Jury Tosh Kobayashi
This piece of writing is an experiment. It is an experiment because it is a proposition to pay attention to an artistic practice that resists definition. It is an experiment because to propose a study of this phenomenon runs the risk of being in line with colonial logics which seek to mark, separate and claim spaces to use for its own agenda. I thus propose paying attention to the art practice, which I am calling free improvisation, with apprehension but also with an understanding that to not notice this practice is to miss a transgressive and important artistic practice that contains a variety of individuals including women, non-binary and queer artists.
I deliberately call this practice free improvisation as opposed to free music or free jazz. I am aware that calling it free improvisation as opposed to free music could suggest that I am referring to the music genre titled ‘free improvisation’, which is associated with European and British sonic practices. I am hesitant to call it free music as using the word ‘music’ in the name might imply that this practice is easily defined as music or that it is mainly a sonic art. I call this practice free improvisation understanding that many of the artists I am referring to refuse or do not care about genre names. Thus, I use free improvisation as a name knowing that I am using a not entirely accurate name to describe a practice that cannot be easily described.
Lastly, I embark on this journey knowing that I am proposing paying attention to a phenomenon that is not coherent. I am not suggesting that free improvisation is a cohesive genre of music or art, or that any of the artists I am thinking of would see themselves as belonging to a unified community. Instead, I propose paying attention to a speculative phenomenon that may or may not be truly real, though I believe it to be. It is my proposition to notice this practice or space because I have noticed that it is a diverse space that includes many diverse bodies including woman, non-binary individuals and queer individuals. I notice this space as a welcomed change to many other artistic practices where such voices often go unheard or unseen.
Who am I and what am I doing?
I started improvising on my instrument when I first began the journey of learning how to play music. When I would improvise, I was not trying to emulate what I heard on records or what I was taught in school or make sounds found in any genre that I knew of at the time. As I learned more about my instrument, what started out as experiments began to formulate into a concrete improvisational practice that I kept to myself because I was unaware that the way I was playing was a legitimate art form. For a long time, I did not know that others played in the way I was experimenting.
I first encountered the term free improvisation during my first year at university. During my time at this university there was an improvisation ensemble offered. I auditioned for the group and was accepted. In the ensemble we encountered many styles of improvisation, but each week we would begin with an improvisation, without any rules, planning or sets of prior expectations. I was told this kind of improvisation was free improvisation and that was the last I heard of it for a while.
Maybe that is a good definition of free improvisation. A sonic practice that is improvised without prior expectations, rules or specific plans. This definition breaks down quickly, as I can set an intention to improvise using a certain variable and yet this improvisation can still be considered free even though I am including a prior expectation into the performance. Here is an example of a type of performance you might encounter. In this audio track I respond to the sound of my room (the fuzz and buzz you hear), with a single note that I try to play in differing ways.
To continue with my story, I transferred to a bigger institution to finish my undergraduate degree in music and soon found that if I wanted to learn improvisation it had to be as an extension of the music taught in the school system. At the time (and generally this is still the case) the only options for traditions of music to study in the academy (at least in the North American context) were what is often referred to as jazz and western classical music. I opted for the so-called classical approach, put my nose down, and forgot any notion of becoming an improviser.
Upon touring the Hartt School of Music as a potential school to attend for a Masters degree, I met a fellow bassist. To my surprise, this bassist was engaging with a form of improvisation that I desired to perform (and practiced when I was sure no one was listening), but had not encountered since my first year of university. It was a relieving and inspiring experience to meet this bassist because for the first time I realized that: 1) There was someone else playing the music I was playing by myself 2) That this type of music was real and legitimate.
Although I chose to go to another institution for my Masters, I kept an eye (or ear) on this bassist’s career. I soon noticed he was not the only one improvising and playing the way I did. In fact, there were a number of musicians engaging with this practice. These musicians had a varied background but they seemed to be playing similar sounds and some of them seemed to know each other and form a community of sorts. I learned that this phenomenon was not a small community. In fact, it was large and was apparently a transnational community of artists who engaged with a form of improvisation that could roughly be called free improvisation.
Later when I started a Master’s degree in musicology, I would search for academic sources on this practice called free improvisation. To my surprise, the body of literature on this practice was very small and often used the term free improvisation to refer to a technique employed by improvisers or as a practice based in the radical music of the 1960s. I did not find literature on the free improvisers I knew and whose careers I had been following along with since I had met that artist despite the fact that many of these musicians I was following had been actively making music and sounds for well over 30 years.
I am starting with my own story not just because it provides evidence (albeit anecdotal evidence) for the existence of free improvisation as an assemblage that might be referred to as genre, but also because the inclusion of my own narrative is first and foremost a gesture towards what I believe is the most significant aspect of free improvisation, the inclusion and privileging of direct and explicit personal narratives into an improvised performance. As I have come to believe, this aspect might be what allows diverse voices to claim this space. Finally, the inclusion of my own personal journey also functions to highlight how elusive free improvisation is as a practice, as it was only by luck and a chance encounter that I was able to notice it in the first place.
