Stevie Wonder

"Hotter than July" documentary

 

This is a 1980 BBC documentary of Stevie wonder's 1980-81 U.S Tour. Stevie wonder is in my top 3 all-time fav artists, I have all his albums except one. yup

 

Posted by KenyaChristian

 

The 2011 Autumn House Poetry and Fiction Contests

Guidelines for the 2011 Autumn House Poetry Contest

Since 2003, the annual Autumn House Poetry Contest has awarded publication of a full-length manuscript and $2,500 to the winner. For the 2011 contest, the preliminary judges are Thom Ward and Michael Simms, and the final judge is Denise Duhamel. The postmark deadline for entries is June 30, 2011. For further questions, feel free to email us, message us on Twitter, or ask us through our Facebook Fan Page.

• The winners will receive book publication, $1,000 advance against royalties, and a $1,500 travel grant to participate in the 2012 Autumn House Master Authors Series in Pittsburgh.
• The deadline is June 30, 2011.
• We ask that all submissions from authors new to Autumn House come through one of our annual contests.
• All finalists will be considered for publication.
• The final judge for the Poetry Prize is Denise Duhamel.
• All full-length collections of poetry 50-80 pages in length are eligible.
• If you wish to be informed of the results of the competition, please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
• Autumn House Press assumes no responsibility for lost or damaged manuscripts.
• All entries must be clearly marked “Poetry Prize” on the outside envelope.
• Twenty five dollar handling fee (check or money order) must be enclosed.
• MANUSCRIPTS WILL NOT BE RETURNED.
• Send manuscript and $25.00 fee to:
  

  Autumn House Press

  PO Box 60100

  Pittsburgh, PA 15211

Electronic submission option: Poetry manuscripts may be submitted electronically by sending the entry by email attachment to autumnh420(at)gmail.com and paying the $25 entry fee through the ”Donate” button on the Autumn House homepage.

Winners of the Autumn House Poetry Prize:

Year	Author	Title	Judge
2010	Corrinne Clegg Hales	To Make It Right	Claudia Emerson
2009	Jacqueline Berger	The Gift that Arrives Broken	Alicia Ostriker
2008	Mary Crockett Hill	A Theory of Everything	Naomi Shihab Nye
2007	Miriam Levine	The Dark Opens	Mark Doty
2006	Nancy Pagh	No Sweeter Fat	Tim Seibles
2005	Ada Limon	lucky wreck	Jean Valentine
2004	Ruth L. Schwartz	Dear Good Naked Morning	Alicia Ostriker
2003	Deborah Slicer	The White Calf Kicks	Naomi Shihab Nye

 

Guidelines for the 2011 Autumn House Fiction Contest

We are pleased to announce the fourth annual Autumn House Fiction Contest.  For the 2011 contest, the preliminary judge is John Fried, and the final judge is Stewart O’Nan. The winner will be awarded publication of a full-length manuscript and $2,500. The postmark deadline for entries is June 30, 2011. For further questions, feel free to email us, message us on Twitter, or ask us through our Facebook Fan Page.

• The winners will receive book publication, $1,000 advance against royalties, and a $1,500 travel grant to participate in the 2012 Autumn House Master Authors Series in Pittsburgh.
• The deadline is June 30, 2011.
• We ask that all submissions from authors new to Autumn House come through one of our annual contests.
• All finalists will be considered for publication.
• The final judge for the Fiction Prize is Stewart O’Nan.
• Fiction submissions should be approximately 200-300 pages. All fiction sub-genres (short stories, short-shorts, novellas, or novels) or any combination of sub-genres are eligible.
• If you wish to be informed of the results of the competition, please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
• Autumn House Press assumes no responsibility for lost or damaged manuscripts.
• All entries must be clearly marked “Fiction Prize” on the outside envelope.
• Twenty five dollar handling fee (check or money order) must be enclosed.
• MANUSCRIPTS WILL NOT BE RETURNED.
• Send manuscript and $25.00 fee to:
  

  Autumn House Press

  PO Box 60100

  Pittsburgh, PA 15211

Electronic submission option: Fiction manuscripts may be submitted electronically by sending the entry by email attachment to autumnh430(at)gmail.com and paying the $25 entry fee through the ”Donate” button on the Autumn House homepage.

