A Jazz-centered Transcultural Approach to Improvisational Studies: An Overview for Music Educators at the Middle School, High School, and University Levels

Abstract

The intent of this treatise is to provide an overview of tools, musical concepts, scales, tonalities, pedagogical perspectives and/or schools of thought that can be used to develop improvisation skills through a transcultural lens by way of: American jazz, music of the African diaspora, the European figured bass system, and Northern Indian classical music. Ideally, secondary students, music education majors, jazz studies majors, and orchestral students in college and universities will be better equipped with tools for improvisation by utilizing a transcultural framework. Furthermore, community music schools and private lesson instructors could be inspired to implement different improvisation techniques into their daily pedagogical routines through the information and sources cited. The main obstacle may be the long-standing traditions of the academy that continue to trickle down to the secondary (i.e., middle school and high school) band, orchestral, vocal, and kindergarten through fifth grade general music classrooms. Pushback and resistance are almost certain as American music education has been and is centered in the European musical and theoretical constructs. Even so, with the following questions in mind, I will explore the necessary concepts that I believe will help achieve a contemporary music education paradigm. What are the historical and theoretical frameworks of these four epistemologies? How can these concepts be implemented to improve and overhaul the current music education model? What are the ramifications of implementing this updated improvisational frontier in music education? How will it create a more culturally rich musical environment in K-12 music classrooms and beyond? Who are some of the prominent improvisation pedagogues and what are the leading schools of thought in the field? Through research and the implementation of these concepts in academic settings, it has been determined that diverse epistemologies do indeed create a more culturally rich music environment within kindergarten through twelfth grade classrooms and the academy. At this treatise's conclusion, the reader will have a broader understanding of improvisation from a transcultural perspective. In this documental overview, the overall distribution of the research presented will not be an equal twenty-five percentage for each of the four culture’s improvisational frameworks, but a comparable extent; jazz will be at the center and the foundational lens through which I ultimately traverse.