Musicking, embodiment and participatory enaction of music: outline and key points

TLDR: A way of understanding the confluence of the enactive approach to cognition and musicology in a wider sense is proposed, which suggests that existing socio-cultural approaches to meaning in music – whereby music is seen as a total social phenomenon, and the naturalistic view of music cognition may be articulated via the life-mind continuum proposed by enactivism.

Abstract: This paper proposes a way of understanding the confluence of the enactive approach to cognition and musicology in a wider sense. The implication is that existing socio-cultural approaches to meaning in music – whereby music is seen as a total social phenomenon, and the naturalistic view of music cognition may be articulated via the life-mind continuum proposed by enactivism. On the one hand, discussions on embodied music cognition are presented with the opportunity to overcome their de facto individualism in a principled, naturalistic way. On the other hand, for the socio-cultural-historical approaches the opportunity seems to be to move beyond the biology-culture divide without submitting to reductionism. A wider explanatory unit is presented. The explanatory utility of embodiment is examined in relation to the wider frame of social-life in dialectical fashion. A definition of musicking is sketched considering it as an instance of processes of social-life. This paper signals a direction to take, yet methodologies, results, and homologies with other disciplines are left open to further discussion.