Winners of the Autumn House Fiction Prize:

Year	Author	Title	Judge
2010	Ashley Cowger	Peter Never Came: Stories	Sharon Dilworth
2009	Matthew Pitt	Attention Please Now: Stories	Sharon Dilworth
2008	Samuel Ligon	Drift and Swerve: Stories	Sharon Dilworth

 

IR's 2011 1/2 K Prize Guidelines
$1000 Honorarium and Publication
Final Judge: Ander Monson

Ander Monson is the author of a host of paraphernalia including a decoder wheel, several chapbooks and limited edition letterpress collaborations, a website otherelectricities.com, and five books, most recently The Available World (poetry, Sarabande, 2010) and Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (nonfiction, Graywolf, 2010). He lives and teaches in Tucson, Arizona, where he edits the magazine DIAGRAM and the New Michigan Press.

POSTMARK DEADLINE: June 1, 2011
Reading Fee: $15
Includes a one-year subscription

• All entries considered for publication.
• Send no more than three pieces per entry, 500 word maximum per piece. Must be non-lineated prose. (That's 3 short-shorts max per entry fee.)
• All entries considered anonymously.
• Previously published works and works forthcoming elsewhere cannot be considered. Simultaneous submissions is okay, but the fee is non-refundable.
• Multiple entries okay, as long as a separate reading fee is included with each entry.
• Entrant's name must not appear on the poems.
• Manuscripts will not be returned.

Entrant’s name should appear ONLY on the entry form. If desired, include self-addressed stamped envelope for notification. Each fee entitles entrant to a one-year subscription, an extension of a current subscription, or a gift subscription. Please indicate your choice and enclose complete address information for subscriptions. International addresses, please add $12 for postage ($7 for addresses in Canada).

IR cannot consider work from anyone currently or recently affiliated with Indiana University. In addition, IR cannot consider work from anyone who is a current or former student of the prize judge. We also will not consider work from anyone who is a personal friend of the judge.

If submitting by post:

• Please click here for our official entry form
• We prefer you to pay online. Payment instructions are available here. With your entry, include a print out of the receipt that is e-mailed to you as confirmation of payment.
• If you are unable to pay online please contact us.

Send entries to:
‘1/2 K’ Prize Indiana Review
Ballantine Hall 465
1020 E. Kirkwood Ave.
Bloomington, IN
47405-7103

If submitting electronically:

Please click here for our submission manager. Be sure to select the genre "1/2 K Prize 2011" and to include your payment confirmation code in the comments box.

Electronic submissions will close on June 1, 2011 at 5 pm EST.

Electronic Payment instructions:

• Go to this website.
• Enter in the transaction amount ($15 for American contestants, $27 for international contestants, $22 for Canadian contestants).
• In the description box, type the name of the contest ( IR Fiction Prize, IR Poetry Prize, or IR 1/2 K Prize)
• Enter your credit card number, the expiration date, and the CVC number (the CVC number is a numerical code found on the back of your card, more detail can be found here).
• Enter your name, e-mail address, and billing information.
• Under comments write in the title of the piece(s) you’re entering in the contest.
• Click “Pay Now”

Please note that, while we attempt to contact entrants whose submissions are not in accord with our guidelines, this is a courtesy. It is ultimately and solely the responsibility of entrants to ensure they have followed the guidelines. Submissions that do not follow guidelines may not be considered.

