£2.99
Sound of Being Human
How Music Shapes Our Lives
What People Are Saying
''Too often we treat popular music as wallpaper surrounding us as we live our lives. Jude Rogers shows the emotional and cerebral heft such music can have. It''s a personal journey which becomes universal. Fascinating''
Ian Rankin
''Moving and absorbing, The Sound of Being Human mixes memoir, analysis, anecdote and personal chronicle into a mosaic that evokes what music means to the individual and the human tribe. A candid, beautiful read''
Stuart Maconie
About the Book
The Sound of Being Human explores, in detail, why music plays such a deep-rooted role in so many lives, from before we are born to our last days. At its heart is Jude's own story: how songs helped her wrestle with the grief of losing her father at age five; how she concocted her own sense of self as a lonely adolescent; how her relationships, both real and imagined, sky-rocketed in the flushes of early womanhood; how her journey into working life, adulthood, and parenthood unfolded, and how she looks to the future.
Shaped around twelve songs, ranging from ABBA's Super Trouper to Neneh Cherry's Buffalo Stance, Kraftwerk's Radioactivity to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' Heat Wave, the book combines memoir and historical, scientific, and cultural enquiry to show how music can shape different versions of ourselves; how we rely upon music for comfort, for epiphanies, and for sexual and physical connection; how we grow with songs, and songs grow inside us, helping us come to terms with grief, getting older, and powerful memories. It is about music's power to help us tell our own stories, whatever they are, and make them sing.
