The Spirit of Music: The Lesson Continues

Wooten (The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth), bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, delivers a remarkable fable in which music is dying. It all begins when Wooten wakes up one morning feeling no longer connected to the music he plays. Looking for advice, he visits his parents, who remind him that real musicians don’t just play instruments, they “listen to everything and listen to their hearts,” and suggest he try teaching music to lift his spirits. When Jonathan, his first student, mysteriously disappears, Wooten embarks on an epic journey to find Jonathan and save music from “the Phasers,” mysterious villains who wear special headphones that “cancel all music in the surrounding area.” In Wizard-Of-Oz–like fashion, he meets up with and befriends fellow musicians along the way and at story’s end discovers that the only way to defeat the Phasers is through the passion and spontaneity of live performance. This allegorical foray into the power of music is both heartfelt and wildly imaginative. Music lovers will adore this sparkling manifesto. (Feb.)