About halfway through Wired for Music, classically trained cellist and sleep-deprived new mother, Adriana Barton, is attending an African Movement Workshop. The rhythmic sounds emanating from a dried gourd strung with coloured beads penetrate her skull, ricochet inside her head, and splinter her thoughts. Then nothingness.
Wired for Music is a comfortable blend of science and stories, with personal insights framed by a subjective, biographical narrative. It’s an enjoyable way to engage with the mysteries of music with extensive notes, references, and an index. The author realises that throughout her formal Western classical training, she had approached music like a ‘worker ant’, aspiring for technical mastery. Her early, stressful experiences with formal cello tuition introduce a rigid, personal tension, ‘I had lost something wild, something precious.’
Her journey of self-discovery is explored, unravelled, and documented in this book. After various experiences and investigations into previously unfamiliar musical forms and rhythms – pop, death metal, rock, dance, lullaby, Indigenous drumming — the author now plays instruments for the human connection, profound enjoyment, and how it makes her feel, deep within her marrow.
In the book’s coda, the author reflects on how she planned to investigate music from an analytical lens, with no intention of dredging up her feelings. Indeed, through the process of writing Wired for Music, she recognises another hidden motive: that of healing herself. Music is now an elixir, offering a sense of beauty and awe. Grab a friend, go outside and listen to the rhythm of the cicadas!
Reviewed by Mark Parry
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adriana Barton is a journalist, author and former staff reporter at Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail.
Her writing on health, science, visual arts, architecture, music and pop culture has appeared in publications including Utne, Azure, Boston Globe, Western Living, Vancouver magazine, BlackFlash, Reader’s Digest books and San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Her personal essay “Growing Up Hippie” was published in the anthology American Voices: Culture and Community (McGraw-Hill) alongside writings by Margaret Atwood and Garrison Keillor. Adriana studied the cello for 17 years with teachers including international solo artist Antonio Lysy and Stephen Geber, former principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra. Book research and journalism assignments have taken her to Syria, Jordan, India, Zimbabwe and Brazil. She has been a guest speaker at the Vancouver Writers Fest, Calgary’s Wordfest and Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts.
In 2023, she gave the closing keynote at the 34th Annual Boston International Trauma Conference at the invitation of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (author of The Body Keeps the Score). She lives in Vancouver, Canada, with her husband and son.
0 Comments