Books That Changed How I Hear Music | Hacker News Reader

Books That Changed How I Hear Music

tedgioia.substack.com

167 pointsjger1536 comments

I can say very little about the books referenced, but one comment struck me as perhaps having wider applicability:

> Hyde, who published [The Gift] in 1983, helped me understand that gift exchanges were much more important than economists and cultural historians lead us to believe. In particular, I gradually came to grasp that talented musicians often struggle because, as gifted peopled, they tend to view their songs in this light. They are punished for building their vocation on gift exchanges in a society that wants to treat everything on a transaction basis. I’d even claim that the biggest problem with the music ecosystem today is the dominance of platforms (YouTube, TikTok, etc.) that pretend to be gift exchanges, but really aren’t.

In particular, I can’t help but wonder if FOSS projects are subject to similar dynamics…

The Gift is also recommended by Margrete Atwood to all creatives. I read parts of it and found it slow and boring but then haven't stopped thinking about it since.

The way we exchange gifts at holidays used to be the way small economies worked, or so i recall the book saying. And thinking about a creation or work of art as being a gift to your community is an idea that seems to make a lot of sense to me.

It is still how some parts of the economy operate. In rural places, you don't buy cabbages from your next door neighbour neither does he buy tomatoes from you. When you have cabbages, more than you and your family can eat, you gift neighbors a bag or three of cabbage. When it's time for tomatoes, they leave a crate for you.

Or another example: drinks between friends. You do not keep a strict tally, simply you buy one round, then next time you meet they buy one round, etc.

Bottom line is it makes no sense to have complex financial instruments, or even money at all, in a small village or tribe where everyone knows each other and there are other mechanisms (cultural and social) to ensure nobody is abusive. An economy based on gift-giving and "indebtedness" makes perfect sense there. This is likely how most small societies operated, even after the advent of agriculture. You only need to break out the gold/silver when trading with strangers.

> I read parts of it and found it slow and boring but then haven't stopped thinking about it since.

I can't tell you how much I love this sentence -- captures a similar experience of mine so succinctly. I keep running into books that I tried to read at a "normal" pace and hated, thought were stupid, that nobody really likes it for real, etc. But then, for different reasons, I started reading books incredibly slowly, and it's like I've entered a secret world.

Some examples, for the curious:

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn

The Varieties of Religious Experience, James

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman

Human Action, Mises

Two out of four (the first two) I started and stopped. Maybe I should persevere.

Sometimes (e.g. Kuhn) you feel like you've already read the thesis after 50 pages or so, and the rest is just repetition of it.

Believe me, I get it :)

Caveat 1: I'm not entirely sure you're wrong wrt Kuhn. But there's no way I would have gotten even 50 pages in w/out going incredibly slow and thinking deeply about it -- my general algorithm now with books such as these is to read enough that I have a 'mind-full' of stuff, and then think about how it connects to other things I care about. That (wrt Kuhn) has made the difference between thinking of paradigms as "big-picture stuff that changes every so often in a manner more complicated than we normally consider", to seeing the tendrils everywhere, all the time, in subtle and nuanced ways propagating through all culture. It took the concept of 'paradigm' from a soundbite I could recite when called upon to a plant that has sent tendrils into the foundations of my thought. Maybe I'm a simpleton and others don't need it, but I don't care anymore. A book is a very personal encounter.

The same applies to James, but something else besides: he's just so _beautiful_ of a writer! But it's a languorous kind of beauty that was utterly lost on me until I started reading him slowly. Reading a few pages at a time I've been struck, repeatedly, by his artistry. I would read him for pleasure, even without any insights. Can't tell you what a change that has been.

The tragedy in all this is that it puts the lie to the self-delusion that I could ever read all that is worthy to be read. C'est la vie. I'd rather actually get something out of the books than have the bedpost notches. I know there are hyper-prolific readers (e.g., Tyler Cowen) -- I wonder if they can get both kinds of value? Either way, I can't, so it doesn't much matter.

