Dura-Europos
Temple of Bel at Dura-Europos
Shown within Syria
Location	near Salhiyah, Syria
Coordinates	34°44′49″N 40°43′48″E / 34.747°N 40.730°E / 34.747; 40.730
Type	settlement
History
Founded	c. 300 BC
Abandoned	256-257 AD
Cultures	Hellenistic, Parthian, Roman
Site notes
Excavation dates	1922—1937 1986—present
Archaeologists	James Henry Breasted Franz Cumont Michael Rostovtzeff Pierre Leriche
Ownership	Public
Public access	Yes

Dura-Europos (Greek: Δοῦρα Εὐρωπός), also spelled Dura-Europus, was a Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman border city built on an escarpment 90 m above the right bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in today's Syria.

Dura-Europos is extremely important for archaeological reasons. As it was abandoned after its conquest in 256–7, nothing was built over it and no later building programs obscured the architectonic features of the ancient city. Its location on the edge of empires made for a co-mingling of cultural traditions, much of which was preserved under the city's ruins. Some remarkable finds have been brought to light, including numerous temples, wall decorations, inscriptions, military equipment, tombs, and even dramatic evidence of the Sassanian siege during the Imperial Roman period which led to the site's abandonment.

Hellenistic Era[link]

It was founded in 303 BC by the Seleucids on the intersection of an east-west trade route and the trade route along the Euphrates. The new city controlled the river crossing on the route between his newly founded cities of Antioch and Seleucia on the Tigris. Its rebuilding as a great city built after the Hippodamian model, with rectangular blocks defined by cross-streets ranged round a large central agora, was formally laid out in the 2nd century BC. The traditional view of Dura-Europos as a great caravan city is becoming nuanced by the discoveries of locally made manufactures and traces of close ties with Palmyra (James).

During the later 2nd century BC it came under Parthian control^[4] and in the 1st century BC, it served as a frontier fortress of the Arsacid Parthian Empire, with a multicultural population, as inscriptions in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Hatrian, Palmyrenean, Middle Persian and Safaitic Pahlavi testify.^[5] It was captured by the Romans in 165 and abandoned after a Sassanian siege in 256-257. After it was abandoned, it was covered by sand and mud and disappeared from sight.

Map of Dura Europus, Syria.

Archaeology[link]

The existence of Dura-Europos was long known through literary sources. It was rediscovered by the American Wolfe Expedition in 1885, when the Palmyrene Gate was photographed by John Henry Haynes.^[6]

British troops under Capt. Murphy in the aftermath of World War I and the Arab Revolt also explored the ruins. On March 30, 1920, a soldier digging a trench uncovered brilliantly fresh wall-paintings. The American archeologist James Henry Breasted, then at Baghdad, was alerted. Major excavations were carried out in the 1920s and 1930s by French and American teams. The first archaeology on the site, undertaken by Franz Cumont and published in 1922-23, identified the site with Dura-Europos, and uncovered a temple, before renewed hostilities in the area closed it to archaeology. Later, renewed campaigns directed by Michael Rostovtzeff continued until 1937, when funds ran out with only part of the excavations published. World War II intervened. Since 1986 excavations have resumed in a joint Franco-Syrian effort under the direction of Pierre Leriche.

Not the least of the finds were astonishingly well-preserved arms and armour belonging to the Roman garrison at the time of the final Sassanian siege of 256. Finds included painted wooden shields and complete horse armour, preserved by the very finality of the destruction of the city that journalists have called "the Pompeii of the desert". Finds from Dura-Europos are on display in the Deir ez-Zor Museum.^[7]

Culture[link]

Dura-Europos was a cosmopolitan society, controlled by a tolerant Macedonian aristocracy descended from the original settlers. In the course of its excavation, over a hundred parchment and papyrus fragments and many inscriptions have revealed texts in Greek and Latin (the latter including a sator square), Palmyrenean, Hebrew, Hatrian, Safaitic, and Pahlavi. The excavations revealed temples to Greek, Roman and Palmyrene gods. There was a Mithraeum, as one would expect in a Roman military city.

