Improvisation as Liberatory Praxis in Popular Music Education

Gareth Dylan Smith is Assistant Professor of Music, Music Education at Boston University. His books include A Philosophy of Playing Drum Kit, I Drum, Therefore I Am, and Authentic Drum Kit Pedagogy. Smith is a drummer and released his duets album, Permission Granted, in 2024, followed by Pathétique with pianist Austina Lee in 2025. His research interests include drumming, punk/DIY/DIWO, and eudaimonia/hedonia. Smith is founding co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Education, past president of the Association for Popular Music Education, and founding co-editor of the book series, Contemporary Music Making and Learning.

Zack Moir is Professor of Learning and Teaching in Music at Edinburgh Napier University. His research interests are in higher popular music education, social justice, and composition/improvisation pedagogies. Moir edited The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Education, The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education, and Action Based Approaches in Popular Music Education. He is also an active composer/musician, writing for saxophone and tape, and solo cello, and creating reactive generative sound art installations for the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

Introduction: Improvisation and Pedagogical Freedom in Popular Music Education
Gareth Dylan Smith and Zack Moir

Chapter 1. Improvisation and Higher Popular Music Education: Onto-Epistemic heterogeneity, liberation, and counter hegemonic praxis
Zack Moir

Chapter 2. Playing with Failure: Improvisation as Resistance to Institutional, Ideological, and Industrial Norms in Higher Popular Music Education
Robert S. McLaughlin

Chapter 3. Freedom's more than "just another word for nothing left to lose": New musical virtuosities, healthy musical identities, and teaching improvisation
Raymond MacDonald

Chapter 4. Improvisation as Liberatory Praxis
Frank Abrahams

Chapter 5. An Unexpected Journey: The Art of Teaching as Improvisation in High School Choir
Austina Lee

Chapter 6. Percussive, Prosaic, Punkademic Praxis and Popular Music Education
Gareth Dylan Smith

Chapter 7. Improvised Teaching: Popular Music, Methodolatry, and Consciousness
David Knapp

Chapter 8. Reflecting on Carnivalesque Improvisation as Anti-Racist Public Pedagogy: The Case of The Rumba Madre
David Diéguez

Chapter 9. The Ethics of Improvisation Through the World Music Pedagogy Approach
William J. Coppola and Patricia Shehan Campbell

Chapter 10. Create and Connect: Improvisation as a Collaborative Learning Experience
Heloisa Feichas and Sean Gregory

Chapter 11. "The Happiness is Better When It's Shared": Reflecting on and Contextualizing the York College Community Jam Session
Tom Zlabinger

Chapter 12. "You were only waiting for this moment to arise": Dialoguing on the possibilities of improvisation pedagogy for a liberatory music education
Rolf Martin Snustad and David Lines

Chapter 13. Improvisation is Not a Toy: Liberating from Liberation Itself
Ed Sarath

Index