Non-fiction books on music and culture that I’ve read (….or need to read) for my PhD in music cognition.
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last updated August, 2026
How Music Works
David Byrne
And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music (ZE Series, 6)
Joe Boyd
The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are
Alva Noë
Bioaesthetics: Making Sense of Life in Science and the Arts
Carsten Strathausen
Aesthesis and Perceptronium: On the Entanglement of Sensation, Cognition, and Matter
Alexander Wilson
Music in Everyday Life
Tia DeNora
Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening
Christopher Small
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)
Hanif Abdurraqib
Bring That Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop
Nate Patrin
Dilla Time
Dan Charnas
The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters
Tricia Rose
Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body
Steven Mithen
The Origins of Music
Nils L. Wallin
A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity
Gary Tomlinson
Culture and the Evolutionary Process
Robert Boyd
The Origins of Musicality
Henkjan Honing
Hip-Hop Is History
Questlove Questlove
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