Remains of the synagogue

The synagogue[link]

The Jewish synagogue, located by the western wall between towers 18 and 19, the last phase of which was dated by an Aramaic inscription to 244. It is the best preserved of the many ancient synagogues of that era that have been uncovered by archaeologists. It was preserved, ironically, when it had to be infilled with earth to strengthen the city's fortifications against a Sassanian assault in 256. It was uncovered in 1932 by Clark Hopkins, who found that it contains a forecourt and house of assembly with frescoed walls depicting people and animals, and a Torah shrine in the western wall facing Jerusalem. At first, it was mistaken for a Greek temple. The synagogue paintings, the earliest continuous surviving biblical narrative cycle,^[8] are conserved at Damascus, together with the complete Roman horse-armour.

The Dura-Europos church, a house church with chapel area on right.

The house church[link]

There was also the identified the Dura-Europos church, the earliest Christian house church, located by the 17th tower and preserved by the same defensive fill that saved the synagogue. "Their evidently open and tolerated presence in the middle of a major Roman garrison town reveals that the history of the early Church was not simply a story of pagan persecution".^[9] The building consists of a house conjoined to a separate hall-like room, which functioned as the meeting room for the church. The surviving frescoes of the baptistry room are probably the most ancient Christian paintings. We can see the "Good Shepherd" (this iconography had a very long history in the Classical world), the "Healing of the paralytic" and "Christ and Peter walking on the water". These are the earliest depictions of Jesus Christ ever found and date back to 235 A.D.

A much larger fresco depicts two women (and a third, mostly lost) approaching a large sarcophagus, i.e. probably the three Marys visiting Christ's tomb. There were also frescoes of Adam and Eve as well as David and Goliath. The frescoes clearly followed the Hellenistic Jewish iconographic tradition but they are more crudely done than the paintings of the nearby synagogue.

Fragments of parchment scrolls with Hebrew texts have also been unearthed; they resisted meaningful translation until J.L. Teicher pointed out that they were Christian Eucharistic prayers, so closely connected with the prayers in Didache that he was able to fill lacunae in the light of the Didache text.^[10]

In 1933, among fragments of text recovered from the town dump outside the Palmyrene Gate, a fragmentary text was unearthed from an unknown Greek harmony of the gospel accounts — comparable to Tatian's Diatessaron, but independent of it.

The Mithraeum[link]

Also partially preserved by the defensive embankment was the Mithraeum (CIMRM 34-70), located between towers 23 and 24. It was unearthed in January 1934 after years of expectation as to whether Dura would reveal traces of the Roman Mithras cult. The earliest archaeological traces found within the temple are from between AD 168 and 171,^[11] which coincides with the arrival of Lucius Verus and his troops. At this stage it was still a room in a private home. It was extended and renovated between 209 and 211, and most of the frescoes are from this period. The tabula ansata of 210 offers salutation to Septimus Severus, Caracalla and Geta. The construction was managed by a centurio principe praepositus of the legio IIII Scythicae et XVI Flaviae firmae (CIMRM 53), and it seems that construction was done by imperial troops. The mithraeum was enlarged again in 240, but in 256—with war with Sassanians looming—the sanctuary was filled in and became part of the strengthened fortifications. Following excavations, the temple was transported in pieces to New Haven, Connecticut, where it was rebuilt (and is now on display) at Yale University's Gallery of Fine Arts.

The surviving frescoes, graffiti and dipinti (which number in the dozens) are of enormous interest to the study of the social composition of the cult.^[12] The statuary and altars were found intact, as also the typical relief of Mithras slaying the bull, with the hero-god dressed as usual in "oriental" costume ("trousers, boots, and pointed cap"). As is typical for mithraea in the Roman provinces in the Greek East, the inscriptions and graffiti are mostly in Greek, with the rest in Palmyrene (and some Hellenized Hebrew). The end of the sanctuary features an arch with a seated figure on each of the two supporting columns. Inside and following the form of the arch is a series of depictions of the zodiac.^[13] Within the framework of the now-obsolete theory that the Roman cult was "a Roman form of Mazdaism" ("la forme romaine du mazdeisme"), Cumont supposed that the two Dura friezes represented the two primary figures of his Les Mages hellénisés, i.e. "Zoroaster" and "Ostanes".^[14] This reading has not found a footing; "the two figures are Palmyrene in all their characteristic traits"^[15] and are more probably portraits of leading members of that mithraeum's congregation of Syrian auxiliaries.^[16]

