Scholarship on musical genre (Fabbri 1982a; Frith 1996; Negus 1999; Holt 2007), though vast, has not accounted for the ways in which it is informed by embodied sensibility. This paper addresses this gap in the literature with an attempt at understanding genre through embodied experience, using hardcore punk [from here called “hardcore”] as a case study. While certain musical parameters are often used to delineate genre within aggressive music scenes, metal and hardcore (and related subgenres) are most often understood by participants as socially constructed entities which cannot be defined by sound alone. Though many bands who self-identify as hardcore play music more closely aligned with metal sonically, social factors at play render the hardcore label more accurate. In this paper, I build upon Waksman’s (2009) punk/metal continuum and Kennedy’s (2018) theory of generic symbiosis by examining the role of embodiment in the construction of genre in heavy music. I explore how subgenres of metal and hardcore interact and how fans create meaning in their physical experiences with the music. Based on fieldwork and long-term involvement in Toledo and Detroit, I argue that one of the main differences between hardcore and metal is audience participation through moshing, dancing, crowd-killing, and other physical movement. I assert that the element of physical danger at shows understood to be hardcore is distinct from that of metal shows. Ultimately, I show how genres are embodied, examining the sensory experiences that inform how people construct and understand genres in relation to each other.

How does performing khayyami serve as a means of secular social identity formation in contemporary Iran? The establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 leveraged political interpretations of Shi’a Islam as an essential arbiter for social and political control (Nooshin 2009: 3). As a result, concepts of Iranian-ness have been debated up to the present. As a significant part of the daily lives of Iranians, music has been a “target of constant government scrutiny” (Lucas 2006: 79), as well as a tool for resistance and defiance. Originating in the port city of Bushehr, the regional genre of khayyami has become a locus for ideological debates regarding Iranian-ness. Characterized by its textual repertoire from quatrains by the poet Omar Khayyam, this genre synthesizes Khayyam’s secular ideas with local dance songs. As a deeply participatory musical practice, musicians and audiences collectively shape the performance through singing, clapping, dancing, and creating a holistic atmosphere of social and musical interaction. As such, khayyami expresses embodied joy and resistance in a political context where singing and dancing in public are politically and religiously prohibited. I will argue that through performing khayyami as a collective musical activity people confront the domination of political Islam from their social identity, and reconstruct it through performing Khayyam quatrains, as the secular symbol of the Persian poetry. Using collected fieldwork and digital platforms materials, I explore theories of race, affect, and national consciousness to illuminate the role of khayyami in representing alternative expressions of Iranian belonging.

Sikh Sabad Kīrtan (the singing of scriptural verses) is performed in a diverse array of musical idioms, broadly categorized into what are called “classical” and “light” styles, the former based on rāg (the South Asian melodic system), and the latter, free of this structure. Whereas the vast majority of Sikh worshippers find their deepest devotional experiences through the light Kīrtan styles, many hold a special affective regard for the classical styles. This is due to the presence of rāg-names in the song- and section-headings in the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib (1604|1704). A compendium of about 6,000 canonized scared song-texts, authored mainly by the founding Sikh Guru (1469-1708), the scripture’s organization by rāg lends a sense of historicity and aura even to contemporary classical styles of Kīrtan. In this paper, I highlight the embodied aspects of musical worship in this heightened auratic context, focusing on what the devotees describe as feelings of proximity to the Guru and the Divine. Based on Sikh epistemology, and sensory ethnography attentive to the thick event, I analyze the spatio-temporal experiences of congregants during the course of a Kīrtan session, to argue for a transportive sensation in worshipping bodies that is a dynamic unfolding of somatic consciousness.

In the early decades of the socialist revolution, Castro declared Cuba an Afro-Latin nation to the dismay of those who embraced a White identity, via Spain, and at the same time obfuscating the cultural inheritance of minority groups, such as Cubans of Chinese descent. Further, the attempt to construct a homogenous national identity has left very little room for the local exploration or discursive expression of identities that fall outside the official narrative, which suggests, promotes, and naturalizes the idea and logic of a perceived universal Cubanness. In this paper, I explore the role music plays in the creation of alternative spaces of being and belonging. I observe that the practice of lion dance embeds and is embedded with forms of knowledge that signal a less visible Cuban identity, and comments on the relevance of the White and Black binary upon which Cuban national identity is predicated. Such a claim for an alternative definition of who is Cuban is constructed and reenacted through rituals of movement, sound, and visual displays. I argue that the symbolic power of the Cuban lion-dance performance provides practitioners and community members with a form of non-textual discourse that needs neither to align, nor contest official narratives. Instead it allows to signal an alternative Cuban identity registered in the body through the performative process. My work is based on field research conducted in Cuba since 2016 and constitutes an effort to give visibility to a less known but significant element of Cuban culture.