Music on the move: understanding music as otherwise knowledge in early childhood

Abstract Posthuman understanding of music and bodies as matter highlights otherwise forms of musical embodied learning. In this paper, we focus on an early childhood classroom music event and think diffractively with cognitive and posthuman theories in order to extend our insight into it. Accordingly, we explore cognitive approaches to music and movement, as well as posthuman concepts such as agency, embodiment, affect and desire, (de)territorialisations and assemblages. As music educators, we acknowledge the relationship between music and movement in early childhood, but our posthuman reading of the event enables a more equitable understanding of children’s music learning.