The Fall of Dura[link]

The good state of preservation of these buildings and their frescoes was due to their location, close to the main city wall facing west, and the military necessity to strengthen the wall. The Sassanid Persians had become adept at tunneling under such walls in order to undermine them and create breaches. As a countermeasure the Roman garrison decided to sacrifice the street and the buildings along the wall by filling them with rubble to bolster the wall in case of a Persian mining operation, so the Christian chapel, the synagogue, the Mithraeum and many other buildings were entombed. They also buttressed the walls from the outside with an earthen mound forming a glacis and sealed it with a casing of mud brick to prevent erosion.

The Palmyrene Gate, the principal entrance to the city of Dura Europos.

There is no written record of the siege of Dura. However, the archaeologists uncovered quite striking evidence of the siege and how it progressed.^[17]

Undermining[link]

The buttressing of the walls would be tested in AD 256 when Shapur I besieged the city. True to the fears of the defenders, Shapur set his engineers to undermine what archaeologists called Tower 19, two towers north of the Palmyrene Gate. When the Romans became aware of the threat, they dug a countermine with the aim of meeting the Persian effort and attack them before they could finish their work. The Persians had already dug complex galleries along the wall by the time the Roman countermine reached them. They managed to fight off the Roman attack, and when the city defenders noticed the flight of soldiers from the countermine, it was quickly sealed. The wounded and stragglers were trapped inside, where they died. (It was the coins found with these Roman soldiers that dated the siege to AD 256.) The countermine was successful, for the Persians abandoned their operations at Tower 19.

A view of the southern wadi and part of the walls of the city of Dura Europos.

Next, the Sassanids attacked Tower 14, the southernmost along the western wall. It overlooked a deep ravine to the south and it was from that direction that it was attacked. This time the mining operation was successful in that it caused the tower and adjacent walls to subside. However the Roman countermeasure which bolstered the wall prevented it from collapsing.

This brought a third approach to entering the city. A ramp was raised again attacking Tower 14, but, as it was being built and the garrison fought to stop the progress of the ramp, another mine was started near the ramp. Its scope was not to cause a collapse of the wall — the buttress had been successful — but to pass under it and penetrate the city. This tunnel was built to allow the Persians four abreast to move through it. It eventually entered the city and pierced the inner embankment and, when the ramp was completed, Dura's end had come. As Persian troops charged up the ramp, their counterparts in the tunnel would have invaded the city with little opposition, as nearly all the defenders would have been on the wall attempting to repel the attack from the ramp. City survivors would have been marched off to Ctesiphon and there sold as slaves. The city, once pillaged, was never rebuilt.

Chemical warfare[link]

In January 2009, researchers claimed they had found evidence that the Persian Empire used poisonous gases at Dura against the Roman defenders during the siege. Excavations at Dura have discovered the remains of 19 Roman and 1 Persian soldiers at the base of the city walls^[18]. An archaeologist at the University of Leicester suggested that bitumen and sulphur crystals were ignited to create poisonous gas, which was then funnelled through the tunnel with the use of underground chimneys and bellows.^[19] The Roman soldiers had been constructing a countermine, and Sassanian forces are believed to have released the gas when their mine was breached by the Roman countermine. The lone Persian soldier discovered among the bodies is believed to be the individual responsible for releasing the gas before the fumes overcame him as well.^[20]

International Prize[link]

The Jury of the International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens has unanimously decided that the twenty-first of these annual awards (2010) will go to Dura Europos, near Salhiyé, on the right bank of the middle course of the River Euphrates, in Syria.^[21]

See also[link]

• Cities of the ancient Near East

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Dirven, L.A. 1999 The Palmyrenes of Dura-Europos : a study of religious interaction in Roman Syria (Leiden: Brill).
• Hopkins, C., 1979 The Discovery of Dura Europos, (New Haven and London).
• Rostovtzeff, M.I., 1938. Dura-Europos and Its Art (Oxford University Press).
• Cumont, Franz; Francis, Eric David, ed., trans. (1975), "The Dura Mithraeum", in Hinnells, John R., Mithraic studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, Manchester UP, pp. I.151–214 .
• Francis, Eric David (1975b), "Mithraic graffiti from Dura-Europos", in Hinnells, John R., Mithraic studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, Manchester UP, pp. II.424–445 .

