Song and Circumstance - by Sytze Steenstra (Paperback)

About the Book

This is the first book to offer a full account of Byrne's sprawling artistic portfolio.

Book Synopsis

For over three decades now, David Byrne has been a leading light in American culture - in popular music, experimental theatre, film, television, fine art, and writing. Based on the cultural capital he gained with his groundbreaking band Talking Heads, Byrne is able to enter into collaborations with many artists, some of popular fame -Brian Eno and Jonathan Demme, for example - and others known best in more specialized circles - such as Joseph Kosuth, Twyla Tharp, and Caetano Veloso. The map of Byrne's collaborations, including the casual and incidental ones, reveals an ongoing effort to combine avant-gardism with popular appeal.

This highly original and illustrated account of David Byrne's career is structured by choosing a specific abstract approach, or a combination of two approaches, for each chapter, discussing the parallels and contradictions between such approaches to benefit the interpretation of Byrne's art. As a result, the fertile conceptual brew that characterizes Byrne's way of making art is present from the beginning, while each chapter adds to thorough insight and developing perspective.

Review Quotes

"Song And Circumstance is an excellent read, of interest to the old school Talking Heads fan, perfervid David Byrne follower, or for readers of how music and philosophy work together."-KEXP Seattle

"If I ever need to remind myself what I was reading or mulling over at various points in my life I have only to look in this scrupulously researched and uncannily on-the-money book. Would that we all had references like this! It is for me a beautiful and narcissistically bizarre experience to re-experience my life through the series of ideas and the flow of connections I have made as they are reported and interpreted by Sytze Steenstra. The book is delightfully and unusually free of gossip and psychological assumptions and explanations (not that those don't also contain some truth); instead it focuses almost exclusively on what I've done, said or written and comes to some conclusions that are (to me) surprising and unexpected. Sytze finds connections I wasn't aware of, and continuity and patterns where initially one might see randomness and chaos. This book makes me seem both smarter than I am and possibly stranger than I am." - David Byrne

"Like David Byrne, this is a very varied and colourful book. It covers all the artist's relative terrain, in such a way that's as equally as enthusiastic and passionate as he himself."Community College Campus News

"Sytze Steenstra's Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to Present is a book that will engage even the most informed fans of his work...Steenstra's book is well worth it for the fascinating insights it offers into Byrne's work."
-John McLeod, Flagpole Magazine, July 28, 2010

1000 word review in NRC Handelsblad, a prominent Dutch newspaper

a superbly wide-ranging, detailed and insightful analysis of the rock star, filmmaker, artist, and design collaborator's multifaceted oeuvre. A discussion of Byrne's book The New Sins, for instance, takes us to the German Romantics, Novalis, and Nietzsche. You emerge thinking that this much-celebrated pop-avant-gardist and bicycling cultural omnivore might even be a tad underrated.--Rick Pynor, Design Observer, November 2010

About the Author

Sytze Steenstra, PhD, isAssistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and a freelance author/editor.