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are, like colours, forms and patterns, means of transmitting our experience in so powerful a way that the experience can literally be lived by others. This has been felt, again and again, in the actual experience of the arts, and we are now beginning to see how and why it is more than a metaphor; it is a physical experience as real as any other. (1965:40–1)

More questions

The work on neonates points to music as an organizing device, one that is implicated in state transformation. Latching on to musical properties (in so far as they are objects of embodied awareness), an infant may become entrained in relation to these properties. To be entrained in this way is to be launched upon a bodily trajectory; the infant’s bodily (physiological and micro-behavioural) state comes to be patterned, rhythmically and, more broadly, bodily stylistically, in some relation to the auditory environment. This environment – including aspects of the materialcultural environment – can thus be seen as involved directly with – as a resource mobilized in and for – the formulation and translation of socalled ‘endogenous’ bodily states. Documenting this involvement helps dissolve the endogenous/exogenous dichotomy. No longer axiomatic, the question of where the body ‘ends’ and the environment ‘begins’ is converted from a resource – ‘the’ body and ‘its’ processes – into a topic for (situated) research on body constitution. The body – its limits, processes, capacities, thresholds – is reconceived as an emergent and flexible entity, as reflexively linked to the material-cultural environment and what that environment may a ord. This shift in conceptualizing the body–environ- ment relationship reformulates that relationship in a new key, one in which the conventional medical notion of the body – a bounded and objectivized entity characterized by endogenous properties – is reconceived as a literary trope, an artefact of discourse and its a priori parameters, its ways of seeing.

At the same time, it would be absurd to attempt to claim that the body is not ‘real’ in its displayed properties, for, as Philip Larkin once put it (1964), ‘our flesh surrounds us with its own decisions’. It is, however, reasonable to suggest that, to the extent that bodily properties are reflexively constituted in relation to the body’s connection to a range of other materials, the body/environment divide can be replaced by a concern with how ‘bodies’ are configured. This alternative (and interdisciplinary) perspective illuminates bodily states and forms of embodied agency as produced through the body’s interaction with and abilities to appropriate environmental materials – materials that can be perhaps best understood as resources for the constitution of particular states over time and social

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space. To speak of body/environment interaction in this way is by no means to depict actors (bodies) as ‘conscious’ or ‘deliberate’ in their mobilization of environmental properties and a ordances; to the contrary, as illustrated in the case of music therapy clients and neonates, bodies and agents are often caught within circumstances where they have to make do with available environmental properties and, under some circumstances and for some purposes, these properties may be useless, unconducive. Thus, the body’s states are reflexively linked to the settings where the body is created, maintained and changed. Such a perspective is by no means new – it is, in fact, merely a cultural constructivist extension of the idea that bodies continually appropriate environmental materials (air, water, temperature and so forth) for a myriad of state maintenance activities, normally classified under headings such as biological and social psychological. This perspective is one that points to the active role of cultural materials in relation to state constitution and maintenance, one that seeks to develop a cultural-ecological perspective for the sociology of the body conceived as a continually renewable, temporal, configuration.

Still, there is a way to go before the ‘key questions’ alluded to earlier, concerning music’s role in relation to the body, are addressed properly. We need more extended examples of what it means, at the level of realtime, spatially located existence, to speak of musical latching, and we need to illustrate in far greater detail what it means to describe music as an ordering device of bodily process. One way to begin to explore this process is through an investigation of body–music interactions as they occur in real time. Indeed, there have been calls for this investigative strategy from within music therapy (for example, ‘future research should also consider moment-to-moment interactions with the music and the e ect of this on physiological process’ (Maranto 1993:167)). Only here can we begin to observe bodies as they latch on to and become entrained by musical devices.

To further these issues I now turn to an exceptional venue for pursuing music’s role as an entrainment device, as a means for organizing the body: the realm of music and movement exercise. I look, in particular, at aerobics, where music is overtly employed as a device of state regularization, a means for structuring and restructuring motivation, movement, energy and the self-perception of fatigue in relation to predetermined aims and over time. My discussion draws upon an ethnography of music’s role during the forty-five-minute period of an aerobic exercise class. This work was carried out by Sophie Belcher, the research assistant on the music and daily life project between 1997–8 at Exeter (Belcher and DeNora forthcoming; Belcher and DeNora 1998). Over a year, between 1997 and 1998, Belcher attended aerobic classes in South Devon (mainly

A naturally occurring experiment

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‘hi/lo’ but also ‘step aerobics’, ‘toning’ and ‘total body workout’), conducted in-depth interviews and quick questionnaires and interviewed production managers from leading (United Kingdom) aerobic music firms. We began by posing the following questions: does music a ord aerobic agency and, if so, what does it take, musically, to create and sustain that body over the course of a forty-five-minute aerobic exercise session? Do some types of music provide better organizing devices for aerobic order than others?