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dura Europos

• "Dura-Europos: Excavating Antiquity" at the Yale University Art Gallery
• Simon James, "Dura-Europos, the 'Pompeii of the Desert'"
• Illustration of the tomblike baptistry of the Christian church^{[dead link]}
• Pierre Leriche, co-head of excavations describes the site (in French)
• The Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony
• "7 vs. 8: The Battle Over the Holy Day at Dura-Europos"
• New York Times: "A Melting Pot at the Intersection of Empires for Five Centuries" By John Noble Wilford December 19, 2011</ref>

David Byrne
David Byrne speaking at the 2006 Future of Music Policy Summit hosted by the McGill University Schulich School of Music in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Background information
Born	(1952-05-14) May 14, 1952 (age 60) Dumbarton, Scotland, UK
Genres	New Wave, experimental pop, worldbeat, alternative rock
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, artist, singer, actor, director, film producer, record producer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, synthesizer, flute, clavinet, slide guitar, harmonica, autoharp, harmonium, violin, accordion buildings[1]
Years active	1974–present
Labels	Luaka Bop, Nonesuch Records, Thrill Jockey
Associated acts	Talking Heads, Brian Eno, X-Press 2, Fatboy Slim, The BPA
Website	www.davidbyrne.com
Notable instruments
Fender Duo-Sonic Fender Stratocaster

David Byrne (born May 14, 1952) is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography, opera, and non-fiction. He has received Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe awards and been inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Early life[link]

Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland, to Tom and Emma Byrne. He was the elder of two children. Two years later, his parents moved to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and then to Arbutus, Maryland, when he was 8 or 9 years old. His father worked as an electronics engineer. Before high school, David Byrne already knew how to play the guitar, accordion, and violin. He was rejected from his middle school’s choir because they claimed he was "off-key and too withdrawn." From a young age, Byrne had a strong interest in music. His parents say that he would constantly play his phonograph from age three and he learned how to play the harmonica at age five.^[2] In his journals he says, "I was a peculiar young man — borderline Asperger's, I would guess."^[3][4] As revealed by Tina Weymouth in the commentary for the concert film Stop Making Sense, Byrne is left handed but plays guitar right handed.

Music career[link]

Talking Heads: 1975–1991[link]

As part of Talking Heads in 1978 Photo: Jean-Luc Ourlin

He graduated from Lansdowne High School in southwest Baltimore County. Byrne started his musical career in a high school duo named Bizadi with Mark Kehoe. Their repertoire consisted mostly of songs such as "April Showers," "96 Tears," "Dancing On The Ceiling," and Frank Sinatra songs. Byrne then attended the Rhode Island School of Design (during the 1970-71 term) and the Maryland Institute College of Art (during the 1971-72 term) before dropping out and forming a band called "The Artistics" with fellow RISD student Chris Frantz.^[5] The band dissolved within a year, and the two moved to New York together with Frantz's girlfriend Tina Weymouth. Unable to find a bass player in New York, Frantz and Byrne persuaded Weymouth to learn to play the bass guitar.

After some practice and playing together they founded the group Talking Heads which had its first gig in 1975.^[6][7] Multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison joined the group in 1977. The band released 8 studio albums before going into hiatus in 1988. David Byrne desired to go solo, but it took 3 years to announce that the band were breaking up in 1991. A brief reunion for a single "Sax and Violins" in 1991 occurred before again dissolving. The band were inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, when they reunited to play 4 tracks.

Solo album career: 1979–1981;1989–present[link]

Byrne at London's Royal Festival Hall in April 2009.

During his time in the band, Byrne took on outside projects, collaborating with Brian Eno during 1979 and 1981 on the album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which attracted considerable critical acclaim due to its early use of analogue sampling and found sounds. Following this record, Byrne took his attention on Talking Heads. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was re-released for its 25th anniversary in early 2006, with new bonus tracks. In keeping with the spirit of the original album, two of the songs' component tracks were released under Creative Commons licenses and a remix contest site was launched.

