What is improvisation in the oral tradition of music?

A new book on traditional Iranian music explores the consequences of an oral tradition of music on the concepts of improvisation, originality and musical freedom. The book also touches on the physicality of making music, challenging our everyday notions of music and music education, which are grounded in the Western literal tradition.

We take it for granted that music can be written down and that the so captured musical essence is representative of the author’s original idea. Even the songs we learn through listening and imitation, such as in kindergarten, are written down in the teacher’s textbook and ascribed to an author. We also understand that the performance of such a piece of music will vary depending on the performer’s interpretation and ascribe this variation to the originality of the performer. However, in musical traditions where musical scores don’t play an important role in passing the music on from one generation to the next, we have to wonder what happens to our notion of originality, or even the very nature of the musical idea. TANI Masato, an ethnomusicologist at Kobe University, comments: “Needless to say, music researchers are aware of the existence of musical scores as a method of research. However, they often fail to appreciate what bias they are subjecting themselves to due to their existence.”

To pull back the curtain, Tani turned to traditional Iranian music. This musical culture is not based on musical scores, but melody types have traditionally been passed down orally. During performance, artists recall these melody types and express them through culturally shared musical clichés in a process that could be described as improvisation. The Kobe University researcher made repeated observational visits to the sites where this form of improvisation is taught.

In his new book “Traditional Iranian music — Orality, physicality and improvisation,” Tani explores the consequences of such an oral musical culture. In that context, improvisation is the internal process of recalling the music heard in the past, and not so much the manipulation of something that already exists. Some cultural perspectives emphasize improvisation as an internal, process-oriented act, while others view it as an external, outcome- or product-oriented phenomenon. “This may lead to the surprising situation where two performances are objectively the same, but the performer can still claim to have never played the same thing twice, or play objectively different things and still say that they were the same,” Tani explains. This contrasts with the concept of musical improvisation in text-based musical cultures, where the variation from the score or the result of the ad-hoc creation process is seen as the product of the performer’s originality. But also in the case of traditional Iranian performances, when these performances are visually represented in the score, they become to be perceived as associated with a specific performer. Tani says, “This means that the modern concepts of author and work depend on the existence of the written musical score.”

There is another aspect that becomes clear through the rethinking of visual aspects of musical scores, which tend to put an emphasis on music as an abstract entity. For instance, the staff notation primarily highlights the pitch and note value of the music. Tani says: “Even when people try to imagine music in the abstract, they are not necessarily contemplating only sound in isolation from other elements. Those who are skilled at the piano will unconsciously handle music within the limitations and merits of the piano and the body that plays it, while those who are more skilled at singing will create music within the limitations of their vocal range, while unconsciously enjoying the benefits of the texture of the voice.” This appreciation of the role of physicality in music challenges us to reconsider what “freedom” means in music making.

Tani’s book thus sheds new light onto music education, from learning and teaching improvisation to the role of the apprenticeship system. “In the future, I would like to turn my attention to something more microscopic and explore how individual creativity can be unleashed through this oral culture, focusing on more specific, individual musicians’ practices,” says the author. But he also has a broader perspective: “While the focus of this book is on musical culture, it offers a methodology that is applicable to other fields dealing with non-Western perspectives and cultural epistemologies. This approach contributes to the field by broadening the scope of analysis beyond Western paradigms, encouraging more reflexive and context-sensitive research in ethnomusicology and beyond.”

This work was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant 22HP6001).

Kobe University is a national university with roots dating back to the Kobe Higher Commercial School founded in 1902. It is now one of Japan’s leading comprehensive research universities with nearly 16,000 students and nearly 1,700 faculty in 10 faculties and schools and 15 graduate schools. Combining the social and natural sciences to cultivate leaders with an interdisciplinary perspective, Kobe University creates knowledge and fosters innovation to address society’s challenges.