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Veteran music journalist Craig Havighurst will discuss “Discovering a ‘Sound First’ Life in Music” as well as his latest book, Musicality for Modern Humans: How to Listen Like an Artist, on Tuesday, March 24, at Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries.
Havighurst’s talk, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 5 p.m. in the Central Library Community Room, with a book signing and reception to follow. His book will be available for purchase at the event. A limited number of free copies also will be available to Vanderbilt students who RSVP on Anchor Link while supplies last. Students must attend the March 24 event to pick up their book.
The event is part of Dialogue Vanderbilt’s “250 Conversations on America: Civil Discourse in Action,” a yearlong series celebrating our nation’s 250th anniversary and Vanderbilt’s enduring commitment to open dialogue.
In Musicality for Modern Humans, Havighurst encourages readers to deepen their relationship with music by learning to “listen like an artist”—offering new tools and frameworks to shift from passive, song-centered consumption to active, sound-focused engagement.
Musicality is about how composers and musicians manipulate tone, time and timbre to reach us emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, he says. The book guides readers toward active, engaged listening with the goal of enhancing our well-being, capacity for empathy, and bonds to family and community. The work is for anyone looking to shake up their habits, get free of streaming algorithms, and listen for more in music across all genres and time periods.
“In this beautifully written book, Craig Havighurst reminds us that with an active ear, we have the potential to participate in the flight of great music,” according to Béla Fleck, renowned banjoist and multiple Grammy Award-winning artist.
A musician since childhood, the Nashville-based Havighurst has been covering the art, tech and commerce of music as a reporter, author, filmmaker and broadcaster for more than 25 years.
Since 2016, he has been the editorial director for WMOT Roots Radio 89.5 FM, where he hosts the weekly interview show “The String,” covering “culture, media and American music.” He has reported for NPR, WPLN-FM, The Wall Street Journal, Acoustic Guitar, No Depression and other magazines. As staff music writer at The Tennessean from 2000 to 2004, he won the Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism.
Havighurst was senior producer and co-host for “Music City Roots,” a nationally syndicated weekly live radio show and public TV series that ran from 2009 to 2018. He currently writes the Substack newsletter String Theories. He is also the author of Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City, which documents how Nashville was transformed by one of the nation’s greatest radio stations.