The study of improvisation has been fundamental to ethnomusicology as a discipline, as evidenced by ample scholarship produced by some of the foundational members of the field. As an incisive model through which to explore the corollaries between cultural formation and music-making, improvisation as a social practice highlights the emergent, context-driven manner in which everyday, personal interactions form the basis for cultural affiliations on individual and collective levels. Ethnomusicologists have studied the subject of improvisation as related to: specific musical practices and systems; local, regional, national, and global identity; intercultural and/or comparative analysis; and even as a model for collaborative and ethical research practices. Two seminal volumes—both co-edited by Bruno Nettl—represent the most explicit overview of improvisation studies as it relates to ethnomusicological research (Nettl and Russell 1998, Solis and Nettl 2009); however these were preceded by decades’ worth of scholarship. For example, for studies of particular musical practices, see Touma 1971 (on maqam), Wade 1984 (on Khyāl vocal music of North India), and Farhat 1990 (on Iranian dastgah). For improvisation as it relates to local and national identities, see Shannon 2006 (Syria), and Marcus 2007 (Egypt), and Meki Nzewi’s work on Nigeria dating from the 1970s to present. Regional studies include Hood 1975 (on Southeast Asia), David Locke’s work in West Africa, and Behague 1980 (on Latin America); while Nettl 1974 and Racy 2000 discuss the potential for improvisation as a basis for cross-cultural and/or intercultural analysis. In addition to these works, Paul Berliner (1994) and Ingrid Monson (1996) revolutionized the study of jazz improvisation through the application of ethnomusicological research practices.
More recent scholarship includes work by: Michael Bakan on medical ethnomusicology and autism (2008) and Laudan Nooshin (2015) on Iranian classical music. Muller and Benjamin 2014 and Feld 2012 provide exciting models for the application of improvisatory musical practices to ethnomusicological research and scholarship via collaborative authorship, interarts and multimedia scholarship. Similar work is being done in the emerging field of critical improvisation studies, marked most explicitly by the founding of the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph and the publication of The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue (Fischlin and Heble 2004). The forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, co-edited by George E. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut, catalogs the history and trends in this field, including a recent shift toward transdisciplinary approaches to the study of musical improvisation that in many ways build off precedents set in the aforementioned works and the field of ethnomusicology in general. In 1987 Marcia Herndon foretold these developments, calling for attention to improvisational practices in music as a predictor of social change. In addition to the two-volume reference guide by Oxford University Press, the forthcoming volume, Sound Changes: Improvisation, Social Practice, and Cultural Difference—the latest publication by Duke University Press in partnership with Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Columbia University Center for Jazz Studies—will present new research that directly engages the intersection of ethnomusicology and critical improvisation studies. The editors of this volume express a vision that resonates strongly with the perspectives of the scholars cited here and with the mission of the Special Interest Group for Improvisation, namely that improvisation must be studied in an interdisciplinary fashion “as a multivalent, global social practice found within and across different cultural and historical contexts, different national sites and traditions….[and] as a crucial model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action—for imagining and creating alternative ways of knowing and being known in the world.”