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An approach to improvisation pedagogyin post-secondary jazz programmesbased on negative dialecticsJoseph Paul Louth aa Music Education , Youngstown State University, One UniversityPlaza , Youngstown , USAPublished online: 23 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Joseph Paul Louth (2012) An approach to improvisation pedagogy in post-secondary jazz programmes based on negative dialectics, Music Education Research, 14:1, 9-24,DOI: 10.1080/14613808.2012.657163

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An approach to improvisation pedagogy in post-secondary jazzprogrammes based on negative dialectics

Joseph Paul Louth*

Music Education, Youngstown State University, One University Plaza, Youngstown, USA

(Received 29 July 2011; final version received 10 January 2012)

This article argues that an approach to jazz improvisation pedagogy based onnegative dialectics may provide a viable solution to the threat of codification ofthe jazz language as a result of the academisation of improvisation studies at thepost-secondary level. Some tentative means of incorporating such an approachinto the design of university improvisation courses are also suggested. Building onan Adornian framework, the author argues that key to developing a (negative)dialectical approach to improvisation pedagogy is the understanding that thepractice of jazz improvisation, at its best, reflects a critical stance that is inopposition to, yet, informed by the more commodified ‘piece’ of jazz music.In essence, the problem of balancing discipline and freedom in improvisationpedagogy is best approached if improvisation is understood as a continual act ofcriticism in reaction to its own inevitable commodification.

Keywords: improvisation; jazz pedagogy; critical pedagogy; critical theory;dialectics; Adorno

1. Introduction

For many university educators the most basic problem confronting improvisation

pedagogy, regardless of style, is the question of how such a process can be taught as a

form of creative expression given that any musical vocabulary involved must be

codified to some degree in order to be transmitted in a formal academic

environment. Through various and sundry ‘rules’ pertaining to relations between

melody and harmony, the codification of improvisational processes has the potential

to imbue musical ideas with objective qualities that render them less like the products

of spontaneous expression and more like commodities that may be used to satisfy a

given musical context in a stylistically and historically appropriate manner. A related

question arises to which a sufficient answer has not yet been supplied: is it possible to

teach someone to improvise creatively? What I am discussing is of course the age-old

problem of discipline versus freedom, specifically as it applies to instruction in

improvisation at the post-secondary level. Since jazz is the most common vehicle for

improvisation courses I will confine the following discussion to that (meta)genre;

however, the implications will apply equally to all styles of music in which

improvisation might be encountered.

*Email: jplouth@ysu.edu

Music Education Research

Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2012, 9�24

ISSN 1461-3808 print/ISSN 1469-9893 online

# 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2012.657163

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Building on an Adornian framework, I argue that a dialectical approach to

improvisation pedagogy is best suited to address the problem of balancing discipline

and freedom when improvisation is taught in formal academic contexts. And key to

such an approach is the understanding that the practice of jazz improvisation, at itsbest, reflects a critical stance that is in opposition to, yet, informed by the more

commodified ‘piece’ of jazz music. This is by itself not a novel idea; both Lee Brown

(1999) and Peter Martin (2002), for example, have made reference to such a cyclical

concept in the realm of musicology and criticism. But I hope to contribute to the

discourse by examining the implications of such a model for pedagogy. The study of

jazz improvisation makes an effective model for a dialectical pedagogy for several

reasons. First, improvisation (of any kind) is extremely problematic to teach because

of the paradoxical relationship between the freedom of musical expression associatedwith the act, and the restriction that necessarily accompanies stylistic parameters,

without which no meaningful musical statements can be made. The problem of

striking a balance between rules and freedom in formal pedagogical settings is

increasingly mentioned in jazz literature, as jazz increasingly becomes a part of the

academy. But aside from how this issue affects jazz performance programmes and

other music programmes in which improvised music is stressed, striking a balance

between rules and freedom is a central concern of all pedagogy, since without either

the discipline or the freedom to exercise responsible decision-making, students willnot become autonomous, engaged members of society. In this respect, the problem of

jazz improvisation pedagogy may function as a microcosm of larger issues.

Moreover, a (negative) dialectical approach to instruction in improvisation is

invaluable because it renders unnecessary the traditional debate as to whether jazz

(or any musical style in which one is attempting to improvise) privileges universal or

particular musical meanings. This debate, explains Lydia Goehr, has plagued the

fields of music analysis and music history since the beginning of the nineteenth

century, when it became clear that music’s ‘emancipation’ from the social realm hadcreated tensions between its aesthetic and historical dimensions (Goehr 1992, 192).

The familiar argument may take the form of ‘aesthetic versus historical’,

‘autonomous versus functional’, or ‘structural versus contextual’ but at its core is

the question of whether music is capable of (or valued for) inhering meaning that

transcends time and/or culture. The debate has become particularly contentious in

jazz scholarship (primarily in the fields of music criticism and musicology/

ethnomusicology) since the relatively recent efforts to ‘remind’ audiences and critics

of the ‘original’ ritualistic and supposedly socially transcendent meanings of jazz(Nicholson 2005, 32�3). Any approach to improvisation pedagogy that is predicated

on a dialectical reading of jazz history, however, essentially renders this argument

ineffectual since it encourages one to perceive universal and particular musical

meanings as inextricably related.

