Playing with Failure

Abstract This chapter examines how improvisation within higher popular music education (HPME) could serve as a powerful pedagogical tool to resist the ideological norms imposed by Western art music (WAM) and industrial agendas derived from neoliberal ideology. Central to this discussion is the notion of playing with failure: a reimagining of mistakes as productive moments within a learning journey, fostering the potential for critical engagement and creative autonomy in students. This chapter delineates the pervasive influence of both WAM-based pedagogical approaches and the neoliberal emphasis on employability, which often marginalize alternative epistemologies and limit the space for students’ creative potential. Drawing on critical theory and critical pedagogy, this chapter explores how conceptualizing improvisation as a form of embodied knowledge, an act of becoming, and an opportunity to “play with failure” within HPME could dismantle oppressive educational structures, and thereby has the potential to promote a more inclusive and emancipatory learning environment. Ultimately, this chapter theorizes improvisation as a counter-hegemonic and liberatory praxis that encourages students and educators to cultivate a critical consciousness and a more liberated musical identity, which challenges dominant institutional, ideological, and industrial narratives and seeks to redefine the educational experience within contemporary HPME.