People go to music festivals for the music, the fun and the entertainment, but do they also go for intellectual discussions? Can the same crowd attend a set by the godfather of disco Jimmy ‘Bo’ Horne, hip hop legend Lil-B, English folk new sensation Ben Howard, psychedelic pop rock folk Grizzly Bear, and hit maker Gotye, and still sit down to listen to a conversation between ex Talking Heads’ David Byrne and Arcade Fire’s Win Butler?
The international festival of music, Pop Montreal, will feature this rare event on September 22, at the Ukrainian Federation in Montréal, and the two musicians will be discussing Byrne’s new book, ‘How Music Works’.
How music works? What a vast and ambitious subject! and the duo Byrne-Butler will talk about the book ‘in the context of their own personal and professional experiences as musicians and music lovers’.
I haven’t read the book but Byrne is a true intellectual and his book explores his lifetime experience about music, as he writes about how music is shaped by its time and space (the influence of architecture for example), and how new recording technologies have changed our relationship with music as performers and listeners. He also examines patterns and adaptations in music in the Darwinian senses of the terms, seeing music as an adaptation and a response to its cultural and physical context. All this seems really brainy and interesting and so few people in the music business are able to reflect about their experience and write about it like he does,… I would certainly go if I were in Montreal!
But what could Win Butler bring to the conversation? I hope he will let Byrne do all the talking!