2. The framework

The approach to improvisation pedagogy being suggested here is modelled onnegative dialectics, a modification of the Hegelian Dialectic, which holds that

seemingly contradictory statements, when viewed as thesis and antithesis, can be

brought together as partial truths and synthesised into ever greater units of

understanding. The early critical theorists, particularly Adorno and Horkheimer,

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were wary of the idea that any ultimate synthesis might lead to true understanding,

and argued that notions of synthesis could result in what they, following Marx, called

‘false consciousness’. Their solution was a perpetual cycle of critique, hence the term

‘negative dialectics’. Adorno and Horkheimer, realising that all theorising, including

their own, could easily become ideological, found that a continuous pattern of

negation was the only way to pursue a truth concept without allowing it to reify (the

term reification has various connotations, but is used here to refer to the assumption

that an abstract, socially constructed idea is somehow universal or natural).1 The

Frankfurt theorists argued that the objectification process, which leads to reification,

must be accepted as an inevitable function of consciousness. Erickson encapsulates

this argument, saying that:

. . . reification of an idea is inevitable if we give it a name. Thus all concepts, such ashistory, technology, material, society, language, and even reification itself, are reified themoment they are used. They have to be, otherwise the very structure of communicationof these ideas breaks down under endless regressions of contextualization, generallyunaccomplishable due to language’s arbitrary relation to things. So reification per se isnot the problem. The problem is our loss of control over its almost independentdevelopment . . ..(Erikson 1995, 203)

The inevitability of reification means that it is insufficient to draw attention to a

particular idea or system that has been objectified in our consciousness, and then act

as though by replacing it we have somehow transcended the problem. The very act of

teaching necessarily involves the constant objectification of abstract concepts in

order to ground them in the everyday world of the concrete, thus the risk of

forgetting the socially constructed origins of many of these concepts is never far

behind. The process through which the socially constructed origins of a replacement

system slowly become forgotten is often referred to in critical literature as

‘re-mythologizing’.

To translate this argument into musical terms, no matter what music is chosen for

study, its incorporation into institutional settings of any kind will necessarily result in

students’ understanding being mediated by formal categories and nomenclature.

Therefore our various nomenclatures, methods of analysis, and of instruction � both

newly developing and extant � should be constantly and critically examined in order

to reveal and consequently retard the process of re-mythologising that is bound to

occur, even as thoughtful instructors try to redress the imbalance between the reified

ideas of formal music education and the notion of music as ‘naturally’ experienced. If

we accept that reification is an unavoidable by-product of teaching and learning, then

some re-mythologising is always bound to occur. The proposed remedy, then, is to

attempt to raise students’ awareness of this ongoing process � to help them to

understand not only how reification causes music’s processual or context-dependent

meanings to codify into seemingly fixed, universal meanings, but how the process

itself is somewhat inevitable as an outgrowth of formalised learning of any kind. This

necessitates keeping the objective and subjective poles of the dialectic in constant

tension, so that music’s subjective aspects can be understood through (or in relation

to) its objective aspects, rather than attempting a synthesis of the two. Therefore such

pairs of terms as: discipline 10 freedom, and form 10 content, should be

understood in this context not as binaries but as irresolvable opposites that can only

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be understood through and in relationship to one another. I will now discuss the

implications of this framework for improvisation pedagogy.

3. Formal improvisation pedagogy and the commodification problem

Although jazz’s entry into academia has had the positive effect of legitimising it as

worthy of formal study, there are those who have expressed concerns that the extreme

codification that has necessarily accompanied this formalisation process may in some

cases be rendering jazz performance devoid of social meaning. Such concerns over

the reification of formerly ‘subjective’, context-dependent improvisational statements

are best understood in terms of the framework explained above, whereby formal

educational contexts must necessarily present knowledge in abstract form, at least tosome extent, which means objectifying it and possibly commodifying it. Bearing in

mind that the primary argument here is a philosophical rather than an empirical one,

it is nevertheless worth summarising some of these concerns.

Kenneth Prouty’s research reveals that many educators and veteran artists are

concerned that improvisation pedagogy in particular often involves the presentation

of a series of rules or general improvisational principles that are meant to apply to

various harmonic situations, regardless of the specific contexts in which those

harmonic situations may arise (Prouty 2002, 183). Prouty concludes that ‘thedemonstration of fluency in the harmonic structures of a certain repertory is very

often a final objective of improvisation courses’. This objective is particularly

prevalent in the system he refers to as ‘theoretically-based improvisational

pedagogy’, in which there is an emphasis on ‘scales and chords as generative devices

for improvisational statements’. This approach to scale/chord relations is referred to

as ‘reverse analysis’ because, instead of utilising theory simply to facilitate under-

standing of the music, theory becomes the basis of musical creation. He states that

many of his informants, both students and teachers, ‘openly questioned the relevanceof this approach’, complaining that it is inconsistent with the manner in which the

vocabulary of most jazz improvisation actually developed (178�80). Prouty para-

phrases the accomplished jazz educator David Baker when he states, ‘Ultimately,

there is a [performance] level that moves beyond material such as that presented

within an improvisation curriculum’ (227). This statement seems to leave little doubt

that there exists a disjunct between most improvisation curricula and the ultimate

goals of improvisational interaction.

The memorisation of melodic sequences and other musical ideas that can beinserted when a corresponding chord is heard allows musical structures to be

transported outside of the cultural and historical contexts that first gave rise to their

use and, potentially, into an academic vacuum. Yet, this system of instruction is, as

Ake (2002, 122) states, ‘the most widely used pedagogical approach in jazz

education’. Jazz artists, critics, and a number of scholars have argued that this often

results in improvisational statements (even from mature students and young,

technically polished artists) that sound reproductive of bygone musicians to the

point where they seem to lack any sense of individual expression (Friedwald et al.2002, 13, 28�9, 193; Prevost 1995, 62; Washington 2004, 33).

