Sound Tracks

A transporting voyage of archaeological discovery: Sound Tracks unearths instruments from around the world and across time, releasing the past's musical secrets for the first time.


From the present day back to the dawn of time, from dark caves and murky swamps to open deserts and ocean depths, here is the history of humankind's relationship with music in fifty detective stories.

We see a child’s delight in Peru in AD 700, playing with a water-filled pot that chirps like a bird; we shiver with a lonely soldier sending trumpet signals to the next watchtower on Hadrian's Wall; we sway to the stately rhythms of the 64 bells buried in a tomb in China in the 5th century BC. And on this grand tour, we learn that music is part of what makes us human – a way of commemorating our pasts, communicating with others and shaping our lives.

Brimming with astonishing insights, Sound Tracks provides an enthralling alternative history of humanity in which the silences of the past are filled with a glorious treasure hoard of vanished sounds and voices.

Review

This is surely one of the most unusual and original histories of music that has been written, recovering a sense of the sounds of the distant past through rare survivals of musical instruments and even a tune recorded on a Bronze Age tablet. Out of the silence of the earth Graeme Lawson has brilliantly conjured up the sounds of 30,000 years of human history ― David Abulafia, Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History, University of Cambridge

Reveals the sounds that ancient musicians could have created and gives credit to the craftsmen and women who routinely pushed-back the boundaries of past technologies to fashion musical instruments. It's a magical book ― Francis Pryor, author of A Fenland Garden

A delightfully quirky tour through the history and prehistory of music in the company of a master ― Adam Zamoyski, author of Napoleon

Archaeologist, professor and historian, a sort of musical Indiana Jones ... Lawson swoops down to pluck a series of objects out of the ground ... spreading them out in front of us, turning inscrutable, unreadable things into lives and music ― Spectator

Lawson is an engagingly vivid narratorwith a sharp eye and ear, and the breadth of his experience and expertise make for a diverting perspective… His tone is playful and persuasive, pitched to ensure that his meticulously detail is accessible – and crucially, relatable – to all curious readers ― New Scientist

The reader is taken in hand by Mr Lawson's expert prose, which shows a winning attachment to the objects and cultures he finds ... [they] will savour rare opportunities to look the over the shoulder of prehistory's answer to Poirot ― Country Life

Here’s a book that turns the history of music on its head… [a] brilliant new book he reveals to us a dazzling showcase of instruments, both everyday and extraordinary… Turn to any page and there’s bound to be something new to discover ― BBC History Magazine

About the Author

Graeme Lawson is an archaeologist, musician and historian with a lifelong fascination for music’s fossil record. He has held senior research fellowships at Cambridge and the Freie Universität Berlin, pioneering the application of science to music’s prehistory and tracing musical continuities through time and across continents.

An acknowledged authority in his field, his ability to communicate with the wider public has made him much sought after, both as performer and speaker, and has done much to raise the profile of music archaeology. His writing brings into sharp focus humankind’s profound and enduring relationship with sound and music.