 

Fourteenth Annual Poetry Contest

Deadline: June 1, 2011
Judge: Tomaž Šalamun
First Prize: $1,500

Complete guidelines:
The winning poet will receive $1,500 and have his or her work published in the November/December 2011 issue of Boston Review. Submit up to five unpublished poems, no more than 10 pages total. Any poet writing in English is eligible, unless he or she is a current student, former student, relative, or close personal friend of the judge. Mailed manuscripts must be submitted in duplicate, with a cover note listing the author’s name, address, email and phone number. No cover note is necessary for online submission. Names should not be on the poems themselves. Simultaneous submissions are not permitted, submissions will not be returned, and submissions may not be modified after entry. A non-refundable $20 entry fee, payable to Boston Review in the form of a check or money order or by credit card, must accompany all submissions. All submitters receive a complementary half-year subscription (3 issues) to Boston Review. Mailed submissions must be postmarked no later than June 1, 2011.

The winner will be announced no later than November 1, 2011, on the Boston Review Web site. All poems submitted to the contest will be considered for publication in Boston Review.

Please enter online using our contest entry manager. This requires payment using a credit card or Paypal.

Or mail submissions to:

Poetry Contest, Boston Review
PO Box 425786
Cambridge, MA 02142

The Jazz Loft Project

By Maria Popova

Wired lofts, 1,447 rolls of film, and what pimps and Salvador Dalí have in common.

In 1957, 38-year-old magazine photographer W. Eugene Smith, most likely undergoing a creative midlife crisis, left his well-paying job at Life, his comfortable home, his wife and four children, and moved into a 4th-floor loft in a run-down 45-story building at 821 Sixth Avenue, between 38th and 39th streets, in the wholesale flower district of New York.

Why? Smith had been struck with the inspiration for his life’s most aspirational project — to create a monumental photo-essay about the city of Pittsburgh.

But 821 Sixth Avenue was a peculiar place to work. Late at night, the dilapidated building blossomed into a thriving epicenter of the jazz music scene, with underground legends and mainstream greats alike — from Zoot Sims to Bill Evans to the Thelonious Monk — roaming the decaying halls. At the heart of this chaos and glory, Smith’s ambitions for the Pittsburgh project dissolved into his fascination with the loft’s secret life and he redirected his artistic focus towards this newfound inspiration.

Thelonious Monk and his Town Hall band in rehearsal, February 1959

Photos credit W. Eugene Smith. Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. © The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith

 

For the following 8 years, Smith went through 1,447 rolls of film, resulting in some 40,000 photographs of everything from the nocturnal jazz scene to street life in the flower district outside, observed Hitchcock-style from his loft window. And he didn’t stop at image — he secretly wired the building with recording equipment, producing over 4,000 hours of stereo and mono audiotapes on 1,740 reels. The recordings captured more than 300 of the era’s greatest musicians, from Alice Coltrane to Roy Haynes to Sonny Rollins, as well as piano masters like Eddie Costa, legendary drummers like Ronnie Free and Edgar Bateman, saxophonist Lin Hallday, and multi-instrumentalist Eddie Listengart.

Loft interior, fifth floor (ca. 1964)

Photos credit W. Eugene Smith. Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. © The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith

 

The cultural landscape Smith documented spread far beyond the immediate circles of jazz, spanning icons like Salvador Dalí, Robert Frank, Doris Duke and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as local cops, photography students and a vibrant array of the city’s less reputable practitioners — pimps, prostitutes, junkies and drug dealers.

White Rose Bar sign from the 4th floor window of 821 Sixth Avenue (ca. 1957-1964)

Photos credit W. Eugene Smith. Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. © The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith

 

In 1998, Sam Stephenson discovered Smith’s jazz loft photographs and tapes, which had remained unseen for 40 years, and spent the following seven years cataloging, archiving, selecting, and editing Smith’s materials for a brilliantly ambitious book, The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965.

Today, the book is finally out.

Here, Stephenson speaks about the project and the cultural import of Smith’s endeavor.

The book’s eclectic mix of characters and callings, of cultural icons and little details of daily life, offers the colorful threads that weave the fabric of an era. With its superb photography and vintage enigma, The Jazz Loft Project is a slice of life from a time long gone but never forgotten, an epoch that left a permanent mark on the culture of music, celebrity and New-Yorkism.

