Conducted Improvisation (Blogpost Revisited)

Adorno's critique of Jazz leads us to believe that even improvisation is derivative and predictable because of the social standard for "good improvisation" that sticks to chord progressions and musical maneuvers that are pleasing to the ear and musically coherent.

Admittedly tooting my own horn here, I taught a DeCal last year that aimed to teach musicians to improvise in a large group. At varying skill levels, the performance required some direction, so I conducted, also improvising.The music itself was not necessarily typical, but as spontaneous and strange as it was, the music moves made by each player were taught, codified, and easily reproducible.

Here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av6WGPpOHrE&list=PLoKM6QT3EquNh3cvwQFltd_idPZBTHgKR&index=4

Improvised Recital

Worth mentioning: In no way was any of what I write here intentional in my conception of the class or this concert. Here I am projecting society as a metaphor onto the video to illustrate an understanding of how Adorno's concept of the Culture Industry works, none of which was clear to me until reading his work this year. 

To abstract this video in relation to Adorno's theory of the culture industry, we could call these taught musical moves "acceptable behaviors," and think of the key, tempo, chord progression, and movement of the song as the "culture" of the song. No, the improvisers are not reading from a pre-written score, nor were they to ever explicitly told what to do. In the class, however, they were taught "acceptable behaviors" that would make their improvisation (individual or cohesive) sound good. 

Part of sounding good in improvised music is agreement. As an improvising conductor, I give as much as I take in the musical conversation with regard to cues and the progression of the piece in which each instance organically follows from the moment before. In other words, not every note is spontaneously or randomly  produced, but informed by agreements about what the music was doing, is doing, and will do.  

Now agreement is key to harmony, but cultural manipulators can take advantage of a certain society's tendency to agree. Skilled improvisers know how to have a musical conversation that features harmonious disagreement. Rhythmic and tonal dissonance becomes its own language here. As cohesive and beautiful as some of the more harmonious, musical parts had been, the fast paced and very fun nature of culture can have you and 40 other people first playing music, then making animal noises, and finally howling on stage—as if to ask, "where is my instrument and why can I no longer participate effectively in the musical discourse?" 

What I am alluding to here is authentic freedom of expression, which is perhaps the most important factor in improvisation of any kind, especially improvised speech. If all that existed in this performance was the limited number of safe moves, the music would go nowhere. It would not progress. In fact, sometimes a "mistake" was so interesting that the rest of us followed and incorporated it as a theme. Was this person who made a wrong move also conducting? Absolutely. And we all took his cues. Good improvisers listen to anyone who makes a distinct move—they choose who to follow. In another segment of this show, we invited a random member of the audience to conduct. Nobody in the room had conducting experience, and yet anyone could have. 

Would Adorno think there is authentic improvisation here? Maybe some. There were many adept musicians in the class capable of making unique musical statements that deviated from the norms and "safe moves." Others were forming a vocabulary and knowledge of music, but hadn't quite hit stride in terms of improvisation. 

Democracy in improvisation is not a new concept. John Zorn's "Cobra" is collectively conducted with a set of gestures and notecards. Musicians even vote on what moves they will all make. The music is truly avant-garde and allows for free expression.

Here's a video: Cobra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp-oZbmsQVw