How Music Can Save The World

Solve the biggest challenges of our time through music with this groundbreaking guide by globally recognized thought leader in music, culture and urban policy Shain Shapiro.

Can music save the world?

After twenty years working with governments around the world, music thought leader Shain Shapiro come to a surprising conclusion: music isnt entertainment. Its infrastructure. Like roads or clean water, music quietly supports society every day. We only notice its importance when something starts to fail. And today, two things are failing.

The music we consume privately - “my music” songs, played through streaming services and in our headphones - does far more neurological, social and economic work than we recognise. Meanwhile the music we make together, “our music” - the choir, the jam session, the lullaby, the funeral song - is decaying and disappearing. As shared musical experiences decline, so do the trust, connection and the shared practice of listening to one another that collective life depends on.

How Music Can Save the World travels from Lagos and Bogotá to schools, care homes and communities across Europe, exploring what happens when we treat music as what it demonstrably is: one of humanitys most powerful forms of social infrastructure.

The world has more music than ever, it is also, in the ways that matter, less musical. This book is about why that matters and how we need to use music to address the biggest problems we face.