A naturally occurring experiment

One way of knowing what it takes to produce forms of organization is through perspective by incongruity, by looking at the conditions associated with disorder, with breakdown. The value of ‘troubles’ and breakdowns of order within the social sciences is mostly untapped in this regard, at least outside the areas of conversation analysis, ethnomethodology and, more recently, participatory design (as applied, for example, to software systems).

In recent years, the study of breakdowns has been used to bring to light many non-discursive, non-propositional and embodied practices that computer users may not be able to describe verbally (Ehn 1988; Winograd and Flores 1986; Bødker and Grønbaeck 1984). The study of breakdowns has also been used to identify the ways in which organizational cultural materials come to a ord work and organizational knowledge.

Transferred to the study of aerobics, a focus on breakdowns is a route, from the so-called ‘natural world’, into the question of music’s role as an ordering device of embodied agency. We can compare, for example, the music of ‘good’ (that is, aerobically organized) sessions with sessions of aerobic disorder to explore music as it contributes to ‘disorder’ and to ‘order’. In this way it is possible to illuminate the musical characteristics that a ord aerobic embodied agency, that enable the particular bodily movements, endurance, motivation, arousal and co-ordination, and that constrain the perception of fatigue. These features are what characterize good or orderly aerobic execution, the situation where bodies are able to maintain and pass through vigorous and varied movement styles over the course of a forty-five-minute session. Aerobic disorder, by contrast, is characterized by bodies that trip themselves up, cannot reproduce the correct steps, get exhausted and have to stop, or are otherwise distracted from the competent execution, ideally with gusto and with pleasure, of the dance routine. For example, consider this example from the field notes of one of several sessions where ‘breakdown’ occurred.

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[T]he moves were incredibly simple yet somehow nearly all of us just couldn’t get it together . . . when I scanned the room there were people totally out of synch with the routine and the music . . . about a third [of the] way into the class . . . the group was all over the place, not following the routine, out of synch, standing still and generally looking perplexed. It was also soon after this that I noticed the two women in front of me, who were regulars who usually took things very seriously, were having a conversation with one another and laughing. (Belcher n.d.)

Thus, as with neonatology and its checklist of physiological and micro-behaviours that characterize stable state organization, aerobics, too, has its checklist. Because of its high degree of rationalization (the highly gendered character of aerobics and its ‘totalizing’ character has been well remarked upon elsewhere (Martin 1997; Whitson 1994)), it is possible to specify versions of aerobic ‘order’ – bodily and situational – in some detail. This distinguishes aerobics from most of the situations and scenes that constitute daily life and, indeed, most other sports where ‘in play’ details (for example, how or whether a footballer achieves a goal) are not fixed in advance. By contrast, the body–temporal parameters of aerobic order are pre-scripted and deviations from that order are censured by a (typically) vigilant session leader and her or his continual calls and prompts. These pre-scripted parameters consist, within ‘hi/lo’ aerobics, of choreographed movements (for example, individual kicks or steps) that are in turn grouped into chunks and then into an overall sequential structure or aerobic ‘grammar’. This grammar consists of basic phases, which are in turn characterized by the speed of the exercise, its degree of vigour, its style of movement and its mode of aerobic subject/body, that is the mode of embodied agency required for the ‘good’ execution of the phase. Thus, most forty-five-minute sessions (the equivalent of one side of a ninety-minute cassette tape) are divided into sequentially organized stages, each characterized by a specific form of movement and energy level. To the extent that each of these components is associated with a mode of embodied agency, the aerobic actor is reconfigured as an agent in real time as he or she passes through the various stages of the session. This is to say that, at di erent times during a session, actors are configured as di erent types of subject/bodies, with, for example, greater or lesser degrees of cognitive awareness, emotionality and gender identification. In the terminology of aerobics, these components are:

Warm-up (slower, gentler lower impact movements, designed to get the body moving, literally warming up and heart rate slightly elevated), roughly ten minutes.

Pre-core (music that shifts into faster higher impact movements), roughly five minutes.

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Core (faster, more vigorous, involving higher impact, for example, leaping – the ‘hardest’ part of the session), roughly fifteen minutes.

