Intellectually Stimulating Music

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently asked a diverse array of academics what kind of music gets their gray matter moving.

Tammy Proctor, chair of the history department at Wittenburg University, uses hard-driving alt-country mavericks to keep her energy up while grading. Her recent favorites include Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, and Gram Parsons. For writing and researching, she goes for more cheerful Celtic and bluegrass music, such as Tim O'Brien's "The Crossing." She also treasures a Wednesday night informal musical gathering, where she can work on her mandolin and flute skills with her colleagues. "I would have difficulty keeping sane in the academic world without access to music on a daily basis."

Barry Shank, who teaches comparative studies at Ohio State, is the author of an academic book on rock: "Dissonant Identities: The Rock'n'Roll scene in Austin, Texas." But his favorite work tune is Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew." He confesses that he usually can't listen to music while working -- it draws too much of his attention. "But there are times," he says, referring mostly to gray, rainy days, "when I find that only precisely fierce sounds can focus my attention such that I become able to work." The wail of Mile's trumpet starts clearing his head; especially tough days require 20+ minutes of Miles & band to get things moving.

Harold Dibble, an anthropologist and curator at the Univ. of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, is a classic "classic rock" rocker. "More than anything else, I am still a huge Beatles fan." When he runs into a creative wall, he picks up his guitar and plays some numbers from the White Album or "Abbey Road."

Biologist Greg Crowther of the Univ. of Puget Sound listens to a lot of pop music about science. He owns over 30 albums of "science-themed" material, ranging from the a cappella astronomy songs of the Chromatics to zany zoology tunes b the Bungee Jumpin' Cows. He subjects his students to "You Can Tell it's a Cell," by J. P. Taylor, while Flanders & Swann's "First and Second Law" kicks off a unit on Thermodynamics.

Barry Goldsmith teaches comedy writing at New York University, but his musical choices "hark back to another time: I love the music of the 70's and 80's -- the 1770's and 1780's, that is." He loves Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Verdi's "Rigoletto," although the latter is too distracting for work time. He is waiting for director Peter Sellars to update Violetta's malady in La Traviata from "consumption" to SARS.

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