NFF 2011 Preview - Music Documentary Selection

“Broke*”

Here’s the trailer for music documentary Broke*, a film examining the music business and the artist ability to maintain a livelihood in it.  It just premiered at this year’s Nashville Film Festival and took home the “Special Jury Prize for Most Original Vision” Award.

The film stars up-and-coming hip hop musician Will Gray and spotlights his journey of making his first album.  Gray also directed the project which includes appearances by John Legend, Kelly Clarkson and others. 

Synopsis:

Is it possible for an artist to break? Following on-the-verge artist Will Gray through the recording of his debut album (featuring production by Grammy Award-winning producer, T Bone Burnett). “Broke*” chronicles the stories of artists and executives searching for ways to thrive in the face of today’s music industry challenges. Featuring candid interviews with industry insiders and intimate profiles of some of the brightest emerging musical talent in the country, the film digs beneath the clichés and standard story-lines to reveal an industry struggling to find a new identity and an artist who’s simply trying to establish one. Featuring Kelly Clarkson, Bobby Bare Jr., Seth Godin, Chopmaster J (of Digital Underground), John Legend, Buddy Miller, Isaac Slade (of The Fray) and Don Was.

Cynthia posted to Film Festival at 11:48 pm on April 22, 2011

A Conversation with Esperanza Spalding

photo by Deneka Peniston

Esperanza Spalding was known in the jazz world long before her landmark Grammy win for “Best New Artist.” Adept in vocal and instrumental performance, composition, and with the ability to sing in three languages, it’s no surprise why. But as the following interview with The Revivalist illustrates, she is also deeply thoughtful and eloquent when it comes to explaining her ideas about art, music, and the factors that inspire her work.

Congratulations on your Grammy win. I’m sure you’re a lot more recognizable to the general public now. Do you feel prepared for stardom, or do you believe high-level fame is even a possibility for a jazz artist?

High-level fame—I don’t think there’s any value in that, in and of itself. For what any artist is striving for, artistically, high-level fame doesn’t translate to improved productivity, improved connectivity in their art. Is it possible? Yes. Anything’s possible. I mean, anything under the sun is possible. But what is the value of it? To sell more records? Cool. So that there’s more funding for other jazz musicians to make great music and be supported? Great. But for the sake of fame, it doesn’t contribute a whole lot to the artistry of the practitioner. So I guess if I were to answer the first question, “Am I ready for fame?” Well, there is no fame right now. Things are just like they were before the Grammys; I just get to do cooler interviews. People don’t recognize me at the airport, and I don’t think they particularly care, anyway. I’m just ready to continue growing and exploring the music, and trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing, and make the best work that I can—that’s what I’m prepared for. And anything that happens around that, as long as it’s positive, and helps me do my job better, and hopefully shines some light on the community that I’m a part of, I’ll take readily.

So would you say your recognition from the Academy can help, or will help, your peers and community of jazz artists?

I hope so. Improvised music based off of the jazz idiom—and not even improvised music—music that is cultivated and performed by people who are sort of coming from a school of jazz, or from a love of the music—I think the Academy is already really aware of it, and supports it. So it’s really sort of popular culture that isn’t as aware of it, and just isn’t as connected with it, because it’s not as easy to accept. It’s not on everybody’s radio. If you don’t live in a city that has a 24-hour jazz station, and you don’t turn the radio on at night, and you don’t own the records already, how are you exposed to it? How will you discover what’s happening out there? So if this brings the idiom as a whole more in the spotlight, and if some avenues open up for some of the incredible practitioners of this music because somehow people know who I am, then it will really be worth something.

I’ve heard that Q-Tip is going to be the producer of your next album, Radio Music Society—

Well, we’re working together. I don’t really use producers in the typical sense of the word. But yeah, we’re collaborating on the next project.