David Ake argues correctly that the formalisation of jazz pedagogy has led to

an emphasis on measurable systems of harmony and note choice in improvisation

instruction over approaches that stress rhythmic or timbral manipulation ‘for

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reasons both practical and accreditational’ (Ake 2002, 116). He echoes critics’

charges that formal jazz studies tend to engender homogeneous sounding players,

saying that ‘jazz education programs reinforce these ideals, setting norms for tone,

vibrato, and pitch center’ (120). He further points out that ‘notation and

harmony-based improvisational theory suit classroom use [because] notes, chords,

and harmonic progressions translate easily to paper’, which of course supports

the notion of measurable, standardised outcomes (120). Ake tends to place

much of the blame for this situation on the influence of classical European

traditions; however, his own analyses support the idea that, at least to some

extent, the loss of contextual meaning that can accompany such approaches is an

inevitable outcome of the unavoidable abstraction that is integral to all formal

education.

All of this is not to suggest that all jazz pedagogy be painted with the same brush.

Obviously, there are significant differences in the amount of abstraction that will

occur based on the degree to which programmes attempt to incorporate traditional

(in the jazz sense) modes of teaching and learning based on oral/aural strategies,

mentorship, immersion, and so on. The point of summarising some of these concerns

is simply to illustrate that there is anecdotal evidence to support the philosophical

argument that formal education, codification and reification are all intimately

related.

These apprehensions about reification were echoed by the participants of a

qualitative study that I myself conducted several years ago (Louth, 2006). The

informants were four highly accomplished jazz artists with international reputations

who were also university jazz educators, yet, who had all learned their improvisa-

tional skills informally and/or were self-taught. The most common complaint that

they voiced about improvisation pedagogy was that, since there is so much

theoretical information to be learned in a short time in formal settings, the necessary

abstraction that takes place tends to lessen students’ overall chances of gaining a

contextual understanding of crucial concepts, and therefore heighten their chances of

mistaking situational knowledge for universal principles.

These concerns are by now well known and have been responded to by various

scholars and teachers. For example, David Borgo has proposed that an ‘ecological

approach’ to jazz pedagogy may provide some remedy to this situation, arguing that

the introduction of collective free jazz techniques and, in particular, emphasising the

social and contextual provenance of knowledge generated through group improvisa-

tion in freer settings may address the over-emphasis on the abstract, formal aspects

of musical knowledge and instead begin to favour the ‘embodied, situated, and

distributed nature of cognition’ (Borgo 2007, 73). However, such proposals to focus

jazz improvisation pedagogy on what amounts to the subjective pole of the dialectic,

as helpful as they (temporarily) are, do not go far enough because they do not

address the problem of ‘re-mythologizing’, which will always occur because

objectification of any improvisational language (even ‘free’ jazz) is unavoidable if

one is to establish any meaningful musical communication. This is why I maintain

that a negative dialectical approach differs significantly from attempts to draw

attention to the subjective or processual aspects of improvisation. I will now attempt

to explain this idea more fully.

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4. Jazz and the perpetual cycle of reification: an Adornian argument

A critical theory reading of these concerns sees here an example of schools as the

‘new culture industry’, in which commodification and consequent reproductive or

conservative improvisational attempts result from the teaching (or acceptance) of

melodic and harmonic structures as if they were pre-existing objects out of which

improvisation occurs, as opposed to theoretical constructs that are superimposed on

improvisation after the fact. Indeed, the issues of cultural production, reproduction

and hegemony that are raised in critical theory seem to justify the complaints

of those jazz critics situated on the Left of the aforementioned debate.

In order to explain this charge more adequately and lay the groundwork for a

model of improvisation based on negative dialectics, some historical context is

necessary. Away from academia, the concerns mentioned above have long been raised

by jazz critics, who argue that there has been a growing systematisation of jazz

performance in general and that mainstream jazz has taken a conservative turn since

the 1980s, at which time the music was controversially presented as a neo-classical

phenomenon by prominent spokespeople such as Wynton Marsalis (Nicholson 2005,

54). Pitted against the neo-classical movement is the so-called critical theory of jazz

school, of whom one of the leading proponents is Krin Gabbard. Gabbard and his

followers (to whom race is a central issue) extol improvisational statements that

undermine traditional formal structures because such ‘free’ statements represent the

subjective voices of African-Americans under conditions of social repression

(Gabbard, 1991). By contrast, (white) societal institutions (including traditional

jazz scholarship and jazz academia) are seen as conspiring ‘to neuter the music by

pushing the resistance out of it’ (Brown 1999, 235).

But Lee Brown shows that this essentialist view, reliant on a dualism between

conventional musical systems and subjective musical statements, is untenable:

Even if we granted that authentic jazz disrupts the elitist’s vaunted ideals of unity andorder, the disrupting could not function in sheer isolation. Otherwise, nothing would befelt as disrupted. In sum, without any reference to a web-work of conventionalstructures, the music could not speak with any voice at all � resistant or otherwise.(Brown 1999, 239)

Here Brown is appropriately using a (negative) dialectical argument to refute the

notion that improvisation can ever free itself from referencing formalised conven-

tions. Ironically, the argument can be traced back to a critical thinker who was

infamously disdainful of jazz � Theodor Adorno (see, for example, Adorno, 2002). It

is Adorno’s critical dialectical method, notwithstanding his views on jazz and

popular music, that allows the perceptive educator to view subjective and objective

aspects of music creation as interdependent rather than opposed to one another.

