Musicians in traditions around the world use their bodies in a varietyof ways in the process of performing and teaching music. The mostobvious example is the movement required to physically produce soundfrom an instrument. Movements are also widely used to transmitparticular emotions during performance, to signal to other musicians ormembers of the audience, or to communicate between teacher and studentin the transmission process. This paper presents the results of an ongoingfieldwork project to investigate the use of physical gestures in Okinawanclassical music, a tradition that uses a number of stylized gestures,particularly those of the hands and head. These physical gestures are quiteoften discussed in the course of lessons and performances, and have alsobeen theorized to some extent by Okinawan musicians and scholars. In this paper I focus particularly on movements of the head and upperbody in the Okinawan tradition. I consider the ways that these movementswere theorized and formalized in the early 20th century by Okinawanmusic scholars, as well as through their incorporation into a notationsystem. I also analyze two field recordings made during the course of theproject. The first of these illustrates the use of upper body movements inperformance as a way of embodying melodic movement, while the secondillustrates how body movements are actively used as a part of the teachingprocess
