Music and the Body: From Cognition to Performance

Abstract

This article provides an overview of some recent approaches to the study of music and the body. Among the topics discussed are embodied music cognition, phenomenology, affect and atmosphere, entrainment and gesture, and “reading” bodies as cultural texts. The different concepts are defined, and examples of relevant studies are identified and discussed. Themes that cut across these topics include the moving body, the nature of embodiment, and the relationship between non-discursive forms of meaning making and language. Earlier work on music and the body within ethnomusicology is also discussed, as well as more recent work that theorises music and embodiment. The article concludes that ethnomusicology is especially well situated to study the body and embodiment due to its ethnographic approach to performance, where moving, performing, and listening bodies are in focus.