Friendship and Anonymity in Collective Free Music Improvisation

Abstract

Researchers interested in the musical practice of free improvisation have historically prioritised studies of improvisatory process at both the individual or group level. In the realm of jazz studies, discussions of group interactivity have long pointed to the role friendship plays in facilitating these processes (Berliner, 1994; Monson, 1997; Jackson, 2012) and recent qualitative studies of group decision making and interaction in jazz have demonstrated that the shared understanding embedded within relationships can help facilitate open environments ideal for free improvisation (Canonne and Aucouturier, 2015; Wilson and Macdonald, 2017). Yet parallel research into group creativity outside the jazz context has put forth an intriguing alternate idea – the notion that anonymity amongst group participants may also lead to openness during the collaborative process (Bryan-Kinns, Healey and Leach, 2007). This thesis unpacks the experiences of four Australian free music practitioners in terms of friendship and anonymity in an attempt to flesh out a spectrum of optimal conditions that might underpin successful free music exchanges. In doing so, it lays open potential areas of future research in terms of delineating how a range of different sorts of relationships might impact improvised group creativity.