In this chapter, David Byrne (frontman of Talking Heads) introduces the reader to an insight that he’s had over the years as an artist and challenges them to question how they think about creation. His insight is that “context largely determines what is written, painted, sculpted, sung or performed”. He suggests this idea in opposition of the common notion that creation just emerges from some interior force within us. He believes that we instincively make work to fit pre-existing formats. Bryne begins by talking about his own history and CBGB in New York, where he often performed when Talking Heads were in the infancy of their career. He introduces the idea that specific factors about CBGB had an effect the performances that took place there, such as the acoustics, the size of the venue and the sorts of crowds who filled the rooms. An example of a point that Bryne made regarding one of these factors was that because of the great acoustics, every detail of a performance would be heard and therefore would affect how we perceive that performance. After introducing the reader to how different factors in a space can affect how music is perceived, he decides to look back further into history and compare how music evolved in different spaces after admitting that he didn’t know of CBGB’s existence when he wrote the music he that performed there.
His first comparison is between rhythmic music originating from Africa and western music from the middle ages. Byrne presents the idea that both of these musical styles had formed to perfectly suit their respective environments and that neither would be nearly as successful if the environments were swapped. Bryne points out that the intricate and layered rhythms of the percussive music from Africa works best outside, which is where it was created and performed, due to the lack of reverberation. He states that with the reverberation of a western church, the complex rhythms would become blurry and less distinct due to the sonic reflections that are present in those sorts of environments. His point here is not that they decided to perform in a space that had no sonic reflections after writing the music, but that the music was tailored that way because of the natural enviroment’s characteristics. Then he goes on explain how he believes this is also true for the music that was played during the middle ages in western churches. Bryne mentions how the slow evolving melodies with few key changes work really well in this environment, pointing out how the reverberation becomes a desired effect when the music is written with it in mind, and that a lot is lost when this music is played outside of its intended environent.
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