Great answer, thanks.

I often get that feeling of "enjoying the beauty of the writing" with Patrick O'Brian, who was pretty prolific. I've read all 20 Aubrey-Maturin books twice now. Even though I don't understand sailing and ship design at all, hardly, I don't mind it -- I get the gist.

(I was inspired by POB; I'm not comparing myself) Writing my two books, I took the same direction: maybe some people won't get all the technical details, but I hope they won't care, like I don't care that I don't know what "wearing" is.

I've only read the first four, but fell in love with the writing. I've bought most of the rest of the series and 'Desolation Island' sits high on the to read next pile.

* Tools for Conviviality, by Ivan Illich

* The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker

Wow. From an Amazon review of The Peregrine[1]:

"The language he uses to construct his sentences is like none other I have ever read. It's a vivid mix of nature writing and the best poetry. The text is so dense, the sentences are so packed with words bringing life to action--there really is no reading experience I can compare this to. I could only stand to read a few pages at a time; "relish" not "read" would be the better word there."

My copy is on its way. Thanks for the rec, I never would have found this.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1FWYHXOVPAIQ

My 2 cents:

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

An interesting followup read would be Graeber/Wengrow's recent work of anthro/archaeological research, Dawn of Everything, which expands on newly-understood historical possibilities for large-scale, post-discovery of agriculture human societies and trade. Our current systems are not as inevitable as people pump them up to be

Also Graeber's Debt which goes deeper into the economy aspects of history, including a lot on social credit based economies.

(Gregory's classic Gifts and Commodities is high on my reading list too, but I haven't gotten around to it yet so I can't say anything specific about it.)

And then Mark Fisher to continue the thread...

I'll bump Debt up on my queue. Haven't been able to stop thinking about Dawn of Everything since tearing through it, it turns so much about our perspective on how the world operates on its head. And by looking at our demonstrated past, not speculation on unknown futures.

Also: if you remember the parts that you haven't stopped thinking about, I'd love to hear what they were. I grabbed the book based on your recommendation :)

I think it was the overall idea of it that stuck with me. We seem to be naturally geared towards a gift economy, like the person above described with the cabbages or sharing drinks with your buddies.

A lot of clashes in the world seem to be capitalism not meshing with those expectations.

A celebrity who is paid millions to be in a movie can be hurt by someone on twitter, with 200 followers insulting they're performance. The person should have no power over them, but does. Maybe that is because it feels like the gifts in the village thing and having your cabbages rejected by a neighbour.

Yes. I have a copy of The Gift, and while I've yet to finish it, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of OSS projects.

See also this brilliant piece by Avery Pennarun on OSS, log4j, and the nature of gifts:

https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211229

In case it's not already mentioned in TFA [1] "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" by Oliver Sacks is a fantastic read that will change how you think of music [2].

[1] substack is hostile to me

[2] https://www.oliversacks.com/oliver-sacks-books/musicophilia-...

For anyone who doesn’t know, Ted Gioia has published books like West Coast Jazz: 1945-1960, Delta Blues, and How To Listen To Jazz.

I’m still reading through the first two and I can highly recommend them to anyone curious about the historical aspect of jazz / blues.

He is excellent at uncovering the cultural stories embedded within music history.

I loved "Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music" and I'm working on "Music: A Subversive History"

I recently heard his interview on Conversations with Tyler. He has an impressive depth of knowledge outside of music as well as an encyclopedic grasp of music.

I tried to read The White Goddess about a year or two ago, and I gave up midway through. As much as I like Robert Graves, that book exists better in its ideas than its execution: the prose itself read more like a brain-dump by a clearly brilliant individual than a focused work. I'm not a Classics expert by any stretch, but t consider myself reasonably well-versed in Greek mythology and history/archaeology of the ancient world. Nonetheless, Graves writing makes no distinction between fact and assertion, and so it's quite hard to tell at times which is which. If he says something like "Hercules was originally a cult-hero worshipped in Crete", is that a fact, or his assertion? Should I expect a footnote to substantiate it, or is that such a well-known fact among Classical scholars that it's my deficiency for not knowing it?

