This morning, I found an extraordinary video of a gunfight happening just outside of an elementary school in Mexico. The video isn't extraordinary because of the violence (although extreme violence is never easy to watch or hear about); it's extraordinary because of how the teacher responds to the violence. Despite the sound of automatic gunfire erupting just outside the classroom, the teacher maintains her cool and even leads the students in a playful call-and-response song. She is able to improvise in the middle of crisis. After watching this video, I began to wonder: How much of improvisation is spontaneous? How much of it is learned?
A couple years ago, I published an article called "Escaping Embarrassment: Face-Work in the Rap Cipher" in Social Psychology Quarterly. This particular paper is drawn from ethnographic fieldwork of street corner rap ciphers (sessions) in South Central LA. In the paper, I argue that improvisation ("freestyling" in this context) is something that requires a lot of practice. Over time and with lots of training, rappers develop a series of "go-to" rhymes that they use and recycle in creative ways, particularly when they encounter potentially embarrassing moments while freestyling with each other. Although they recycle the same words, phrases, and rhyme schemes, they do so in novel and unique ways. This is the same for jazz musicians, athletes, preachers, soldiers, customer service clerks, and virtually anyone who has ever undergone rigorous training to respond in different kinds of situations. For those interested, here's an old video of Open Mike, Flawliss, and CP freestyling with each other. The rappers in this videos are main characters in my book, "Blowing Up: Rap Dreams in the Hood," which is under contract at the University of Chicago Press.
Improvisation isn't something that just magically appears out of thin air, right? It's something that a person has already encountered in their past. It's something that they have played with, experiment with, and as such, is something that they can use in a moment of need, right?
These days, I'm beginning to second guess some of these ideas. I'm starting to wonder if social scientists (myself included) are blind to stuff that isn't really observable or measurable. Maybe there's also something that we could call "pure improvisation." Maybe there are behaviors and actions that are not so easily summarized as a unique combination of what you've already learned and practiced?
In the case of this video, maybe the teacher and children have had practice responding to gunfire (Sadly, in areas ravaged by drug cartel violence, this might be the case for many). Or, maybe this woman has tapped into something that eludes practical explanation. What do you all think?
A couple years ago, I published an article called "Escaping Embarrassment: Face-Work in the Rap Cipher" in Social Psychology Quarterly. This particular paper is drawn from ethnographic fieldwork of street corner rap ciphers (sessions) in South Central LA. In the paper, I argue that improvisation ("freestyling" in this context) is something that requires a lot of practice. Over time and with lots of training, rappers develop a series of "go-to" rhymes that they use and recycle in creative ways, particularly when they encounter potentially embarrassing moments while freestyling with each other. Although they recycle the same words, phrases, and rhyme schemes, they do so in novel and unique ways. This is the same for jazz musicians, athletes, preachers, soldiers, customer service clerks, and virtually anyone who has ever undergone rigorous training to respond in different kinds of situations. For those interested, here's an old video of Open Mike, Flawliss, and CP freestyling with each other. The rappers in this videos are main characters in my book, "Blowing Up: Rap Dreams in the Hood," which is under contract at the University of Chicago Press.
Improvisation isn't something that just magically appears out of thin air, right? It's something that a person has already encountered in their past. It's something that they have played with, experiment with, and as such, is something that they can use in a moment of need, right?These days, I'm beginning to second guess some of these ideas. I'm starting to wonder if social scientists (myself included) are blind to stuff that isn't really observable or measurable. Maybe there's also something that we could call "pure improvisation." Maybe there are behaviors and actions that are not so easily summarized as a unique combination of what you've already learned and practiced?
In the case of this video, maybe the teacher and children have had practice responding to gunfire (Sadly, in areas ravaged by drug cartel violence, this might be the case for many). Or, maybe this woman has tapped into something that eludes practical explanation. What do you all think?
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