Cool-down (slowed movements, less vigorous leading to very slow floor exercises such as sit ups at the end of the session), roughly five minutes.

Floor exercises (slow toning exercises, such as stomach crunches and sit ups), roughly ten minutes.

Comparing a good (that is, aerobically ordered) and highly typical session with a session (with the same class members) where aerobic order was subject to decay highlights many of the ways in which music is a device of aerobic ordering. Using this quasior natural experimental format helps to bring into relief some of the ways that music provides a device of bodily ordering in real time, as described in the following sections. First, however, it is necessary to describe the ways in which the aerobics music production companies orient to aerobics’ generic grammar and try to embed particular scenarios of music use within the musical product itself.

Composing (for) the users – commercial musical profiles of music use

To be sure, music is prominent as an orientational device within any aerobic session. Produced and distributed by commercial music outlets such as Pure Energy, Music Xpress, Power Productions, Koreography Klub and Muscle Mixes, the music used in aerobic classes is oriented to highly specific circumstances, to particular segments of aerobic grammar. Perhaps not surprisingly, not unlike the Muzak corporation and other firms that produce music for ambience, aerobic music companies catalogue their stock by a ect and intended use and in ways that make music’s position within the aerobic grammar clear. Moreover, it is standard to involve ‘fitness professionals’ in the production process where they may select particular numbers and advise about where in the aerobic grammar such numbers are best placed.

For example, cassettes entitled ‘Motivation’, which are designed for use in the warm-up, maintain a beats-per-minute rate of 130–8, while ‘Body Blitz’ or ‘Energy Workout’, with a bpm of 140–6, are employed during the core. Cool-down numbers tend to hover at around 130 bpm and are classified under the heading ‘Relaxation’.

Beyond beats per minute, aerobic music firms select and tailor the musical and stylistic features of individual numbers. One of the first things they try to do is heighten rhythmic clarity. Rhythm is typically

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positioned in the musical foreground, with vocals often relegated to the background. Features that might detract from this clarity (for example, complicated transitions) are deleted. The music is also entirely synthesized, which also adds to its sometimes almost surreal or hyperreal clarity (for example, no real group of musicians could produce the almost sterile sharpness of attack and release, of rapid tutti passages). These firms also try to match musical materials such as melodic patterns or formulae, genre, orchestration or particular gestural devices to particular phases and movement demands within a workout. Thirdly, most of the vocal tracks in aerobic music are sung by female voices, often pitched at or near the top of the female vocal range. A related point, the upper or higher dimensions of melody and harmony are typically positioned as the musical telos; melodies and harmonies press up and lift in ways that are homologous with the gravity resistant physical practices of aerobics.

Played at full volume throughout nearly the whole of a session, the musical features of aerobics are thus designed to provide much more than mere ‘backdrop’ to aerobic proceedings, and they contribute much more than the all-important grounding of beats per minute. In aerobics, music is expressly designed to be placed in the foreground as a device of body constitution and bodily organization, a device upon which body coordination and conduct may be mapped. Not only ‘good to think with’, music is also ‘good to embody with’. This capacity of music, to a ord bodily agency, draws upon certain ‘exosemantic’ correspondences, as Richard Middleton calls them, conventional within Western music and capitalized upon by aerobics firms:

Music is often felt to ‘symbolize’ awareness of time (through tempo and rhythmic structure) and space (through pitch-height relationships, and intensity and textural contrasts). We think of pitch going ‘up’ and ‘down’; sounds being ‘closer’ or more ‘distant’; rhythm as being ‘in time’, ‘late’, ‘out of phase’, and so on. Connotations relating to other senses are often attached (thus ‘high’ sounds are ‘light’, ‘bright’, ‘clear’) and so are emotions (usually related to tension/relaxation schemas); and images of movement are usually involved, too: we have already met many ‘gestures’, and equations of musical rhythms and body rhythms (walking, breathing, heartbeat, and so on) are commonplace. (Middleton 1990:225)

In aerobics, music defines the components of a session through its tempo changes (for example, music for warm-up, core and cool-down) and it also profiles the bodily movements associated with each of these components. This profile is achieved through the ways that musical materials – melody, rhythm, gesture, genre – are deployed. In this sense, music is a device in the foreground, a means of a ording aerobic entrainment. Here, music works at what Richard Middleton refers to as the level of ‘primary signification’ (1990:220–32). Drawing upon Jakobson’s