His book has about fifty of these on every page. It's bloody difficult to follow, as a result.

I think he did a much better job, to be honest, when he implemented his White Goddess theory into his retelling of Jason and the Argonauts, Hercules My Shipmate. At least there you understood the theory through the context of the narrative.

> Graves writing makes no distinction between fact and assertion

This seems to be very very very common in humanities writing and it really puts me off.

I would love to know why Ted Gioia is being posted here.

I think it is because of a youtuber Rick Beato had a video of him recently which he was featured. Which lead me to start reading his substack.

Is that how other people found him? I like what I have read and he seems like a really interesting guy and knows a lot about music.

Just interesting how he bubbled up and wondering if others found him from Beato also?

Just skimmed the book of list, yep none of them are music books. As a photography enthusiast, I started reading Susan Sontag's On Photography a few years ago, and havent' finish it.

So after finished reading the author's comments on each book, I wonder how they can relate to my music listening? :/

There is one author that somewhat had an influence in my interest in Music, and that was Murakami. It's crazy how he goes from such poppy music references from The Beatles in Norwegian Wood, to jazz pieces that have influenced him in others in novels such as South of the Border. Really motivated me to open up my music tastes past the punk rock and noughties rock of my teenage life.

All great books. I'd throw in "The Singer of Tales" by Albert Lord, which can really shift your thinking about how oral traditions work. For pure music, I'd highly recommend "The Rest is Noise", by Alex Ross.

Tantalizing. Why _do_ rockstars trash their hotel rooms? Were Greek philosopher poets truly musical performers? So many questions.

> Why _do_ rockstars trash their hotel rooms?

I guess Girard's answer might be something about the power of ritual sacrifice, although it would not be mine.

> Were Greek philosopher poets truly musical performers?.

Don't know about anybody else, but there are some allegedly authentic recreations of Sappho songs on Youtube.

I have not read any of the books listed.

> Why _do_ rockstars trash their hotel rooms?

How many rockstars don’t trash their hotel rooms? How many non-rockstars actually trash their hotel room?

Or maybe this is more of a “no true Scotsman” thing.

>Why _do_ rockstars trash their hotel rooms?

Does this really happen any more or was this just a single generation meme where the cool thing was how hardcore a band was which involved antics like this?

Kitchen confidential? Substack is rapidly becoming the Experts Exchange of feature writing. Perhaps it’ll go to the same graveyard as EE did when StackOverflow killed it.

My reading list just got 10 books longer.

Bait and switch. There's nothing about music here. Only a tired rehashing of book titles that people write about to make themselves look intelligent.

It's not so much a bait-and-switch; the subtitle says none of them are about music. But you're right, it's a show-off list that tells more about his influences as a critic and writer than anything that "Changed How I Hear Music" — and it's not even flaunting anything very impressive. But I suppose it's hard to write an article every few days without running out of true things to say.

> it's a show-off list that tells more about his influences as a critic and writer

What distinguishes a list of one’s influences as a “show-off list” vs. just a regular list?

The phenomenon of music - human’s ability to conceive of it, perform it, of others to enjoy it, and for groups to share experience around it - is a phenomenon that touches on many other aspects of human existence. It raises fascinating questions about the nature of human cognition, culture, subjective experience, etc.

That an author draws inspiration in how he understands music from a wide variety of subjects seems pretty reasonable. To the intellectually curious, it might help one evolve their own understanding of / relationship with music.

> it's not even flaunting anything very impressive

Nor does it claim to do so. Nor does it need to do so. If you wrote a blog post in which you shared the materials that influenced your understanding of Python, Scheme and C# with a goal of helping other people interested in these subjects in their own journey to understanding, must those resources be “impressive”? Is “informative” or “interesting” not enough?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com