There is growing recognition that improvisation is a vital artistic and ontological practice that can promote developments in many areas of musicianship and beyond. Although improvisation is taught and assessed in education institutions throughout the world, pedagogical research on improvisation is disparate, emerging mainly from case-specific accounts of particular musical traditions, for instance, jazz and free improvisation. Furthermore, in certain musical contexts, improvisation is often viewed primarily as a means to an end or as a method to construct musical artifacts.
In contrast, this volume considers improvisation within the field of popular music education not as a "means to an end" but as the opportunity for liberatory praxis. Editors Gareth Dylan Smith and Zack Moir view improvisation and improvisatory thinking within education as means to enhance, challenge, rethink, or disrupt normative pedagogic approaches within popular music education. Improvisation offers liberatory potential through resisting, undermining, and refocusing many of the forces in music education and cultures of music learning that can have dehumanizing effects on learners, teachers, scholars, and practitioners alike.
The editors have curated a unique collection of essays wherein improvisation as liberatory praxis works as an exploratory framework. Together these chapters--written by leading scholars, practitioners, and musicians from around the world--explore ways to consider improvisation and improvisatory thinking within education as means to enhance, challenge, rethink, or disrupt normative pedagogic approaches within and around popular music education.
This edited collection draws together cutting-edge thinking about improvisation as a foundation for action and reflection towards social transformation in and through popular music education. Together these chapters--written by leading scholars, practitioners, and musicians from around the world--view improvisation and improvisatory thinking within education as means to enhance, challenge, rethink, or disrupt normative pedagogic approaches within and around popular music education.
Introduction: Improvisation and Pedagogical Freedom in Popular Music
Education
Gareth Dylan Smith and Zack Moir
Chapter
1. Improvisation and Higher Popular Music Education: Onto-Epistemic
heterogeneity, liberation, and counter hegemonic praxis
Zack Moir
Chapter
2. Playing with Failure: Improvisation as Resistance to
Institutional, Ideological, and Industrial Norms in Higher Popular Music
Education
Robert S. McLaughlin
Chapter
3. Freedom's more than "just another word for nothing left to lose":
New musical virtuosities, healthy musical identities, and teaching
improvisation
Raymond MacDonald
Chapter
4. Improvisation as Liberatory Praxis
Frank Abrahams
Chapter
5. An Unexpected Journey: The Art of Teaching as Improvisation in
High School Choir
Austina Lee
Chapter
6. Percussive, Prosaic, Punkademic Praxis and Popular Music
Education
Gareth Dylan Smith
Chapter
7. Improvised Teaching: Popular Music, Methodolatry, and
Consciousness
David Knapp
Chapter
8. Reflecting on Carnivalesque Improvisation as Anti-Racist Public
Pedagogy: The Case of The Rumba Madre
David Diéguez
Chapter
9. The Ethics of Improvisation Through the World Music Pedagogy
Approach
William J. Coppola and Patricia Shehan Campbell
Chapter
10. Create and Connect: Improvisation as a Collaborative Learning
Experience
Heloisa Feichas and Sean Gregory
Chapter
11. "The Happiness is Better When It's Shared": Reflecting on and
Contextualizing the York College Community Jam Session
Tom Zlabinger
Chapter
12. "You were only waiting for this moment to arise": Dialoguing on
the possibilities of improvisation pedagogy for a liberatory music education
Rolf Martin Snustad and David Lines
Chapter
13. Improvisation is Not a Toy: Liberating from Liberation Itself
Ed Sarath
Index
Gareth Dylan Smith is Assistant Professor of Music, Music Education at Boston University. His books include A Philosophy of Playing Drum Kit, I Drum, Therefore I Am, and Authentic Drum Kit Pedagogy. Smith is a drummer and released his duets album, Permission Granted, in 2024, followed by Pathétique with pianist Austina Lee in 2025. His research interests include drumming, punk/DIY/DIWO, and eudaimonia/hedonia. Smith is founding co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Education, past president of the Association for Popular Music Education, and founding co-editor of the book series, Contemporary Music Making and Learning.
Zack Moir is Professor of Learning and Teaching in Music at Edinburgh Napier University. His research interests are in higher popular music education, social justice, and composition/improvisation pedagogies. Moir edited The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Education, The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education,
and Action Based Approaches in Popular Music Education. He is also an active composer/musician, writing for saxophone and tape, and solo cello, and creating reactive generative sound art installations for the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