Afrological vs Eurological
Afrological and eurological are two terms coined by scholar and artist George Lewis[1] to refer to two distinct approaches to improvisation. These terms do not refer to the race of the bodies who perform the two types of improvised musics rather they mark the way these improvised traditions were developed within their intendent social, cultural and historical legacies. So, when I say that the free improvisers I am noticing and drawing attention to are using an afrological approach to improvisation or are exhibiting characteristics of an afrological approach I am not suggesting a racial characterization of these performers, rather I am commenting on a specific approach and ethos of improvising.
In this second audio example, I again improvise with the sounds of my room. I set up the simple parameter to pull a single string and bow it. In this recording, you can hear my room, my fingers scratching and sliding along the metal ridges of my strings and the faint sound of my breathing. My body and my place (my home to be exact) is just as much a part of my performance as my instrumental playing.
An afrological approach to improvising is one that places importance on personal narratives being imbued into your performance. Lewis highlights phrases such as ‘telling your own story’ or ‘developing your sound’ as characteristics of this approach. Conversely, eurological approaches would be exemplified by trying to get rid of the performer’s personal narrative from the improvisation. An example of this would be attempting to have a critical distance from the improvisation or using chance-based operations as an attempt to not have agency in the outcome of the event.
There is of course a privilege that is being highlighted with these terms. Afrological logics are born out of the traditions of African American musics, individuals whose own histories have been quite literally erased due to the legacies of the slave trade in the Americas. Therefore, the rejection of personal narratives as exemplified by a eurological approach to improvising links itself to a distinct type of privilege where those in power attempt to wilfully forget their stories as opposed to those who imbue their performance with personal stories, stories that have been previously destroyed, stolen, withheld or unacknowledged.
Feministing Free Improvisation
There is very little written academically about the phenomenon of free improvisation. As I mentioned earlier, free improvisation resists definitions and often its artists define as other labels so it should not be a surprise that it is an under-documented artistic practice. What was a surprise, a pleasant surprise, was finding the article titled ‘Feministing Free Improvisation’ written by three feminist musicians and scholars.[2]
This article draws on environmental and feminist theories to think through a way to develop a feminist free improvising practice. Their use of Anna Tsing is extremely poignant as they use her theories of pericapitalism to describe free improvisers in the way I have come to see free improvisers. I want to unpack this further and will do so in the next section.
In the meantime, I would like to discuss the way the authors of the text problematize and liberate the concept of freedom in free improvisation. As I pointed out in the last section the notion of freedom is a distinctly political dimension of improvisatory practices. Afrological and eurological, denote a racialized and historical logic to improvised performances and the article ‘Feministing Free Improvisation’ the authors unpack the gendered logics of the word free.
In this article the authors explain how most academic conceptions of freedom in improvisatory settings are linked to a masculine position. This masculinized position often takes the form of the solitary male romantic artist who freely expresses their genius (generally born out of suffering) through their music. Further, they show how this conception of a free improviser has been constructed by citing entirely western male continental philosophers. Put more plainly, the ‘free’ in free improvisation has often been conceptualized as a masculinized figure, which is simply a construction and does not have to be an inherent truth of the practice free improvisation.
The authors also explore how the space of ‘jazz’ (an often-contested term) has often been an unsafe environment for woman and non-binary musicians. The inclusion of jazz into the discussion, I believe, comes from the link of free jazz to free improvisation. However, as the authors point out, free improvisation does not have to link itself to any genre or mode of contact, the freedom implied in free improvisation can be interpreted as the autonomy for musicians (specifically woman and non-binary musicians) to choose to improvise freely in a way that best represents their own personal experiences.
The authors note that unlike the image of the solitary male improvisers, free improvisers can often be very collaborative. This space of collaboration where every voice matters and is equal can be described as a more welcoming environment for woman and non-binary improvisers. I have witnessed through my digital browsing that this is the case with this newer form of free improvisers I am describing, but of course this would need to be studied more fully to confirm.
In this last audio example, I continue to improvise to the sounds of this room. This time I use a drum mallet (an unconventional technique) to play the strings of the bass. In the recording, you can hear my room, my body rubbing the strings and my literal voice, with gasps, hums and heavy breathing.
The most striking feature of this article is the discussion on what free improvisation offers woman and non-binary performers, which I would also extend to queer performers as well. The authors articulate that free improvisation offers the ability of a personal artistic expression that is not defined by preconceived rules of any genre. Maybe this ability might account for the diversity of individuals being found in the free improvisation community.
Art of paying attention
In ‘Feministing Free Improvisation’ the authors look to Anna Tsing’s work The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruin[3] as an example of how multiple forms of freedom are enacted by the mushroom pickers described in the book. This book is an academic text that unpacks an ethnographic study of matsutake mushroom pickers and the diverse groups of people who pick these mushrooms. The book follows the mushroom and its pickers through various location and various intersecting (but not always intersecting) temporalities. Despite being united over the idea of picking the mushrooms, these pickers come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have a wide variety of reasons for taking part of this transnational community.