What are some key differences between his style and Gil Goldstein’s [co-producer of Chamber Music Society] style?

[Laughs] It’s easier to say what’s similar, because they’re dramatically different, obviously. But what’s similar about them is that they are phenomenal musicians. They have an incredibly diverse arsenal of musical experience, and musical awareness; and both of them work great with others. They’re really supportive of what I’m trying to do—that’s what unifies them. They both really believe in my music, and they really believe that they can help me make it better, and offer a lot to the final product. So that’s what they have in common. They’re so dramatically different that it’s hard to start there….Masterful musicians, masterful at completing projects and getting a unified sound. Also, Q-Tip has worked with jazz musicians before. He co-produced a record with Kurt Rosenwinkel. And it sounds like Kurt Rosenwinkel, but you could hear what Q-Tip did. He just brought out a different sound, and actually really framed Kurt’s music beautifully. And that is sort of the faculty in which we’re working. It’s great. It’s exciting.

Radio Music Society, I’ve heard, is going to be geared toward a more popular style of music—

Oh, I don’t know about that. That’s not necessarily true. I think that has evolved out of me saying that we want the songs to end up on the radio. I don’t know if they will. But we’re formatting the music without sacrificing any of the elements that are so integral to my music. We’re just formatting it sonically with the arrangements so that someone who isn’t used to hearing improvised music, or a band improvise, or the sound textures, harmonies and melodies that are really the music that I love (meaning the music I love to make—I love all kinds of music), but hopefully, by some formatting magic, some sonic magic, and arranging magic, we can share this music with a wider audience that is just more used to what is on the radio these days. So that’s sort of the challenge. I don’t know if it’s going to work, but that’s the premise of the next record.

Do you think Radio Music Society will be more accessible—do you want it to be more accessible for the general public?

I don’t know. I hope that if it’s a sound boundary, or an exposure boundary, just the way that it sounds, and it possibly ending up on the radio will allow people to be exposed to it. I think accessibility has more to do with exposure than content. I really think that. If you’re six and you don’t know the difference between what you’re supposed to like and what is too advanced or too elite for you, you just become attracted to what you like, of what you’re exposed to. So if you’re a young person that has been exposed to a whole diverse array of genres and idioms and different styles of performance art, you just have a wider selection to choose from of what you like, and what you feel connected with; what speaks to you. I don’t know how much of it will be the musical content itself that makes it more accessible, or just the fact that it will be distributed, and hopefully shared with a wider audience of people, so that more people will have access to it. That’s how I see accessibility. I think that’s sort of a myth—that music has to be presented a certain way to be accessible. I don’t think that’s true. I think people are much more open and much more willing and able to receive all different kinds of music. Music is much more diverse than what ends up on Top 40 radio. I think that’s more a testament to what ends up on the radio than people’s tastes.

I mean, of course, to a big degree, it is [about content]. But I don’t think it’s as significant as we think, or as we’re taught to think. I’ve seen over and over again, young people, people of all ages, just spontaneously and intuitively like something they’ve never heard before, and they never had access to it, so they didn’t know if they would like it or not. It’s like, if music speaks to you, it doesn’t matter who it’s by, or what it’s saying, or what it sounds like—if it connects with you, it connects with you. And people deserve the opportunity, and I think they want the opportunity to hear more diverse music. That’s why people say, “Oh, it’s so different; it’s so refreshing.” I hear that all the time about new artists. People get excited when something’s refreshing and different, because they like to hear new things. So in that sense, hopefully accessibility will increase more from the direction of more people being exposed to it than that the music has somehow been catered to be “accessible.”

The focus of this issue of The Revivalist is on instruments, so I wanted to ask you about yours—to talk a little bit about your relationship to the bass. Is there a particular way you feel when playing versus practicing? How has your relationship or connection changed over the years?

