliot en 1953, originalmente le habían propuesto a David Byrne que compartiera libros sobre poesía, pero el artista confesó no ser muy lector de ese género: “Soy de los que siente que la poesía y las letras de las canciones son bestias muy diferentes, y mucha (no toda) la poesía me resulta difícil de entender”.

Los asistentes al festival entonces tuvieron la fortuna de poder acceder y tomar prestados los libros de Byrne, de los cuales 224 tratan (naturalmente) sobre música. Títulos sobre jazz, salsa, rap, diseño sonoro, ritmo africano, música latinoamericana, cultura punk y canto popular forman parte de esta extensa colección, algunos de los cuales fueron fundamentales para la investigación de su aclamado libro «How Music Works».

Si moriste de envidia leyendo todo esto, tenemos una buena noticia para ti: David Byrne publicó la lista completa de los libros sobre música que formaron parte de aquel pop-up.

224 libros sobre música en la biblioteca de David Byrne:

40 Watts from Nowhere: A Journey into Pirate Radio by Sue Carpenter
A divina comedia dos Mutantes by Carlos Calado
A Photographic Record: 1969–1980 by Mick Rock
A Thelonious Monk: Study Album by Lionel Grigson
A Whole Room for Music: A Short Guide to the Balfour Building Music Makers’ Gallery by Helene La Rue
Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life by Brandon Labelle
Acoustics for Radio and Television Studios by Christopher Gilford
Africa Dances by Geoffrey Gorer
African Music: A People’s Art by Francis Bebey
African Rhythm and African Sensibility by John Miller Chernoff
Afro-American Folk Songs by H.E. Krehbiel
AfroPop! An Illustrated Guide to Contemporary African Music by Sean Barlow & Banning Eyre
All You Need to Know About the Music Business by Donald S. Passman
Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafè by Miguel Algarin & Bob Holman
An Illustrated Treasury of Songs by National Gallery of Art
And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey by Studs Terkel
Arranged Marriage by Wallace Berman & Robert Watts
Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music by Cristoph Cox & Daniel Warner
Austin City Limits: 35 Years in Photographs by Scott Newton & Terry Lickona
Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music by Deborah Pacini Hernandez
Bandalism: The Rock Group Survival Guide by Julian Ridgway
Beats of the Heart: Popular Music of the World by Jeremy Marre & Hannah Charlton
Best Music Writing 2001 by Nick Hornby & Ben Schafer
Best Music Writing 2002 by Jonathan Lethem & Paul Bresnick
Best Music Writing 2003 by Matt Groening & Paul Bresnick
Best Music Writing 2006 by Mary Gaitskill & Daphne Carr
Best Music Writing 2007 by Robert Christgau & Daphne Carr
Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne
Black Music of Two Worlds by John Storm Roberts
Black Rhythms of Peru: Reviving African Musical Heritage in the Black Pacific by Heidi Carolyn Feidman
Blues Guitar: The Men Who Made the Music by Jas Obrecht
Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music that Seduced the World by Ruy Castro
Botsford Collection of Folk Songs Volume 1 by Florence Hudson Botsford
Botsford Collection of Folk Songs Volume 2 by Florence Hudson Botsford
Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie
Bourbon Street Black: The New Orleans Black Jazzman by Jack V Buerkle & Danny Barker
Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship by Idelber Avelar & Christopher Dunn
Brutality Garden: Tropicalla and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture by Christopher Dunn
Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise by David Rothenberg
But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz by Geoff Dyer
Cancioneiro Vinicius De Moraes by Orfeu
Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music by Mark Katz
Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley by Timothy White
Chambers by Alvin Lucier & Douglas Simon
Chinaberry Sidewalks: A Memoir by Rodney Crowell
Chris Stein/Negative: Me, Blondie and the Advent of Punk by Deborah Harry, Glenn O’Brien & Shepard Fairey
Clandestino: In Search of Manu Chao by Peter Culshaw
Clothes Music Boys by Viv Albertine
Cocinando! Fifty Years of Latin Cover Art by Pablo Yglesias
Conjunto by John Dyer
Conversations with Glenn Gould by Jonathan Cott
Conversing with Cage by Richard Kostelanetz
Copyrights & Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity by Siva Vaidhyanathan
Dancing in Your Head: Jazz, Blues, Rock and Beyond by Gene Santoro
Desert Plants: Conversations with Twenty-Three American Musicians by Walter Zimmerman
Diccionario de Jazz Latino by Nat Chediak
Diccionario del Rock Latino by Nat Chediak
Driving Through Cuba: Rare Encounters in the Land of Sugar Cane and Revolution by Carlo Gebler
Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion by Mickey Hart & Jay Stevens
Essays on Music by Theodor W. Adorno
Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond by Michael Nyman
Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 by Negativland
Fela Fela: This Bitch of a Life by Carlos Moore
Fetish & Fame: The 1997 MTV Video Music Awards by David Felton
Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes by Stephen Sondheim
Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents by Bruno Nettl
Folk Song Style and Culture by Alan Lomax
Folk: The Essential Album Guide by Neal Walers & Brian Mansfield
Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition by Iannis Xenakis
Fotografie in Musica by Guido Harari
Genesis of a Music by Harry Partch
Give my Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman by B.H. Friedman
Gravikords, Whirlies, & Pyrophones: Experimental Musical Instruments by Bart Hopkin
Guia Esencial De La Salsa by Jose Manuel Gomez
Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning by Gary Marcus
Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity by Veit Erlmann
Here Come the Regulars: How to Run a Record Label on a Shoestring Budget by Ian Anderson
He Stopped Loving Her Today: George Jones, Billy Sherrill and the Pretty-Much Totally True Story of the Making of the Greatest Country Record of All Time by Jack Isenhour
Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music and Graffiti by Steven Hager
Hit Men by Frederic Dannen
Hitsville: The 100 Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazines 1954–1968 by Alan Betrock
Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why by Ellen Dissanayake
Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture by Alice Echols
How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond by John Powell
Hungry for Heaven: Rock and Roll and the Search for Redemption by Steve Turner
I Have Seen the End of the World and it Looks Like This by Bob Schneider
I’ll Take You There Mavis Staples: The Staple Songers, and the March Up Freedom’s Highway by Greg Kot
In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise by George Prochnik
Indian Music by B. Chaitanya Deva
It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues by Paul Myers
Japanese Music and Musical Instruments by William P. Malm
Javanese Gamelan by Jennifer Lindsay
Jazz by William Claxton
Knitting Music by Michael Dorf
La Traviata: In Full Score by Giuseppe Verdi
Laurie Anderson by John Howell
Leon Geico: Cronica de un Sueno by Oscar Finkelstein
Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicolas Slonimsky
Light Strings: Impressions of the Guitar by Ralph Gibson & Andy Summers
Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music by Eric Weisbard
Listening Through the Noise: the Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music by Joanna Demers
Listen to This by Alex Ross
Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany by Stephen Sondheim
Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Music Made New in New York City in the ’70s by Will Hermes
Love in Vain: The Life and Legend of Robert Johnson by Allen Greenberg
Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture by Tim Lawrence
Low by Hugo Wilcken
Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-dirty in Seventies New York by James Wolcott
Macumba: The Teachings of Maria-Jose, Mother of the Gods by Serge Bramly
Mango Mambo by Adal
Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB 1965–1985 by Charles Perrone
Max’s Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll by Steven Kasher
Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James and the Shondells by Tommy James
Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe
Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an imaginary Soul Superstar by Dori Hadar
Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” by Alan Lomax
Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture by Thurston Moore
Music by Paul Bowles
Music and Communication by Terence McLaughlin
Music and Globalization: Critical Encounters by Bob W. White
Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of Music by MacDonald Critchley & R. A. Henson
Music and the Mind by Anthony Storr
Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession by Gilbert Rouget
Music Cultures of the Pacific, The Near East, and Asia by William P. Malm
Music in Cuba by Alejo Carpentier
Music, Language and the Brain by Aniruddh D. Patel
Musica Cubana Del Areyto a la Nueva Trova by Dr. Cristobal Diaz Ayala
Musical Instruments of the World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia with More than 4,000 Original Drawings by Ruth Midgely
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
My Music by Susan D Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi & Charles Keil
New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88 by Stuart Baker
Noise: A Human History of Sound & Listening by David Hendy
Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Attali
Notations by John Cage
Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds by David Toop
On Sonic Art by Trevor Wishart
Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving the Opera by Fred Plotkin
Patronizing The Arts by Marjorie Garber
Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner
Pet Shop Boys: Literally by Chris Heath
Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey by Peter Manuel
The Power of Music: Pioneering Discoveries in the Science of Song by Elena Mannes
Presenting Celia Cruz by Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs
Queens of Havana: The Amazing Adventures of the Legendary Anacaona, Cuba’s First All-Girl Dance Band by Alicia Castro
Recordando a Tito Puente: El Rey del Timbal by Steven Loza
Reflections on Macedonian Music: Past and Future by Dimitrije Buzarovski
Remembering the Future by Luciano Berio
Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording Music and Its Effect on Music by Michael Chanan
Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties by Ian Macdonald
Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans by John Broven
Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Pay: The History of Politics in the Music Industry by Steve Shapple & Reebee Garofalo
Rock Archives by Michael Ochs
Rock Images: 1970–1990 by Claude Gassian
Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews by Timothy White
Salsa Guidebook for Piano & Ensemble by Rebeca Mauleon
Salsa: The Rhythm of Latin Music by Gerard Sheller
Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York City by Vernon W. Boggs
Samba by Alma Guillermoprieto
Sonic Transports: New Frontiers in Our Music by Cole Gagne
Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear by Steve Goodman
Souled American: How Black Music Transformed White Culture by Kevin Phinney
Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture by Frances Dyson
Soundings by Neuberger Museum
South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous by John Broven
Spaces Speak, Are You Listening: Experiencing Aural Architecture by Barry Blesser & Linda-Ruth Salter
Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music by Angelique Kidjo
Starmaking Machinery: The Odyssey of an Album by Geoffrey Stokes
Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer by Jonathan Cott
Stolen Moments: Conversations with Contemporary Musicians by Tom Schnabel
Stomping the Blues by Albert Murray
Tango: The Art History of Love by Robert Farris Thompson
Text-Sound Texts by Richard Kostelanetz
The ABCs of Rock by Melissa Duke Mooney
The Agony of Modern Music by Henry Pleasants
The Anthropology of Music by Alan P. Merriam
The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer
The Beatles: Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn
The Book of Drugs: A Memoir by Mike Dougherty
The Brazilian Sounds: Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil by Chris McGowan & Ricardo Pessanha
The Faber Book of Pop by Hanif Kureishi & Jon Savage
The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places by Bernie Krause
The Human Voice by Jean Cocteau
The Kachamba Brothers’ Band: A Study of Neo-Traditional Music in Malawi by Gerhard Kubik
The Last Holiday: A Memoir by Gil Scott-Heron
The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States by John Storm Roberts
The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock by Charles White
The Merge Records Companion: A Visual Discography of the First Twenty Years by Merge Records
The Music Instinct by Philip Ball
The Music of Brazil by David P. Appleby
The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and the National Identity in Brazil by Hermano Vianna
The New Woman Poems: A Tribute to Mercedes Sosa by Nestor Rodriguez Lacoren
The Performer Prepares by Robert Caldwell
The Rational and Social Foundations of Music by Max Weber
The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl by Trevor Schoonmake
The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa by Evan Eisenberg
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
The Rolling Stone Interviews: The 1980s by Various
The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice by Greil Marcus
The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World by Trevor Cox
The Sun and the Drum: African Roots in Jamaican Folk Tradition by Leonard Barrett
The Thinking Ear by R. Murray Schafer
The Traditional Music of Japan by Kishibe Shigeo
The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art by Tim Blanning
The Veil of Silence by Djura
The Wilco Book by Dan Nadel
This Business of Music: The Definitive Guide to the Music Industry by M. William Krasilovsky & Sidney Shemel
This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin
Through Music to Self by Peter Michael Hamel
West African Rhythms for Drumset by Royal Hartigan
What Good are the Arts? by John Carey
White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960’s by Joe Boyd
Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History 1955–Present by Gail Buckland
Whose Music? A Sociology of Musical Languages by John Shepard, Phil Virden, Graham Vulliamy, Trevor Wishart
Why is This Country Dancing: A One-Man Samba to the Beat of Brazil by John Krich
Woody Guthrie: A Life by Joe Klein
The Rough Guide to World Music: Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia, and Pacific: An A-Z of the Music, Musicians and Discs by Simon Broughton & Mark Ellingham
The Rough Guide to World Music: Salsa to Soukous, Cajun to Calypso by Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham, David Muddyman & Richard Trillo
World: The Essential Album Guide by Adam McGovern
Yakety Yak: The Midnight Confessions and Revelations of Thirty-Seven Rock Stars and Legends by Scott Cohen