ABSTRACT
In contrast to the usual conditions for reading a book or viewing a painting, the audience, especially in popular musics, may well be co-performers by, for example, singing or clapping along with the onstage musicians, and the musician is also normally listening to her/his own performance. As a society that prioritizes and valorizes the cognitive over the physical, people generally infer emotional state from the physical conduct it supposedly produces. It is helpful, then, to complement such studies conducted in clinical environments, with forms of ethnography and testimony from those who have been caught up in musical arousal. Music is not the only activity which arouses aggressive inclinations in everyday life. Indeed, it is more difficult to think of situations of zero stress in contemporary life, than of those involving various levels of arousal from irritation to violent reaction. Ethnographic evidence suggests that this is a predominant function of aggressive arousal.