Essentially that method rests on a belief in an irresolvable tension or dichotomy

between music’s structure and its history that can never be sufficiently synthesised.

Despite the fact that Adorno shows disdain for music that was conceived as

functional (as well as autonomous art music that ‘degenerates’ into functionalism),

key aspects of his philosophy actually serve to negate the dualism between functional

and autonomous music. This is because, for Adorno, social content ‘is immanent in

the structure of art’ (Subotnik 1991, 33). And it is this notion that music’s formal, or

autonomous, aspects must be understood in dialectical relation to its socio-historical

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context, that is potentially fruitful (Adorno 1997, 215). In other words, we should

not be choosing between readings of music as either autonomous abstractions or

socio-historically bounded, when both viewpoints might be better viewed as

polarised, yet, inseparable parts of a cyclical, historical process.

Steadfast individuality in all modern music is an illusion in Adorno’s theory

because once musical content that begins as the subjective voice of emotion becomes

formalised through repetition, it begins to function as a device. Hence it takes on an

objective character through our collective understanding of it as a formal property

and inevitably loses its individuality. The ‘freedom of play’ that an artist thinks she

has when working within set conventions is seen in this light as merely temporary

because she is inevitably contributing to the creation of new formal parameters.

Extending this idea to other forms of music, he says:

All forms of music . . . are sedimented contents. In them survives what is otherwiseforgotten and is no longer capable of speaking directly. What once sought refuge in formsubsists anonymously in form’s persistence. (Adorno 2006, 37)

Conversely, all musical content that strives to be subjective (through exposing itself

against the ‘backdrop’ of a musical form) inevitably ossifies into an objective musical

form itself, a process referred to as ‘sedimentation’ (see above). Once this process is

repeated to the point of exhaustion, there is no alternative but for a new musical

syntax to emerge. Note that Brown’s argument reflects Adorno’s comments (this is

not accidental, as Brown has studied Adorno extensively). Formalisation is present

in even the most jarring and unusual avant-garde musical examples. Similarity of

some kind must always exist for difference to be perceived. For this reason, although

the process of academisation seems to have accelerated the formalisation of jazz, it is

naıve to assume that such reification was foreign to jazz prior to its academic

admission.

Yet, it is relatively easy to fall prey to this misconception, since jazz’s

improvisational nature has sometimes led scholars who fear its codification to

overlook the necessary relation that obtains between spontaneity and reification and

consistently describe the music as overwhelmingly subjective. For example, Bruce

Johnson (2002) states that ‘relative to art music, jazz is unprotected by the distinction

between quotidian noise and music, a distinction preserved in the art-music score

and central to the aesthetics of autonomy’. He goes on to describe jazz as being ‘at

odds with authorized musical aesthetics [owing to its] tendency away from accepted

forms of regulation, control and containment’ (105). By contrast, we are told that

‘the art music score, with its aura of sacral inviolability, constrains democratic

interventions and reinterpretations’ (107).Several authors other than those associated with the critical school of jazz, notably

philosopher Theodore Gracyk and music education philosopher David Elliott, have

advanced the notion that theories (such as Adorno’s) that rely on Western concepts of

the aesthetic are entirely inappropriate frameworks for discussing or analysing jazz.

Their reasoning is that jazz is best understood as praxis rather than art object. Gracyk

(1992) argues, for example, that the traditional Western aesthetic view (adopted by

Adorno in his criticism of jazz) considers performance ‘as a token of some further

work, with the work itself the locus of value’ (537). He cites Miles Davis’ 1959 seminal

album Kind of Blue as an example of music that defies such a definition (533). There

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was only one complete run-through for each cut on the album, and the musicians were

not aware of the themes on which they were to improvise before Davis brought his

sketches into the studio. Elliott would agree with this assessment. He has referred to

jazz as ‘African based music’ in which ‘gratification tends to be immediate’ and he

accuses the Western European tradition of evaluating jazz only on the basis of its

‘embodied meaning’ and ‘syntactic possibilities’, as opposed to what he calls its

‘processual meaning’ (Elliott 1983, 193�4).

Although Elliott, Gracyk and Johnson are all correct in claiming that jazz

pedagogy and analysis have tended to focus on structural aspects, there are dangers

in taking the other extreme view. Failure to account for the dialectical relationship

that improvised jazz negotiates between the ‘European’ pole of art object and the

‘African’ pole of social practice (for lack of better terminology) amounts to what

Brown (1999, 238) calls a reversion to primitivism. Such a view renders structural

approaches to jazz improvisation futile, and does not really explain how the process

actually works as praxis, that is, by formalising (or commodifying) the musical

objects of previous musicians to act as ‘ground’ for the current ‘figures’ of an

improvisation. In using the term ‘commodity’, I am referring to both the manner in

which jazz musicians appropriate each others’ ideas as objects (in this sense, there is

some truth to Adorno’s charge that jazz’s exchange value permeates ‘the work

process itself ’), as well as the way in which musical protestations eventually ossify

into ‘style’ categories through repetition and acceptance.

