Topics in Recorded Music: David Bowie

Catalog description

David Bowie’s life and work offer a template for how to survive and continue to evolve as a musical artist. His legend and influence have only continued to grow since his death in 2016, stimulated by sell-out art exhibitions and documentaries. Arguably no other 20th century cultural figure charted such specific creative evolutions in the course of one career. Spanning four decades, Bowie maintained his essential authenticity within each of what he described in his prophetic 1972 song, as “Ch-ch-ch-ch Changes”. A multi-talented performer, writer and visual artist, Bowie played his career like an instrument, divining trends of every generation to process, absorb and adapt into successive phases of his ever-evolving chameleon persona; absorbing the zeitgeist and refracting it back, filtered through his artistry. Showing media mastery, he kept secret the two-year recording process of his 2013 album, The Next Day. His closing works, the opera Lazarus and the majestic mystery of the album Darkstar, released days before his death, sealed this multi-talented artist’s towering status. The manipulative bravado of knowing when and how to keep a star’s inaccessibility and mystery, or to expose oneself, as Bowie did on TV in his own darkest days, has given him an enduring mystique, glamour and respect. Examining the arc of his work is a window into significant UK/US scenes of every decade since the 1950s, and offers insight into: the British Mod R&B that produced the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; the hippy free festival counter-culture; US R&B; futurism; electronica; glam and gender games, improvisation; soul; funk; jazz, dance; disco; minimalism; New Romanticism and UK clubland; ambient; avant-garde theater (plus the Buddhism that ultimately sustained him.) And each of them he made his own.