Pump up the Bass—Rhythm, Cars, and Auditory Scaffolding

ABSTRACT Music has been theorized as supplying the individual with an “auditory scaffolding” (De Nora) to latch on to, generating means for ordering and organizing sense of self within varied environments: rhythmic structures balanced with emotional moods, lyrical content conditioning daily routine, sonic texture and melody exciting the imagination through the course of a day's work. The contours of musical expression are understood to aid in sculpting individual movements and exchanges with the world. Engaging such formulations, the article positions notions of auditory scaffolding and latching against forms of motoric and tactile experience and practice, from acts of drumming, which locate the body within an expanded rhythmic and vibratory structure, to modified car designs that house outlandish and excessive speaker systems with a view to pumpin' up the bass—auditory latching is explicitly detailed as found within cultures of rhythm and customized design. This leads from the details of individual bodies amid vibrations to questions of social groups, particularly lowrider and hip-hop cultures in Los Angeles in which automobiles function as sonic machines. Such an example is used so as to expand notions of auditory latching and to suggest dynamic links between music and its place.