Overstating the case for the subjective, processual aspects of jazz promotes a

dichotomous view in which jazz is pitted against the purportedly closed, objective

realm of European art music. This false dichotomy ignores the historical process

through which subjective content sediments into objective form. A naıve reading of

the comments of Johnson, Gracyk, and Elliott would conclude that European art

music is frozen and universally objectified, while jazz is like a living subject. Such a

view fails to recognise that both genres are subject to the same historical forces and

that jazz, being improvisation based, simply moves through phases of reification and

rebirth at an accelerated pace, leaving the immediate impression that it is exclusively

located at the subjective pole of the dialectic. A brief look at the historical record will

suffice to show that this view of jazz is lacking.

To begin with, the argument that Miles Davis’ improvisational experiments on

Kind of Blue resist categorisation as art objects can be recast dialectically. Davis, in

this light, was abandoning stultified musical forms that would no longer allow for

even the illusion of subjectivity. Lhamon writes that:

. . . with Kind of Blue (1959), Davis in one blow consolidated avant-garde dissatisfactionwith the elements of song form, which were still vestigial after bebop’s assault on them,and he popularized alternative structures. Instead of prescribed chord changes atprescribed intervals, Kind of Blue used modal structures. (Lhamon 1997, 55)

Beyond altering the function of harmonic accompaniment by emphasising modality

rather than tonality (unlike in western art-music theory, the term ‘modal’ in jazz

theory refers to a framework for improvisation that employs a small number of

chords that seldom change and are derived from one or two modes) Davis developed

a personalised approach to improvisation around 1960 that emphasised musical

implication rather than statement (Heckman 1997, 121). These events were a direct

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response to the extreme development of the improvisational vocabulary of bebop, the

language of post 1945 ‘modern jazz’ that had, in Davis’ mind, reached the point of

saturation and culminated in a loss of subjective meaning. Brown puts the case

succinctly in criticizing Robert Walser’s view of Davis. Walser in effect adopts an

essentialist position by attaching critical social meaning to Davis’ ‘consistent and

deliberate use of risky techniques’. Brown observes, however, that ‘nothing is risked

unless the officially despised conventional values still have some stake in the case’(Brown 1999, 240). And how did bebop become so highly conventionalised? Martin

(2002) describes how Charlie Parker, an undisputed innovator in the world of

modern jazz, created myriad musical fragments of syntax that were taken up by

others. Thus Parker was ‘contributing immensely to the codification of bebop as a

musical language’ (148).

Thus the seminal figures of jazz were acutely aware of the stultified language that

they were reacting to in each case, and their reactions were, one could even argue,

historically forced. For example, Mackey (1995) cites Howard McGhee, another

modern jazz virtuoso, as saying, ‘ . . . [W]e can’t do no more than what’s been done

with it, we gotta do somethin’ else. We gotta do some other kind of thing’. He adds

that pianist Thelonius Monk, another of the founders of bebop, had the same

frustrations with codified improvisational vocabulary and reacted by designing music

that would ‘use notes differently’ (16).

But perhaps no subgenre of jazz is more closely associated with subjectivity thanthe free jazz of the 1960s, or ‘The New Thing’, as it was dubbed by founder Ornette

Coleman. Coleman’s seminal album, Free Jazz (1960), significantly heralded the

movement, which abandoned not only tonality but other traditional organisational

principles, as well as flouting accepted notions of timbre. The movement was largely

associated with social critique and the largest migration of African-American jazz

musicians from the South to northern American cities that had occurred up to that

time. This music was informed by, among other things, ‘decolonization, the black

power movement, the counter-culture, and antiwar movement of the Vietnam Era’

(Washington 2004, 31). In addition, the structural innovations introduced into it

were intended to ‘fight for freedom, not merely from staid musical conventions but

also against political injustice’ (31). And although some associated this approach

with the European avant-garde, the improvisational syntax created for The New

Thing was in many ways ‘an attempt to subvert Western European aesthetic

expectations’ (33).

Yet, Salim Washington argues that The New Thing was simply the latest phase of

what he calls jazz’s ‘perpetual avant-garde’ nature. He charges that the histories of allavant-garde movements in jazz have been misrepresented as permanent ‘fringe’

elements rather than attitudes that condone a ‘continuous search for expansion of

the formal parameters available for artistic expression’ (2004, 28). Washington

succinctly explains how rapidly ‘new’ musical statements have become ossified into

formal conventions throughout jazz’s young history by pointing out that the free jazz

of the 1960s was considered a more virulent strain of protest music simply because of

shifting musical expectations. The chromaticism and angularity that resulted in what

Gracyk (1992) calls ‘the antithesis of entertainment’ had, by 1960, become the

vernacular language of jazz. This caused many to overlook the fact that ‘at the time

of its emergence, ‘‘The New Thing’’ was simply a continuation of the perpetual

avant-garde tradition of the music and was no more self-consciously revolutionary

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than the bebop of the ‘‘modern music’’ movement’ (Washington 2004, 33). Because

audiences and historians often fail to perceive this perpetual avant-garde quality of

jazz, they likewise fail to perceive the connections between categories such as bebop

and ‘The New Thing’, and instead compartmentalise them according to perceived

‘style’ differences. According to Washington, the result is that avant-garde becomes

