The Secret Life of Beats

Part memoir, part musical odyssey, The Secret Life of Beats follows Grammy Award–winning drummer Will Calhoun from his childhood in the Bronx to the far corners of the world—driven by the curiosity and fearlessness that made him one of the most extraordinary musicians of his generation.

Will Calhoun grew up in a household full of music, family, and the kind of neighborhood bonds that shape a person for life. The lessons he learned there—on stoops, in living rooms, and at his mother’s side—became the foundation for a life unlike any other in contemporary music. As the drummer for the Grammy Award–winning band Living Colour, he helped redefine what rock music could be, shattering expectations about race and genre. But the beat, as it always does, kept moving.

As a drummer who moves fluidly between heavy metal, jazz, world percussion, and electronic music, Calhoun has never belonged to just one world. In The Secret Life of Beats, he takes readers from that Bronx childhood to the stages of the world, through the downtown New York music scene of the ’80s and across Brazil, Australia, and Africa. Along the way, he crosses paths with some of the most extraordinary artists and cultural figures of our time—Harry Belafonte, the Rolling Stones, Wayne Shorter, Public Enemy, Oumou Sangaré, and Nelson Mandela, among many others—and recounts it all with the warmth and wit of a natural storyteller.

At its heart, The Secret Life of Beats is a book about the curiosity that kept pushing Calhoun beyond everything he thought he knew. What his upbringing gave him—the capacity to sit with people, honor where they come from, and find the humanity in any room—turned out to be exactly what master drummers, tribal elders, and indigenous musicians across the world recognized in him.

The Secret Life of Beats is the story of a man who understood that the music always has more to teach—if you’re willing to listen.