The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth, Michael Spitzer (Bloomsbury 2021)
I don’t know a lot about music: I just know what I like. Michael Spitzer does know a lot about music and he’s able to convey what he knows with enthusiasm and insight. This book is a good introduction to the astonishing variety and richness of the music made by human beings not just all over the world but all through time. And Spitzer looks at the sounds made by birds, bees and baleen whales too. Are they music?
Maybe. But what is music? What purposes does it serve? Those are some of the big questions Spitzer looks at. I liked the very interesting connections he made between walking and singing. You can find important elements of music all over the animal kingdom – crickets have rhythm, birds have melody, whales have development – but only human beings put them all together and create true music. Unlike our closest relatives, the apes and monkeys. Why is that? Why are we special? Spitzer suggests it’s connected to our bipedalism and our ability to walk. A piece of music is like a journey through a landscape.
I like that idea. But I was unsure about other things in the book. First, although Spitzer draws in many threads from many places, times and specialities, I don’t think he weaves them together satisfactorily. I’m not sure anyone could. The subject of music is too big and the reasons for making music may be too varied. As I read, the book began to taste like a stew that wasn’t fully cooked. It had a lot of delicious ingredients but they didn’t come together as one dish.
And the other thing I was unsure about was Spitzer’s nods towards Woke politics. It’s good that the nods were there, but I don’t think nodding is enough. Yes, he condemns the so-called western world and repeatedly calls out slavery, colonialism and other horrors visited by the so-called west on the so-called rest, but I’m afraid that, for me, it all had a perfunctory feel, as though Spitzer’s heart wasn’t truly in it. I’m sure I’m wrong and that, like me, he is indeed a keyly committed core component of the anti-racist community, but it would have been good to have more space in the book dedicated to issues around racism, sexism, transphobia and other core progressive topics.
Papyrocentric Performativity 
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