‘reified as a style’ and its processual aspects go unnoticed (28).To clarify this idea, it is necessary to examine more closely the central act of jazz

performance that we are discussing � improvisation � in order to demonstrate that it

tends to take on a critical role in reaction to its own commodification. The effective

jazz improviser is aware of the continuous tension between content and form, as well

as the need to balance the effects of improvisational statements which are continually

ossifying into formal conventions. Because jazz performance is based on principles of

alteration and quotation, the improviser who struggles to communicate expressive

content against a backdrop of formal parameters (not to mention a backdrop of

historical performances, including her own, against which she and others may

evaluate new musical statements) must instinctively understand the dialectical

process involved in a way that casual listeners (and perhaps many scholars) likely

do not. In jazz, the repetition of patterns or short musical ideas (known as ‘riffs’)

quickly removes them from the sphere of the subjective by making them available for

appropriation as formal objects. This is in fact the primary way that jazz musicians

learn their art. Prouty notes that ‘the language of improvisation is gleaned from pre-

existing sources, particularly recordings of major jazz artists’ (Prouty 2002, 182).Experienced improvisers react to these developments by attempting to imbue

each successive performance with new expressive content, which eventually

necessitates altering the structural parameters of the form, as Berliner (1994) has

noted. This view of the process negates the dualism between the evolutionary and

revolutionary views of jazz history because it essentially says that both views are

partly correct. While the ‘Great Men’ narrative has focused on the way that key

figures, such as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, managed to spearhead the creation

of new styles, a dialectical model implies that their accomplishments can only be

understood in relation to the hundreds of musicians who pushed the improvisational

vocabulary to the point of subjective exhaustion in the first place.

There is an additional factor, however, that differentiates jazz performance

aesthetics from traditional European art-music aesthetics and that is the element of

interaction. Berliner (1994) states, ‘[I]mprovisation involves reworking precomposed

material and designs in relation to unanticipated ideas conceived, shaped, and

transformed under the special conditions of performance, thereby adding uniquefeatures to every creation’ (241). The ‘special conditions’ to which he refers are the

conditions of group interaction. Ingrid Monson (1996) has studied the interactive

aspects of jazz improvisation by focusing on the complex improvisational interplay

within the rhythm section (those instruments who generally act in a supporting role

with regard to a soloist) of a jazz ensemble. The rhythmic ‘feel’ or ‘groove’,

established by the rhythm section through its constant interaction, acts as a

framework that is dynamically related to anything then improvised by the soloist.

Then soloist and rhythm section will often add complementary layers of what

Monson calls ‘interactional texts’ (189). Not only does such a collective process resist

the category of ‘composition’ in the traditional sense but, theoretically, a constantly

shifting context should act as a buffer to prevent the stultifying of musical

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statements, if heard as parts of a whole. Logically, the less interactive the ensemble,

the more likely that musical codification is occurring more quickly.

So there are at least several complex dialectical processes that occur during jazz

improvisation: (1) the tendency towards spontaneity that is simultaneously informedby the need to relate to some formal structural parameters, (2) the tendency of

improvised statements to be expressive, yet, reference formal conventions and

(eventually) transform themselves into new conventions and (3) the negotiation

between individual and collective goals during group interaction. The praxis of

improvisation is thus predicated on an ongoing relationship between action and art

object, in contrast to the oversimplified praxial reading that most so-called critical

theory of jazz scholars have advanced. Improvisations themselves are not best

perceived as art objects (recordings are another matter); however, the musicalstatements appropriated for the task � the crystallised musical fragments with which

improvisers negotiate, can be viewed as such. This helps to explain the history of the

emergence of various styles while sidestepping the evolution/revolution debate.

Martin (2002, 152) summarises the dialectical nature of jazz in one sentence: ‘It is

precisely in reconciling the tension between innovation and tradition, spontaneity

and organization, that players work to achieve that integration of the individual and

the collective which is at the heart of the jazz aesthetic’.

To summarise, the argument that codification can be offset by an entirelycontextual instructional approach that considers improvisation as praxis rather than

product is untenable because (1) formal education always involves a degree of

abstraction from an original context, and, more importantly, (2) improvisation as

praxis is inconceivable without some musical product to function as backdrop, even

prior to the academisation process. To believe otherwise is to ignore the perpetual

cycle of reification that must necessarily accompany any ‘perpetual avant-garde’. As

the above passages have attempted to demonstrate, the ongoing history of jazz as a

dynamic music continues to depend on such formalisation.

5. Some practical implications

To return the reader from the brink of theoretical exhaustion, I offer some tentative

examples of how a dialectical approach predicated on maintaining a balance between

the subjective (freedom-oriented) and objective (discipline-oriented) aspects of

improvisation might inform instruction at the post-secondary level. First, as I

hope will by now be clear, the formalisation process through which improvisationalvocabulary is codified cannot be fought against by suggesting that students simply

‘do their own thing’ when improvising because formalisation is merely an

acceleration of the process of reification which is an inevitable part of musical

creation. On one hand, no intelligible musical statements can be made without

recourse to established conventions � established with respect to one or more musical

styles and/or emerging from within the spontaneous performance itself. On the other

hand, formal education accelerates this process and tends to be biased towards the

abstract side of the equation, and abstractions (particularly in the context ofprescriptive instructional methods) tend to give the erroneous impression that jazz

improvisation is a ‘closed’ activity. I suggest that the best solution involves using the

formal teaching process itself to unveil the very codification of improvisational

language that formal education accelerates, so that students become overtly aware of

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the complex relationship between musical form and content as they struggle with

learning to improvise.

