Are Audiobooks Musical?

By Alex Barnard

I was recently surprised to learn that at the Grammys this year, an award was won by an audiobook. Alongside Olivia Dean and Lola Young, the Dalai Lama was victorious. This isn’t a new phenomenon – there’s been a whole Grammy category for ‘Best Spoken Word Album’ since 1959. The award has been won by Leonard Bernstein, Martin Luther King Jr. and Carrie Fisher, all names worthy of accolades, but does it really fit into what is predominantly seen as a set of Music Awards?

The Grammys are described as ‘Music’s Biggest Night’ on the Recording Academy's own website. Upon learning that the awards extended beyond this, I was conflicted. I had never thought of the Grammys as a celebration of literature; that was the duty of the Booker or Pulitzer Prize. Yet audiobooks appear on Spotify, and accompany the daily commute or dog walk in much the same way as music, with the intellectual value of listening to a symphony.

The Dalai Lama’s winning audiobook, titled Meditations, is actually far from just spoken word: it interweaves Indian classical music with his messages. The musicians behind the music include Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, a sixth-generation sarod player whose dedication to traditional music has meant his relative obscurity in the West. His use of the sarod, an instrument similar to but smaller than a sitar, is clean-sounding and melodic. He has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House and won a variety of cultural prizes including the UNICEF National Ambassadorship prize. The inclusion of a relatively obscure artist – in the Western world – such as Khan, with such musical prowess, explains the Grammy win. Listeners aren’t just treated to the Dalai Lama’s wisdom, but invited into a musical world including some of its finest creators.

Also featured is Rufus Wainwright, a Canadian-American singer-songwriter and composer. Beyond rock music, his influences include opera and classical, which he became interested in during his adolescence. Wainwright often amalgamates genres together in his work, from using ragtime rhythms to use of a full symphony orchestra. His creative collaboration with Amjad Ali Khan and the Dalai Lama comes, therefore, as no surprise; Wainwright’s musical interests are wide-ranging and interlocking.

The sheer creative scope of the Dalai Lama’s project, paired with his messages promoting harmony and peace, render Meditations more than just an audiobook. The Dalai Lama’s words function as an instrument in a soundscape. If the focal aspect of a piece doesn’t have a melody, is that to say that rap music, for example, doesn’t count? Meditations, and in particular the Dalai Lama, winning a Grammy is less bizarre than it originally seems – it’s not just interesting to people invested in its Buddhist messages, rather, the words paired with an enriching musical soundtrack create a full-bodied soundscape.