How Music Works is David Byrne's bestselling book, an upbeat celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. Drawing on his work over the years with the Talking Heads, Brian Eno and his myriad collaborators - along with trips to Wagnerian opera houses, African villages, and wherever music exists - Byrne shows how music emerges from cultural circumstances as much as from individual creativity. It is his magnum opus and a passionate plea for the liberating, life-affirming power of music.