Music Chronicle G Roald Smeets

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English: Bob Dylan at the Air Canada Centre, T...

English: Bob Dylan at the Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the essay that gives this collection its title, Ross explains: “I have always wanted to talk about classical music as if it were popular music and popular music as if it were classical.” Over the course of 19 greatest hits culled mostly from his dozen-plus years as The New Yorker’s music critic, Ross consistently performs this delicate balancing act. Though the bulk of the book examines classical work both historical and contemporary, Ross veers effortlessly from Mozart to Radiohead, from Kurt Cobain to Brahms, bringing a pop fan’s enthusiasm to the composers and treating the rock stars seriously as musicians. Most of the essays deal with a single subject, whether it’s a study of Verdi’s (beloved if not always respected) operas or an account of several performances by the latter-day wandering minstrel Bob Dylan. Some of the most memorable, though, tackle broader themes, like the explosion of classical music study in China or the ways technology affects music, with an impressive but never showy blend of historical reportage and thoughtful analysis. Ross — the author of “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century,” which won a 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award — travels across continents with the Icelandic dance-pop star Bjork, and in the resulting profile, he recounts the singer’s dismissal of her classical training as “all this retro, constant Beethoven and Bach bollocks.” The triumph of “Listen to This” is that Ross dusts off music that’s centuries old to reveal the passion and brilliance that’s too often hidden from a contemporary audience. It’s a joy for a pop fan or a classical aficionado.

THE ANTHOLOGY OF RAP
Edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois.
Yale University, $35.

It’s hard to believe that after more than 30 years on the charts, rap still generates so much hostility from so many listeners. In some ways, this outrage is the greatest testament to the music’s power. Fortunately, there’s an easy response to critics who claim anyone could string together a bunch of words and call it music: “Oh, yeah? Let’s hear you try.” With the mammoth “Anthology of Rap,” Bradley and DuBois — professors of English at the University of Colorado and the University of Toronto, respectively — build a solid case for the achievements of hip-hop lyrics as poetry. The collection traces hip-hop’s rhymes from the rudimentary cadences of the old school to the high-wire verbal gymnastics of the Notorious B.I.G., Eminem and beyond. The “Anthology” serves several functions: it’s a repository of significant lyrics (and some significant errors — but even those demonstrate just how complex this stuff can be); a history of the music by eras; and an encyclopedia of performers, with a brief, well-written biography for each. As with all printed song lyrics, it’s crucial to remember that these words were intended not to be read but to be heard (though as Bradley and DuBois point out, these particular rhymes “have little in the way of melody or harmony to compensate for a poor lyrical line”). Still, this landmark work chronicles an earth-shattering movement with deep roots. Leave it to Public Enemy’s Chuck D to point out, in the afterword, that the first thing Thomas Edison did when he invented the phonograph was to record himself reciting a rhyme.

SOUL MINING
A Musical Life.
By Daniel Lanois with Keisha Kalfin.
Faber & Faber, $26.

Lanois has produced records for Bob Dylan, U2, Peter Gabriel and Willie Nelson. Neil Young (a fellow Canadian) titled his latest album “Le Noise” in his honor. Don’t expect much, however, in the way of celebrity gossip from Lanois’s impressionistic memoir. When he recounts his time in the studio with these superstars, the language tends to turn both technical and mystic: “Harmonic interplay is a result of a collision of ingredients.” But a three-page interlude on the making of U2’s “Beautiful Day” gives a sense of the exhilarating rush that results when a song suddenly clicks. And really, how can you expect anyone to explain how a Bob Dylan record gets made? Lanois has a signature sound that’s often described as “atmospheric” or “spacious,” so perhaps it’s no surprise that “Soul Mining” is at least as much about the locations of his work as it is about the sessions. Beginning with his youth in a small town in Quebec, he ventures to New Orleans, rural England, Jamaica and elsewhere. “The mountain villages of Oaxaca had offered me the symphony of the bells,” he writes. “Now Berlin was bringing me the streetcar train symphony.” Full of aphorisms and even practical advice (keep notes, make charts), “Soul Mining” illustrates the ways in which life experiences — motorcycle repair, a butcher shop, the floor in a Mexican hotel room — add up to individual creativity. “I am not a stylist,” Lanois writes. “I am a child of God, of my mother, of the values that guide my work.”

FAB
An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney.
By Howard Sounes.
Da Capo, $29.95.

Even a reporter as dogged as Sounes has a hard time breaking new ground on a Beatle. The big reveal in “Down the Highway,” his 2001 biography of Bob Dylan, was proof of Dylan’s secret wife and child. In “Fab” the headline grabber is extensive detail on Paul McCartney’s miserable marriage to, and exorbitant divorce settlement with, Heather Mills, although the most explanation Sounes provides for their relationship is the theory, from a cousin of McCartney’s, that the sex was good. The first half of “Fab” offers yet another retelling of the musician’s youth and his years with the greatest band of all time. At this point, most of Sounes’s prominent sources have written books of their own, and the picture of McCartney as ambitious, brilliant and sometimes annoying is familiar. “Fab” lifts off, though, in 1967, with the introduction of its most interesting character — the rock photographer Linda Eastman, who set her sights on Paul and determined to marry him even before they had met. Eastman was truly the great love of McCartney’s life, and she gave him the stability and boundless support he needed, though Sounes’s portrayal of her is complicated, fascinating in its contradictions. “Almost everybody interviewed for this book who knew Linda personally spoke well of her,” Sounes writes, “yet people in the media . . . found Linda a gauche, abrasive woman lacking charm.” McCartney’s post-Beatle journey — his struggle for some sense of family and normalcy, while also amassing inconceivable fortunes — is the less glamorous but more satisfying part of “Fab.” It’s too bad Sounes minimizes McCartney’s surprisingly contemplative recent albums in favor of gossip: they make a far worthier end to McCartney’s own long and winding road.

Alan Light is the director of programming for the public television series “Live From the Artists Den.”

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