Rei Momo (1989) was the first solo album by Byrne, after leaving Talking Heads, that features mainly Afro-Cuban, Afro-Hispanic, and Brazilian song styles including popular dances including merengue, Cuban Son, samba, mambo, cumbia, cha-cha-chá, bomba, and charanga. His third solo album Uh-Oh (1992) followed that featured a brass-section and was driven by catchy tracks such as "Girls on My Mind" and "The Cowboy Mambo (Hey Lookit Me Now)". His fourth solo album, titled davidenryb (1994), was a more proper rock record, with Byrne playing most of the instruments on it, leaving percussion for session musicians. "Angels" and "Back in the Box" were the two main singles released from the album. The first one entered the US Modern Rock Tracks chart, reaching #24. For his fifth studio effort the emotional Feelings (1997), Byrne employed a brass orchestra called Black Cat Orchestra. His sixth Look into the Eyeball (2001) continued the same musical exploration of Feelings, but was compiled of more upbeat tracks, like those found on Uh-Oh.

Grown Backwards (2004), released by Nonesuch Records, used orchestral string arrangements, and includes two operatic arias as well as a rework of X-Press 2 collaboration "Lazy". He also launched a North American and Australian tour with the Tosca Strings. This tour ended with Los Angeles, San Diego and New York shows in August 2005.

Byrne and Eno reunited for his eighth album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008).^[8] He assembled a band to tour worldwide for the album for a six-month period from late 2008 through early 2009 on the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tour.

Work in theatre and film: 1981–present[link]

In 1981, Byrne partnered with choreographer Twyla Tharp, scoring music he wrote that appeared on his album, The Catherine Wheel for a ballet with the same name, prominently featuring unusual rhythms and lyrics. Productions of The Catherine Wheel appeared on Broadway that same year. In Spite of Wishing and Wanting is a soundscape David Byrne produced for the Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus's dance company Ultima Vez.

In 1991, Byrne released a classical instrumental album The Forest, where some of the tracks were already featured as a score for 1988 Robert Wilson theatre piece of the same name.

His work has been extensively used in movie soundtracks, most notably in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su on Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. In 2004, Lead Us Not Into Temptation (music from the film "Young Adam") included tracks and musical experiments from his score to Young Adam. Byrne also wrote, directed, and starred in True Stories, a musical collage of discordant Americana released in 1986, as well as producing most of the film's music. Byrne also directed the documentary Île Aiye and the concert film of his 1992 Latin-tinged tour titled Between the Teeth. He was chiefly responsible for the stage design and choreography of Stop Making Sense in 1984. Byrne added "Loco de Amor" (Crazy for Love) with Celia Cruz to Jonathan Demme's 1986 film Something Wild.

Byrne wrote the Dirty Dozen Brass Band-inspired score for Robert Wilson's Opera The Knee Plays from The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down. Some of the music from Byrne's orchestral album The Forest was originally used in a Wilson-directed theatre piece with the same name. The Forest premiered at the Theater der Freien Volksbühne, Berlin in 1988. It received its New York premiere in December 1988 at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Forestry Maxi-single contained dance and industrial remixes of pieces from The Forest by Jack Dangers, Rudy Tambala, and Anthony Capel.

In late 2005 Byrne and Fatboy Slim began work on Here Lies Love, a disco opera or song cycle about the life of Imelda Marcos, the controversial former First Lady of the Philippines. Some music from this piece was debuted at Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia in February 2006 and the following year at Carnegie Hall on February 3, 2007.

In 2008 Byrne released Big Love: Hymnal - his soundtrack to season two of Big Love. These two albums constituted the first releases on his personal independent record label Todo Mundo.