An alternative suggestion, offered by two of the participants in my (above-

mentioned) study, is to organise improvisation classes in such a way that students are

forced to learn all repertoire aurally and then abstract their own information about

which note and rhythm choices are most appropriate for a given harmonic andinteractional context. Harmonic templates, chord�scale relationships, and similar

‘rules’ are then arrived at through trial and error as students retrace the historical

development of various styles and, hopefully, come to understand theoretical

abstractions as convenient superimpositions that grew out of concrete practices

rather than the converse.

Beyond this suggestion (which has been successfully applied over a number of

years, according to the study participants who shared it with me), there are other steps

that an educator may take to draw attention to the ongoing process of codification

and help to ensure that the tools of improvisation are not perceived as permanently

fixed objects. For example, the instructor can take time to portray forms such as the 12

bar blues, the blues scale, or the 32 bar song form as dynamic, historically changing

phenomena. This idea of a ‘fractured’ music history can be fruitfully applied to

contextualise not only some of the styles in which students are expected to improvise,

but also many harmonic and structural forms. Burnham (1995) notes, for instance,

that our contemporary understanding of chords as occupying places on a grid, such asin the familiar I-IV-V-I progression, was uncommon prior to the development of

Riemann’s theory of functional harmony. The difference between hearing chords as

accompanying harmonies and hearing chords as functions may seem merely semantic,

but it is not. With the advent of Riemann’s theory the progression of tonic,

subdominant, dominant, tonic took on the quality of a ‘quasi-abstract category’

because ‘all surface harmonic entities either fulfil one of these functions directly or act

as variants of one of them’ (Burnham, 1995, 82�3). Once the idea of a T-S-D-T grid is

in place, it is natural for many of us to want to superimpose the concept on all music

that has chords, including music that is partially or entirely modal and tonal music

that was not conceived under the rubric of functional harmony.

Much music was and can be created without recourse to the harmonic function

grid. This should be noted particularly when acquainting students with older jazz

and blues tunes. Although a folk or blues tune in the key of A may contain the chords

A, D and E, there is no reason to assume that they fulfil the same function as those in

Mozart’s Sonata Alla Turca. The harmonic structure of the blues was historically

devoid of such functionality. In fact, ‘the chords . . . were originally almost incidentalto the melodic line � whatever chords the singer could play’ (Gridley 2003, 31). The

now familiar I-IV-I-V-IV-I framework developed historically out of what were

originally purely practical harmonic choices.

It follows that when introducing frameworks for improvisation, teachers should

endeavour not to imply that tunes lacking ‘logical’ chord progressions (in terms of

the functional harmony we so often internalise) are somehow inferior. This is

because they may well have been intended as chord successions. There is also the

issue of Roman numerals as convenience rather than for any imputed functionality.

The convention of using Roman numerals to designate chords has extended far

beyond its traditional use in ‘common practice’ music, as a quick glance at many jazz

harmony books or popular music analyses will show. Tomassetti (2003) uses the

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following scheme, which has become widespread if not universal, to show the

harmonic form of the standard 12 bar blues:

phrase 1) I7 I7 I7 I7 phrase 2) IV7 IV7 I7 I7 phrase 3) V7 IV7 I7 I7

The advantage of using Roman numerals, as jazz educators will attest, is that the model

can be quickly transferred to all 12 keys. Yet, in the case of the blues, Roman numeralsdo not indicate function as in ‘common practice’ music. For example, ‘dominant’

sevenths need not resolve, because chords with added lowered sevenths do not function

as true dominants in the blues. Nor should the V-IV root motion in the third phrase be

considered weak. It is simply a well-acknowledged part of the tradition, as all jazz

musicians and jazz educators are aware. However, this is an obvious example of a case

where students may mistakenly interpret Roman numerals, adopted for practical

reasons, as functional if care is not taken to explain the difference.

The scale normally taught alongside this harmonic form also presents a potential

problem for students who have only learned it through formal means. The ‘blue

notes’ of the seven tone scale C Eb F F# G Bb C (shown here in bold type) have for

convenience only come to be designated as a lowered third, a raised fourth (or flatted

fifth) and a lowered seventh. Historically, blues intonation is based on microtonal

pitch manipulations, part of a style of African-American singing eventually adapted

to solo wind instruments, whereby pitches that lie between those of the Western

chromatic scale were often performed for expressive effect. This involves any number

of pitch gradations that lie, typically, between the third and lowered third and

between the seventh and lowered seventh. However, other pitches, such as the fifth,are subject to this treatment. The blues scale, with its apparently fixed ‘blue notes’, is

therefore simply a crystallisation of some of the more common performance

practices associated with the blues. Berliner calls it a probable ‘construction of

more recent jazz pedagogy’, which, in turn, reflects the terminology of analytical

writing about jazz’ (Berliner 1994, 790, fn. 25).

It would be unnecessarily time consuming to question the transcendent

objectivity of all of the possible forms and genres that might be encountered in an

improvisatory situation. Jazz educators and teachers of improvisation should make

strategic choices, knowing that once one or two examples are discussed in depth,

students will hopefully get a sense that the dynamic relation between form and

content holds in other musical situations. Historicising the musical forms that

undergraduate students work with in improvisation classes begins simply by

explaining that forms do not generate ‘hard and fast’ rules for all situations, and

that improvisational and compositional forms have grown out of specific socio-

historical practices. Hopefully, students will eventually come to grasp the complexity

of the historical relationship between musical form and content.Another strategy for problematising the assumed stability of the ground against

which improvisation occurs might involve discussing the criteria by which we

generally judge the quality of improvised solos and talking about how these criteria

are culturally and historically contingent. Encouraging dialogues that interrogate the

assumed universality of such values as teleology � the notion that an improvised solo

should seem organic, should have a ‘natural’ progression of intensity along with an

appropriately placed climax � would be applicable in this situation [see, for example,

Ruth Solie’s (1980) work on well-entrenched assumptions about organicism in music

analysis for evidence of how such hidden criteria became well established]. Of course,

for an improvised solo to sound appropriate in most sub-styles of modern jazz, it will

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have these features, but it is imperative to remember that the criteria for creating a

‘good improvised solo’ are stylistically and historically contingent. Unless educators

help students to understand this, new criteria that apply to new styles will be slow to

develop in the future.

