listen

The book unfolds before us a world of vibration and reverberation, powerful images and sounds, in countless textures and qualities. Mathio illustrates through simple exercises, which include reality and imagination, music, noise and silence, musical instruments, objects and people - how to cultivate creative listening. Listening opens a way to create a space of sounds and a private temple of sounds, and teaches how to protect listening from the shrill environmental noises that numb it.

William Alauddin Matyo is a pianist, composer, writer and Sufi sheikh, a student of the American Sufi teacher Samuel L. Lewis and the Indian singer Pandit Per Nath, studied African music with the Nubian teacher Hamza Al-Din, jazz with William Rousseau and classical-European music with Easley Blackwood.