Wired for Music: A book that proves we've got the music in us
Wired for Music: A Search for Health and Joy Through the Science of Sound, by Adriana Barton. Greystone Books, 290 pages. $32.95 (Canada)
Backstory
A publicist for Greystone Books who saw my blog, MUSIC I MISSED, recently asked if I’d read and review this new book by one of their authors, Adriana Barton.
I told her I am not some huge social media influencer or high-profile critic. I said I post my new blog entries to Facebook and send them by old-school email to about 100 friends.
She wasn’t dissuaded. “If one person reads your review and buys the book, that’s great.”
So I asked her to send it.
I recognized the author’s name. Adriana Barton had done good work for years as a health reporter for the Globe & Mail. This book seemed to be an extension of that expertise she had developed in exploring health.
Then I read the dust jacket and rolled my eyes.
“Christ, this is one of those ‘the science of music’ books,” I muttered.
In Wired for Music, the blurb promised, Barton would “get to the root of music’s profound effects on the human body and brain.”
For most of my 40-plus years as a journalist and professional writer, I’ve written about how “things” work. Poverty, refugees, theology, climate change, dynamite, stem cells, language, the immune system, volcanoes, global supply chains, deep space telescopes and bats (the flying kind) are just a few of the topics I’ve covered.
I love this work. I learn a lot and I like being able to help people understand what’s going on around them.
But I’ve always drawn the line at writing professionally about my hobbies – music and baseball.
I don’t want to know the physics behind what makes a pitcher’s slider baffle batters. I also don’t want to understand the geometry, more physics, and psychology that enables a batter to swing at a good slider and actually hit it. When watching baseball, I want to remain amazed, even mystified.
And the same goes for music.
I don’t want to know about the engineering that went into my drum kit. Nor do I want to understand the brain science that enables me to improvise. Trying to understand the how-and-why of music takes the fun out of it for me. I’d rather that talent just happen.
So, I’ve resisted books that explore the science of baseball and music, and the same applied to Barton’s book. When I received it, I put it aside and left it, unread, for weeks.
What brought me back? Full disclosure: It was a mixture of guilt and politeness that finally made me crack the cover: I thought, “The publisher was nice enough to read my blog and like it and send me the book. I should at least try reading it.”
So I did.
What do I think of Wired for Music?
Read on.
REACTION
Well, much to my surprise, this is a terrific book.
When I interview a university researcher, I almost always come out of the experience saying, “I’m now 100 per cent smarter than I was before I talked with that prof.”
And that’s how I feel now with Wired for Music under my belt.
Adriana Barton has created quite a wonder here – a book that works well as both a very deep and comprehensive dive into why we humans connect with music and as a frank and personal discussion of Barton’s often painful experiences – physically and emotionally – as a young cellist.
It’s that mix that makes this a rewarding read.
The science/health/cultural information she relays from scientists and scholars around the world is informative and often surprising. She presents a well-written exploration of how the brain processes music and how that processing can provoke certain emotions that positively impact our health. She even gets into how and why certain types of music were created. Barton does a good job with all of this, as evidenced by the presence of one “wow” and “cool” after another scribbled in the margins of my copy.
For example, early in the book she tells a story of a particular development in what we now know as music therapy. This gets personal for me. I was aware of this discipline and had seen it in action. One of our kids, our son Nicky, who died in 2014 at age 28, was profoundly physically and mentally challenged. He lived in a group home. Music therapists would work with Nicky and his mates, often to notable effect. Even though none of the residents of the home could talk, they all responded positively to sounds of the music the therapists played. I remember how Nicky loved the big, booming drums of Max Weinberg on Springsteen’s We Take Care of Our Own. The happy look on his face and the way he kicked his foot against our car’s glove compartment told me so.
Barton tells us that, in fact, the use of music to calm us and even to possibly promote physical health goes way back into human history. Indigenous peoples around the world have used music for millennia in that way.
And she relates a nifty story of more modern times. In 1945, the US War Department launched a music program for soldiers recovering in hospitals that soon expanded to 112 veterans hospitals, where music was played in operating rooms and psychiatric wards.
As part of the program, an army air force private, Harold Rhodes, invented a therapy instrument made from aluminum tubing from wrecked B-17 bombers. As part of their therapy, bed-ridden patients learned to play his “xylette,” a small xylophone connected to a piano keyboard. And Rhodes didn’t stop there. He founded his own electric piano company. You know the legendary song by The Doors, Riders on the Storm? Ray Manzarek plays a famous, long passage in that song on a Fender Rhode Piano Bass – that instrument is one of Harold Rhodes’ inventions.
Wired for Music is full of these mini-stories. In another, Barton explains how the ancient Romans enjoyed loud, expressive music using a variety of horns, pipes and percussion. But this was perceived as debauchery by the growing Christian religions, whose leaders evolved music that eventually became Gregorian chant – far from the party music favoured by the Romans. And in a fascinating chapter called “Bad Vibrations” she also explores how music can be used for evil. The section on how Hitler employed music in the Nazi death camps is harrowing.
I particularly liked the sections where she explores music as a powerful salve for loneliness, documenting, for example, how singing in a choir has a proven positive effect on mental health.
I know whereof she speaks. One of the most wonderful moments of my life came in the fall of 2021, when the pandemic lockdown was lifted in Ontario and I got back together with some guys in a rehearsal studio in Markham (a great studio called The Farm: thefarmrocks.net). For two hours, we jammed, trying out Springsteen’s I’m on Fire and a bunch of Tom Petty songs. Playing the music was, of course, fun. But it was being there in-person, playing the music together that resulted in an undeniable happy feeling.
All this impressive research and Barton’s ability to explain what she’s discovered would be enough.
But she makes this book a deeper, more soulful read by letting us into her own experience.
In this book-within-a-book, she tells the story of her own often difficult journey as a musician. Barton started playing the cello as a little girl in Ottawa. She was very formal about it for years. Private lessons, endless practising, all that. Eventually, she studied with renowned cellists and played with high profile orchestras and in respected competitions.
But it didn’t work for her. She developed physical pain from playing too much. She couldn’t turn a doorknob without it really hurting.
This approach to music didn’t make her happy, either. At one point, a boyfriend – a drummer in a bar band – surmised that she wasn’t a real musician. “You never made your own music. You never jammed…All you did was rehash someone else’s songs. That’s not music, that’s parasitic.”
She didn’t like him saying that, but, privately, she couldn’t deny his claim.
“I couldn’t forget all the times I’d felt like a trained monkey, playing by rote.”
She eventually put the cello away and pursued a career in journalism. But her fascination with music continued, and in this book, she’s able to combine this lifelong interest with her skills as a science journalist.
The result is chapters about the connection between music and our brains that is personalized by Barton’s often touching accounts of her own experiences with music, including a particularly moving section about taking a year off and visiting her father’s Polish-Ukrainian family in eastern Europe and experiencing their musical culture.
Should you read Wired for Music? Yes. But let me offer some help.
The book is well-written but so chock-full of information that I often found it overwhelming. There are no photos, charts, tables, graphs or sidebar blurbs. There’s a little dialogue here and there, but not much. There is no summary at the end of each chapter. In the hardcover edition, it’s 228 pages of straight prose.
I recommend approaching it in a planned way.
Each of the 10 chapters is about 15 pages long. Read a chapter over a day. Let yourself consume this fascinating information slowly. Take a few days off in between chapters to let it seep into your brain. If you try to rush through it, you’ll get frustrated and miss out on all the great details in this impressive book.