Song and Circumstance

For over three decades now, David Byrne has been a leading light in American culture - in popular music, experimental theatre, film, television, fine art, and writing. Based on the cultural capital he gained with his groundbreaking band Talking Heads, Byrne is able to enter into collaborations with many artists, some of popular fame -Brian Eno and Jonathan Demme, for example - and others known best in more specialized circles - such as Joseph Kosuth, Twyla Tharp, and Caetano Veloso. The map of Byrne's collaborations, including the casual and incidental ones, reveals an ongoing effort to combine avant-gardism with popular appeal.
This highly original and illustrated account of David Byrne's career is structured by choosing a specific abstract approach, or a combination of two approaches, for each chapter, discussing the parallels and contradictions between such approaches to benefit the interpretation of Byrne's art. As a result, the fertile conceptual brew that characterizes Byrne's way of making art is present from the beginning, while each chapter adds to thorough insight and developing perspective.

Sytze Steenstra, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at MaastrichtUniversity, The Netherlands, and a freelance author/editor.

List of illustrations
INTRODUCTION
The world is a song
Singer and conceptual artist
Mythology and methodology
Conceptual Romanticism
The method of this book
Part One: STRIPPING DOWN ROCK SONGS
The tentative rejection of mimesis
Cybernetics as inspiration
The first years of Talking Heads
Ethological and neurological aspects of music
Experiments with rhythm, texture and persona
Part Two: A WIDER MUSICAL COMMUNITY
Music and dance as social exchange
Isolated voices embedded in rhythm
At the crossroads: "Remain In Light"
Comparative studies of myth, archetypes and ritual
Archetypal conflicts: "goin' boom boom boom"
Speaking in Tongues: persona as ritual texture
Part Three: RITUAL IN DAILY LIFE
Introducing performance theatre
A concert in the cinema: "Stop Making Sense"
Music in context: "Talking Heads vs. The Television"
"The Knee Plays", music for Robert Wilson
"Little Creatures": television's naiveté
"True Stories", a generic Gesamtkunstwerk
A soundtrack for Mabou Mines' "Dead End Kids"
"The Forest", a Byrne-Wilson piece
"The Forest" as film script
Part Four: ROCK STAR AND ETHNOGRAPHER
The artist as ethnomusicologist
"Naked", Talking Heads' most 'African' record
"Ilé Aiyé": a musical ethnographic documentary
"Rei Momo": incorporating Latin sensibility
Soundtracks for ethnographic art documentaries
Luaka Bop
In the mirror: Sex 'n' drugs 'n' electronic music
Critical responses
Part Five: IN THE VISUAL ARENA
The arena of visual communication
Photographic repertoires
"Strange Ritual": documents of sacralization
The voodoo of the business world
"The New Sins": a new mythology of chaos
Dressed objects and other furniture
Part Six: TROPICALISMO IN NEW YORK
The singer as imaginary landscape
"Between The Teeth"
New York Tropicalismo
TV presenter
"Live at Union Chapel"
Choreographed songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno
History in the disco mirror ball
Part Seven: AN EMOTIONAL EPISTEMOLOGY
Cloud diagrams
"Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information"
Arboretum: the garden of correspondences
The representation of politics
Who owns our eyes and ears?
Philosophy in installments
Bicycle Diaries: a comparative mythology of cities
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Discography and Filmography
Bibliography of David Byrne writings
General bibliography
Index