How to Be a Head is a seminar-style course in which students will theorize our contemporary musical community, as observed in global and local music cultures as well as materialist histories of music production. We will study how independent and underground musics travel through cultures and subcultures, discuss techniques of crate-digging and digital research, and learn to creatively articulate our own theories of influence and postmodernism, all towards an understanding of the many ways music reaches us. Readings will include work by Mariana Richey, David Grubbs, Tim Lawrence,, Georgina Born, and Greg Tate.