An additional strategy involves exploring and discussing with students the process

by which content sediments into form on a microcosmic level through a series ofexperiential learning exercises involving group improvisation. In this scenario,

students can potentially discover how short, extemporised musical statements that

they ‘create’ can be used as vocabulary in interactive improvisation and transformed

into structural elements for subsequent improvisational frameworks or compositions.

This type of activity can work for either melodic or harmonic improvisation, and is

flexible enough to accommodate a variety of instrumental or vocal situations. The

exercise is based on a small-scale simulation of the long-term effects of interactive

improvising on the development of forms and style characteristics. As already

mentioned, experienced jazz improvisers are intuitively aware of the ongoing process

of commodification that their musical statements undergo, creating what Berliner

(1994, 222) calls a ‘perpetual cycle between improvised and precomposed compo-

nents’. Jazz improvisers react to a constantly shifting harmonic and rhythmic

framework supplied by a rhythm section (comprised of drums, bass and chordal

instruments). The often spontaneous musical statements of the rhythm section serve as

structural parameters for the soloist, who also quotes and reacts to the musical

statements of her colleagues in the immediate performance, and to those of bygoneartists and others whose performances she is aware of. Through her improvisations, she

contributes to the framework being supplied by the rhythm section, which is reacting

to her and consequently shifting the context appropriately (Monson 1999, 52).

The point is that students engage in interactive improvisation sessions over an

extended period of time, calling specific attention to how musical ideas that begin

spontaneously as statements set apart from the underlying rhythmic-harmonic

context can become formalised and can even transform into conventions with

repeated use. And although the concept is derived from interactive jazz improvisa-

tion, a jazz context need not be established. Almost any stylistic framework will

suffice. The goal is to emphasise the way in which improvised musical statements are

conditioned by the structural parameters of form, as well as by the interactive

context of the moment, while contributing to the ongoing development of new forms.

Ideally, some new form should emerge from the sessions that may develop out of a

single idea or may be an aggregate of several ideas. This would necessarily be a long-

term project, requiring multiple improvisation sessions, which may be accompanied

by transcriptions from audio recordings and could be followed up by reflectiveactivities such as group discussion.

Recordings of student improvisational performances could be made, which could

then be listened to, discussed, aurally analysed and/or transcribed. Ideas generated

from improvisation sessions could also be formalised, either by habit or notation,

into compositional material and used to create compositions or designated as the

basis for further improvisational frameworks. Most improvisation pedagogy

approaches are built around the idea of providing parameters for students, and

students are doubtless aware that parameters shape what they ‘say’ musically by

limiting and therefore guiding their choices. But students may not easily perceive the

relation between pre-composed and spontaneous musical material. Encouraging

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them to explore the process through which their own musical statements are

formalised is one possible way of helping them to understand that relation.

In order to situate the outcomes of the exercise in a larger context, the

formalisation that occurs could be compared with a historical example. While

undertaking such an exercise, teachers should be mindful that development, in the

modern aesthetic sense, is not necessary for formalisation. We would do well to heed

Monson’s (1999, 31) concerns about deep-seated modernist bias against ‘riffs’ (short

melodic phrases that do not ‘develop’ but are used repetitively instead), which make

up a good deal of African-American and world popular musics. Both riffs and motifs

(the latter term implies a sense of development) are prone to formalisation, the

former owing to repetition and the latter owing to their roles as structural elements in

the creation of new musical ideas.

There is perhaps no final solution to the paradoxical problem of trying to engender

creativity while simultaneously presenting theoretical frameworks for understanding

that seem closed or permanent. Jazz musicians who are informally trained, highly

motivated, or capable of reaching high levels of artistry are doubtless able to escape the

confines of improvisational rules on their own by developing an intuitive under-

standing of the socially constructed nature of theoretical concepts and learning to

work simultaneously within and against them; however, educators should concern

themselves with helping all students who attempt to improvise to strike this balance. In

this regard, I have been arguing that a dialectical approach to the problem can be quite

useful. Such as approach simply entails drawing attention to both aspects of the

improvisational process: the manner in which musicians struggle to subvert expecta-

tions by creating spontaneous musical statements, and the manner in which these

statements become absorbed into the stock vocabulary and transform into formal

conventions. Indeed, educators can work at unveiling the social origins of patterns and

rules for students even as they introduce such theoretical constructs, which should help

to offset some of the more conservative effects of formal instruction.

Note

1. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 5th Ed., defines reify as: ‘to convert (a concept, etc.)mentally into a thing’.

Notes on contributor

Paul Louth is Assistant Professor of Music Education at Youngstown State University inYoungstown Ohio, USA, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in musiceducation foundations, methods, and research. He is a former high school music teacher andprofessional freelance trombonist whose research interests focus on critical music pedagogy,philosophical issues in music education, and informal music learning.

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