When I’m practicing, or when anyone’s practicing, we’re honing the details. We’re studying physically how to become agile. We’re working out, in sort of frozen time, meaning we can take a long time with a concept or an idea or a pattern or sound if we need to, until we have access to it physically, and intellectually. We can sort of stop the clock, so to speak, and we can go in and hone in the details. Refine, polish. All these things that have to do with our physical and intellectual understanding, and ability to do something. So when you’re performing, ideally, you don’t have to worry, or think about those things. When I get on the stage and I’m performing, what I’m trying to do is to play from a place of transmission. I want to intuitively have access to these intellectual concepts—either it’s a sound combination, or a physical pattern. I’m passively trying to convey a feeling, or a story, or a thought through the notes, through my instrument. So I’m not worried about technique; I’m not worried about playing a certain shape or phrase. I’m assuming and I’m trusting that these things I’ve practiced will come out when they need to come out to contribute to the music in that moment. So, in a way, it’s like the clock is moving now. So once everything just happens spontaneously, in real time, you’re not really in control of it. The music that we’re playing is based so heavily in improvisation. So when I get on the stage, I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. I know something’s going to happen, but I have to be free enough to listen and react to what’s happening around me. So I kind of let go of all that intellectual control and physical planning, and just try to let the music come out of my well-refined machine, being my body, that is handling the instrument. I think most instrumentalists would say that’s the main difference between performing and practicing.

And as we all get older, we start having deeper connections with everything we engage with. You have a broader understanding of the way that you’re interacting with your work. So when I was much younger, the bass was just fun, and it was intuitive. And improvised music was just a fun, intuitive thing. And now it’s really starting to become a language that I’m studying as a language, and studying different ways of articulating, and vocabulary, and grammar, and different ways of putting together these fine words with their fine meanings, to say finer and finer, and more refined things, that are more meaningful to me. And I assume that as I grow older, and I mature as a human being, my relationship with the instrument itself, and with the music itself will become more ingrained in my being. Just like language—I’m not really thinking about my word choices right now. I’m trusting that what I want to say will come out, and that I have enough vocabulary that the idea I want to convey to you will come out clearly. And as an instrumentalist, that’s sort of what I’m striving for. And I assume that as I get older and have better words and a bigger vocabulary, I’ll just be clearer and clearer. And, of course, for me, the instrument is bass, composition, and singing, and lyric writing, so all of those things I consider my instruments, or perhaps, it’s just music as a whole that’s my instrument, and I intend to just continue to refine and distill my use of the language.

In what ways is the bass limiting (versus the other instruments you tried before it)? In what ways does it allow you more freedom?

I don’t really remember what it was like to play violin. I don’t know why. I don’t remember what it felt like to practice. And I don’t really remember what I physically thought about, what it was like to be a violinist. That was the instrument I played the longest, so I don’t think I really thought about it in that way. But compared to voice, I guess, or compared to writing, for example—again, writing can happen in stop-time, and you can take as much time as you need to work out everything and then you present it when it’s done. Which is very liberating, because you are in control, ultimately, of what gets put out. You can work on it until it’s like, “Okay. This is perfect. This is exactly what I want to say, and I know it, because I’ve edited out everything I don’t want to say.” So with the bass, at least with the way that I’m usually playing it, it’s much more spontaneous, so that is liberating, in and of itself, because you’re so in the moment, and you’re not responsible for everything in the music, so you can sort of relax and lay back, and just become a part of this musical entity. And the drawback to that, of course, is that in real-time, you could play something that you don’t really mean, or you might play something that’s frivolous, or out of tune, or placed in the wrong spot, or not be able to physically achieve what your ears want to hear, which can be a drawback. So the comparison between bass and voice I think would be that the melodies that I’m playing on bass, for most listeners, are much more abstract than what I’m singing. We have such an ingrained connection with the human voice, that however I open my mouth and sing, it’s going to have some symbolism or meaning for the listener—because it’s a voice. The way I breathe, the way I enunciate, even if I’m not singing lyrics, and then when you add lyrics—okay, so then it’s not abstract at all. I’m actually telling you what I’m talking about, what I’m emoting about. So with the bass, there’s a certain freedom in the abstraction. And then of course, again, it’s limiting. If I want to specifically convey an idea, I’m not exactly sure if the listener got what I meant. Whereas with words, I can say, “I am sad because my cat is sick.” So you can say, I understand exactly what you’re singing about. Those are just some comparisons. I don’t find any of them limiting. And they’re not inherently freeing either. With discipline and time, you become freer on all the instruments. And if you don’t practice, and you don’t work hard at them, you feel limited because you can’t physically achieve what you can intuitively conceptualize. So the instruments in themselves are neither, but our relationships with them dictate the relationship that we’ll have whether we feel like a free musician, so we can play and say anything that we feel, or we can never really quite achieve it.

