Beyond the Universal Language

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Beyond the Universal Language: Music, Meaning, and Human Communication considers why music can feel immediately communicative across cultures while its meanings remain shaped by history, context, and learned ways of listening. Drawing on musicology, ethnomusicology, philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science, the essay questions what we really mean when we call music a “universal language.” 

The Sound of Attention explores the history of musical listening through musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, and the philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti. It argues that listening is not simply a biological capacity, but a historical practice shaped by culture, education, memory, technology, and performance, offering a new perspective on one of musicology's most fundamental yet least examined subjects. 

Emerald Echoes: Cambodian Funk and Cultural Memory explores Phnom Penh’s vibrant popular-music scene of the 1960s and early 1970s, tracing its musicians, recording industry, radio, cinema, and nightlife before the rupture of 1975. It also examines how surviving recordings preserve this lost musical culture. 

Chance and Choice traces the emergence of aleatoric music, where chance, open form, and performer choice unsettled the boundaries of the written score and transformed twentieth-century ideas of musical authorship. 

A scholarly study of Lowell George and the classic Little Feat years, examining the band's songwriting, ensemble playing, rhythmic language, and fusion of blues, country, funk, gospel, jazz, and New Orleans R&B. Through close analysis of the recordings and historical sources, the essay considers how George's individual voice shaped—and was shaped by—the collective sound of Little Feat. 

A reflection on Neil Young’s 2005 Ryman Auditorium performances, where Prairie Wind and longtime classics come together in a deeply personal meditation on memory, aging, mortality, and artistic renewal. The essay considers the music, the historic character of the Ryman, and the intimate performance that became Heart of Gold. 

An interdisciplinary exploration of music, ritual, and transcendence, examining how listening creates meaning, shapes community, and continues to carry sacred possibilities across cultures and secular life.

Rethinking Continuity: Toward a Theory of Musical Persistence proposes musical persistence as a new framework for understanding how musical traditions endure, change, and remain meaningful across generations. The essay examines the roles of cultural meaning, transmission, musical language, performance, and adaptation in sustaining musical life through changing social and historical conditions.