In 2010, David Byrne songs were featured on the soundtrack of Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Byrne and Brian Eno provided the soundtrack for the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.^[9]

Other musical contributions: 1990–present[link]

Byrne has contributed songs to five AIDS benefit compilation albums produced by the Red Hot Organization: Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter, Red Hot + Rio, Silencio=Muerte: Red Hot + Latin, Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon, and Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip. Byrne appeared as a guest vocalist/guitarist for 10,000 Maniacs during their MTV Unplugged concert, though the songs in which he is featured were cut from their following album. One of them, "Let the Mystery Be", appeared as the fourth track on 10,000 Maniacs' CD single "Few and Far Between". Byrne worked with the "Queen of Tex-Mex", Tejano superstar Selena, writing, producing and singing a song ("God's Child (Baila Conmigo)"), included on Selena's last album, "Dreaming of You", before her death. Byrne was the host of Sessions at West 54th during its second of three seasons and collaborated with members of Devo and Morcheeba to record the album Feelings in 1997.

Byrne playing; Austin City Limits, in 2008

In 2001 a version of Byrne's single “Like Humans Do”, edited to remove its drug reference, was selected by Microsoft as the sample music for Windows XP to demonstrate Windows Media Player (not included in SP2 installs).^[10][11]

In 2002, he co-wrote and provided vocals for a track, "Lazy" by X-Press 2, which reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 1 on the U.S. Dance Charts. Byrne said in an interview in BBC Four Sessions's coverage of his Union Chapel performance that “Lazy” was number 1 in Syria.

In 2006, his singing was featured on "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter" on The Cosmic Game by Thievery Corporation.

He is featured on the tracks "Money" and "The People Tree", on N.A.S.A.'s 2009 album The Spirit of Apollo. Also in 2009, David Byrne appeared on HIV/AIDS charity album Dark Was the Night for Red Hot Organization. He collaborated with Dirty Projectors on the song "Knotty Pine". In the same year, Byrne performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. He also was a signator of a letter protesting the decision of the Toronto International Film Festival to choose Tel Aviv as the subject of its inaugural City-to-City Spotlight strand.^[12]

In 2007, David Byrne provided a cover of The Fiery Furnaces' song "Ex-Guru" for a compilation to celebrate the 15th birthday of Thrill Jockey, a Chicago-based label.

In 2008, Byrne and his production team programmed the Battery Maritime Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, to play music.^[13] Essentially Byrne took the old New York City building, hooked the entire structure - pipes, heaters, pillars and all, electronically to an old pipe organ, and made a playable musical instrument of it, for a piece called "Playing the Building".^[1] This project was also installed in 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden,^[14] and at the London Roundhouse in 2009. It bears similarities to a series of installations performed by New Zealand and Detroit based artists Alastair Galbraith and Matt De Genaro, recorded on their 1998 record Wire Music and 2006 follow-up Long Wires in Dark Museums, Vol. 2. Byrne says that the point in this project was to allow people to experience art first hand, by creating the music with the organ, rather than simply looking at it.^[15]

In April 2008, Byrne took part in the Paul Simon retrospective concert series at BAM performing "You Can Call Me Al" and "I Know What I Know" from Simon's Graceland album.^[16]

In 2008 Byrne collaborated with The Brighton Port Authority, composing the music and singing the lyrics for "Toe Jam".

In May 2011 Byrne contributed backing vocals to the Arcade Fire track "Speaking in Tongues" which appeared on the 2011 edition of their album The Suburbs.^[17]

Other work[link]

Byrne founded the world music record label Luaka Bop in 1990. It was originally created to release Latin American compilations, but it has grown to include music from Cuba, Africa, the Far East and beyond, releasing the work of artists such as Cornershop, Os Mutantes, Los De Abajo, Jim White, Zap Mama, Tom Zé, Los Amigos Invisibles and King Chango.^[18][19]

In 2005, Byrne initiated his own internet radio station, Radio David Byrne.^[20] Each month, Byrne posts a playlist of music he likes, linked by themes or genres. Byrne's playlists have included African popular music, country music classics, Vox Humana, classical opera, and film scores from Italian movies.

In 2006, Byrne released Arboretum, a sketchbook facsimile of his Tree Drawings, published by McSweeney's. Byrne is also a visual artist whose work has been shown in contemporary art galleries and museums around the world since the 1990s. Represented by the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, he has also created public art installations, many of them anonymously. In 2010 his original art work was in the exhibition The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.^[21]

Personal life[link]

While working on the film True Stories, Byrne met costume designer Adelle Lutz whom he married in 1987. They have a daughter, Malu Abeni Valentine Byrne, born in 1989. Byrne and Lutz divorced in 2004. Byrne began a relationship with the artist Cindy Sherman in 2007.^[22]

Although a resident of the United States since childhood, Byrne is a British citizen,^[23] and has never applied for U.S. citizenship. He lives in New York City.