What are some of your non-musical influences?

Life. [laughs] Everything that’s ever happened to me. That’s the main one. But also, I find a lot of inspiration in reading great writers. So recently, I was reading some Henry Melville. And that is just so poetic. Even when he’s describing a scene in a bar. It’s so poetic, and the symbolism is so fine. I really love reading great practitioners of language. That inspires me a lot. And other than that, just life. Anything you’re emoting through music comes from life—where else would it come from? Just going through the routine of a day, and experiencing all the things that I have the capacity to feel, and think, and notice—those directly or indirectly become fodder for my creativity and my completed work.

Esperanza Spalding “I Know You Know”

Visit Esperanza Online here

Interview by Kyla Marshell

7 Must-Read Books About

Music, Emotion & the Brain

By Maria Popova

 

What Freud has to do with auditory cheesecake, European opera and world peace.

Last year, Horizon’s fascinating documentary on how music works was one of our most-liked pickings of 2010. But perhaps even more fascinating than the subject of how music works is the question of why it makes us feel the way it does. Today, we try to answer it with seven essential books that bridge music, emotion and cognition, peeling away at that tender intersection of where your brain ends and your soul begins.

MUSICOPHILIA

We love the work of neuroscientist and prolific author Oliver Sacks, whose latest book, The Mind’s Eye, was one of our favorite brain books last year. But some of his most compelling work has to do with the neuropscyhology of how music can transform our cognition, our behavior, and our very selves. In Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition, Sacks explores the most extreme of these transformations and how simple harmonies can profoundly change lives. From clinical studies to examples from pop culture — did you know that Ray Charles believed he was “born with the music inside [him]“? — Sacks delivers a fascinating yet remarkably readable tale that tells the story, our story, of humanity as a truly “musical species.”

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC

Why music makes us feel the way it does is on par with questions about the nature of divinity or the origin of love. In This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, Daniel Levitin sets out to answer it — an ambitious task he tackles through a range of lenses, from a digestible explanation of key technical constructs like scale, tone and timbre to compelling cross-disciplinary reflections spanning neurobiology, philosophy, cognitive psychology, memory theory, behavioral science, Gestalt psychology and more. He illuminates diverse subjects like what accounts for the diversity of musical tastes and what makes a music expert, framing music processing as a fundamental cognitive function embedded in human nature. Most impressively, however, Levitin manages to do this while preserving the without subtracting from the intuitive, intangible magic of powerful music, dissecting its elements with the rigor of a researcher while preserving its magnetism with the tenderness of a music lover.

Never ones to pass up a good ol’ fashioned erudite throw-down, we can’t resist pointing out that the book’s final chapter, The Music Instinct, may be the juciest: It’s a direct response to Harvard psycholinguist Steven Pinker, who in a 1997 talk famously called music “auditory cheesecake” and dismissed it as evolutionarily useless, displacing demands from areas of the brain that should be handling more “important” functions like language. (Obviously, as much as we love Pinker, we think he’s dead wrong.) Levitin debunks this contention with a mighty arsenal of research across anthropology, history and cognitive science, alongside chuckle-worthy pop culture examples. (It’s safe to assume that it was musical talent, rather than any other, erm, evolutionary advantage, that helped Mick Jagger propagate his genes.)