The authors of ‘Feministing Free Improvisation’ aptly acknowledge the connection between the way Tsing describes the mushroom pickers’ ways of life to those of the free improvisers. Tsing refers to mushroom picking as pericapitalist, which describes practices that exist outside of but are related to capitalism. I agree with the authors’ connection that free improvisers, like the mushroom pickers, are pericapitalist. Free improvisation is not a commercial music or performance art that can be readily commodified. The performances often happen outside of performance spaces, in basements, under bridges, in a variety of locals.
I would extend the connection to Tsing’s notion of pericapitalism even further though. Pericapitalism is described as being located at sites of salvage, in the book the example would be the forests in which the mushrooms are gathered, prior to them being sold to mushroom buyers. Free improvisation is in a way a form of salvage art making. It is made by artists of differing background, some with formal training and some with not. They come together bringing the sounds from their own personal experiences, sounds that are often salvaged from other genres and placed in new configurations.
A major theme in Tsing’s work is the idea of noticing spaces that survive or emerge despite capitalism. Tsing, for instance, is drawing attention (or noticing) how new assemblages are being formed around picking mushrooms in the wreckage of global climate change. She theorizes that turning towards these instances might help in understanding new modes of multispecies flourishing. These stories she tells are not fixes to climate change, they are not feel-good stories, rather they are open-ended questions that help us think through are current global state of precarity.
I am thinking about capitalist ruin, to quote the title of the book, when I look at the hyper-specialization needed to enter artistic fields. The need for an expensive education, or expensive equipment to enter into the artistic workforce are real problems. Institutions are often the only way for artists to make money, but what are artists to do when they cannot afford to enter these institutions or worse, when their identities are denied or tokenized by the very same institutions?
Free improvisation is not a technocratic fix to such problems. It is a reflection of the instability of artistic institutions and the capitalistic models that drive it. Free improvisers do not need education, they do not need instrument training, they do not need instruments, they do not need to make sound, they do not need locations to perform. Free improvisation is a pericapitalistic space that deserves attention, it is a space to notice.
Tsing stresses that pericapitalist assemblages offer ways to revitalize devastated landscapes and economies. Attuning to such assemblages in the wake of decimated industries, and I am thinking specifically about our current time of transitioning out of lockdown, is imperative. I am calling for an act of noticing, paying attention and listening (both literally and figuratively) to the assemblage which I have dubbed ‘free improvisation’.
Tsing describes a type of listening to such assemblages as similar to listening to polyphony. Polyphony is a word that describes pieces of music that contain multiple melodies, simultaneously occurring in the piece. As a listener, one can choose to listen to the individual melodies or the emergent assemblage of sounds as a whole. I think this metaphor gets to the heart of the type of listening and noticing that is made possible with these types of assemblages.
I cannot conclusively say that the space of free improvisation is filled with a large number of queer and non-binary individuals, but I can say they are present. My lack of evidence is also a point towards the need to take this phenomenon seriously and to use Tsing’s wording, cultivate our arts of paying attention and notice this fascinating assemblage. I am being careful not to use direct examples or names of artists as I am also working to not out individuals or mark and label individuals who wish to remain unmarked. Instead, I am attempting to draw attention to the presence of such individuals in this assemblage and how the facets (the multiple styles of freedom) allow for these individuals to express themselves as equal voices in this space.
To draw on Tsing further, I am calling for a polyphonic listening to the assemblage of free improvisation, or free music or whatever name this practice or those involved in it want to name it. I am calling for a polyphonic listening, where we untangle and listen to the voices and stories of queer, non-binary and female artists who are not listened to even though they should be. To continue with the metaphor, queer, non-binary and female artists have often not been allowed a voice in polyphonic assemblages. Instead they have been forced to accompany the ‘main melody’ or be subsumed by the dominant narrative of the song, or have been completely left out altogether. In free improvisation, these voices have the ability to be heard as individual, autonomous voices, that have equal position in this polyphonic assemblage and I believe that is something worth noticing.
[1] Lewis, George. ‘Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives, Black Music Research Journal, 16:1, 1996, 91-122.
[2] Reardon-Smith, Hannah, Louise Denson and Vanessa Tomlinson, ‘Feministing Free Improvisation’, Tempo, 74:292, 2020, 10-20.
[3] Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
Bibliography
Lewis, George. “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives. Black
Music Research Journal, Vol. 16, No 1 (1996): 91-122.
Reardon-Smith, Hannah, Louise Denson and Vanessa Tomlinson. “Feministing Free Improvisation.” Tempo 74, no. 292 (2020): 10-20.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Jury Tosh Kobayashi is an interdisciplinary artist, improviser and composer. His art focuses on the use of ‘free-materials’ as performative strategies. His work often incorporates sounds, bodies, environment (indoors and outdoors) and sonic responses to visual impetus. Kobayashi was trained as an actor, musician and is also pursuing an academic and creative PhD at the University of Ottawa. His academic work interrogates notions of representation in artistic practices and documenting stories of artists who have often been ignored by the academy. This focus is contextualized by the growing need to engage with the global state of precarity that is often labeled climate change.