Jazz Style and Improvisation Codes

Every now and then it becomes fashionable to study the processes involved in improvisation or extemporization. Any renewed interest in improvisation, for whatever reason, is usually accompanied by a renewed interest in jazz, for it is within the jazz tradition that improvisation is generally presumed to be most manifest in Western culture. This importance of improvisation to jazz, though generally assumed, is by no means fully accepted. Jazz historian Max Harrison writes: Attempts at a concise-even a coherent-definition of jazz have invariably failed. Initial efforts to separate it from related forms of music resulted in a false primacy of certain aspects such as improvisation, which is neither unique nor essential to jazz . . . (Harrison 1980: 561).