MUSIC, LANGUAGE, AND THE BRAIN

As if to drive a stake through the heart of Levitin and Pinker’s debate, Music, Language, and the Brain by Aniruddh Patel — both a musician himself and one of the greatest living neuroscientists — dissects the unique neuropsychological relationship between two of the most unique hallmarks of our species. Rigorously researched and absorbingly narrated, the book traces the origins of humanity’s understanding of this correlation, dating as far back as the philosophical debates of Ancient Greece, and challenges the scientific community’s longstanding assumption that music and language evolved independently of one another. It’s the kind of read that will leave you at once astounded by how much you’ve learned about its subject and keenly aware of how little you — how little we, as a culture — know about it.

It’s worth noting that Music, Language, and the Brain makes a fine addition to our list of 5 must-read books about language.

LISTEN TO THIS

In 2008, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross published The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century — a remarkable historical and social context for contemporary music, which went on to become one of the most influential music history books ever written. Last fall, Ross released his highly anticipated sequel: Listen to This — an outstanding effort to explain and understand the world through its musical proclivities, from European opera to Chinese classical music to Bjork. Though the book, an anthology of the author’s most acclaimed essays with a deeper focus on classical music, is further removed from neuroscience than the rest on this list, Ross’s astute observations on the emotional and social experience of music make it an indispensable addition nonetheless.

MUSIC, THE BRAIN AND ECSTASY

If the human voice is the greatest instrument, as the widespread music teacher preaching goes, then the brain is the greatest composer. Every time we perform, compose or merely listen to music, the brain plays high-level Tetris with a range of devices, harmonies and patterns, creating emotional meaning out of the elements of sound and often extracting intense pleasure. In Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination, composer Robert Jourdain examines music’s unusual emotive power through little-known facts and physiological phenomena and historical anecdotes. Perhaps most fascinatingly, he pins down the origin of pleasure in music as a consequence of a series of tonal deviations that create a conflict in the brain, resolved with a return to the tonal center, which gives us a sensation of bliss. This sequence of conflict and resolution, he explains, can come from the four key elements of music: rhythm, melody. phrase, and harmony. “Ecstasy” is the result of a resolution that comes once a conflict has reached the limit of the listener’s comprehension ability in tonal space-time.

THE TAO OF MUSIC

Traditional self-help books are the pesky cold sore swapped between the lips of legitimate literature and serious psychology. And then there are the books that actually help the self in smart, non-pedantic ways involving no worksheets or mirror nodding. That’s exactly what John Ortiz does in The Tao of Music: Sound Psychology, blending the extraordinary power of music with the principles of Taoist philosophy to deliver an unusual yet captivating proposition: You can enlist your music library in improving your performance and state of mind across everyday challenges like keeping anger at bay, breaking the spell of procrastination, learning to be fully present with romantic relationships, and mastering the art of true relaxation. Through cognitive-behavioral exercises, meditative techniques and melodic visualizations, Ortiz offers a powerful music-driven toolkit for navigating life’s obstacles, and even curates specific “musical menus” of songs and melodies that target specific emotional states and psychological dispositions.

MUSIC AND THE MIND

Nearly two decades after its original publication, Anthony Storr’s Music and the Mind remains an essential and timeless prism for looking at one of humanity’s greatest treasures. From the biological basis of cognition to a thoughtful analysis of the views held by history’s greatest philosophers to the evolution of the Western tonal system, Storr addresses some of the most fundamental questions about music, like why a minor scale always sounds sad and a major scale happy, and offers an evidence-backed yet comfortingly human grand theory for the very purpose of music: Peace, resolution and serenity of spirit.

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Scientists have found that the pleasurable experience of listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain important for more tangible pleasures associated with rewards such as food, drugs and sex. (Credit: iStockphoto)

Musical Chills:

Why They Give Us Thrills

>via: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110112111117.htm