Cycling[link]

Byrne is known for his activism in support of increased cycling, and for having used a bike as his main means of transport for most of his life, especially cycling around New York. He has a regular cycling column in the New York Times.

He says that he cycled when he was in high school and returned to it as an adult in the late 1970s. He likes the freedom and exhilarating feeling cycling gives him. He has written widely on cycling, including a 2009 book, Bicycle Diaries.^[24] In August 2009, he auctioned his Montague folding bike in order to raise money for the London Cycling Campaign.

In 2008, Byrne designed a series of bicycle parking racks in the form of image outlines corresponding to the areas in which they were located, such as a dollar sign for Wall Street and an electric guitar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Byrne worked with a manufacturer that would construct the racks in exchange for the chance to sell them later as artworks, and the racks remained on the streets for about a year.^[25]

Views[link]

Byrne also posts personal comments on the music and, occasionally, on the state of the recorded music industry. In July 2007, Byrne posted the following comment:

There was another piece in the Times today about yet another 20 percent drop in CD sales. (Are they running the same news piece every 4 months?) Jeez guys, the writing's on the wall. How long do the record execs think they'll have those offices and nice parking spaces? (Well, more than half of all record A&R and other execs are gone already, so there should be plenty of parking space). They, the big 4 or 5, should give the catalogues back to the artists or their heirs as a gesture before they close the office doors, as they sure don't know how to sell music anymore. (I have Talking Heads stuff on the shelf that I can't get Warner to release.) The "industry" had a nice 50-year ride, but it's time to move on. Luckily, music remains more or less unaffected — there is a lot of great music out there. A new model will emerge that includes rather than sues its own customers, that realizes that music is not a product in the sense of being a thing — it's closer to fashion, in that for music fans it tells them and their friends who they are, what they feel passionately about and to some extent what makes life fun and interesting. It's about a sense of community — a song ties a whole invisible disparate community together. It's not about selling the (often) shattered plastic case CDs used to come in.^[26]

Works by David Byrne[link]

Solo studio albums[link]

• My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (with Brian Eno) (1981)
• Rei Momo (1989)
• Uh-Oh (1992)
• David Byrne (1994)
• Feelings (1997)
• Look into the Eyeball (2001)
• Grown Backwards (2004)
• Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (with Brian Eno) (2008)

Talking Heads[link]

• Talking Heads: 77 (1977)
• More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978)
• Fear of Music (1979)
• Remain in Light (1980)
• Speaking in Tongues (1983)
• Little Creatures (1985)
• True Stories (1986)
• Naked (1988)

Books[link]

• True Stories (1986)
• Strange Ritual, Chronicle Books (1995)
• Your Action World (1999)
• The New Sins (Los Nuevos Pecados) (2001)
• David Byrne Asks You: What Is It? Smart Art Press (2002)
• Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information with DVD (2003)
• Arboretum, (2006)
• Bicycle Diaries (2009)

^[27]

Film[link]

• Stop Making Sense - concert movie from Talking Heads tour (1984)
• True Stories (1986)
• Ile Aiye (The house of life) - Documentary (1989)
• Here Lies Love - concept album in collaboration with Norman Cook (released 2010)
• Ride, Rise, Roar - music documentary of his concert tour with Brian Eno (released 2010)^[28]
• This Must Be the Place - 2011

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Sytze Steenstra: Song and Circumstance. The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to the Present. New York and London: Continuum Books, 2010.
• John Howell: David Byrne. (American Originals Series) New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992.
• Ian Gittin: Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime: The Stories Behind Every Song.

External links[link]

Find more about David Byrne on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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	Quotations from Wikiquote

Wikinews has related news: Musician David Byrne sues Florida governor over campaign song

• Official website
• David Byrne at the Internet Movie Database
• David Byrne on Charlie Rose