Improvisation Is Not a Toy

Abstract This chapter responds to patterns of superficialized engagement with improvisation that author Ed Sarath has observed in music studies and its ramifications for liberatory discourse. Particularly conspicuous is continued marginalization of seminal Black American Musical contributions in understanding the ethno-epistemological ramifications of improvisatory praxis, including in music studies change discourse. The Black roots of most popular music continues to elude much Popular Music Education research, thus suggesting that a field which one might expect to exemplify liberatory vitality may nonetheless be prone to liberatory lapse. Improvisation, understood more fully, redirects critique into the interior dimensions of the liberatory phenomenon itself. The deeper one interrogates the first, the greater the insights into the second.