Review of Fischlin, D and Heble, A (eds) (2004) 'The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation and Communities in Dialogue', Middletown (Connecticut): Wesleyan University Press

Abstract

'The Other Side of Nowhere' is an informative and significant collection of scholarly articles on musical improvisatory practices, and the influence such practices have on the socio-cultural and political milieu from which they emerge. The book's title refers to the "alternative sound-world" engendered and articulated in the art or practice of improvisation. It denotes a space that both challenges and creates alternatives to aesthetic and socio-cultural certainty, predictability and orthodoxy, and in doing so generates the potential for other ways of thinking, acting and communicating, including different (and hopefully enhanced) forms of social relationships. Improvisation and improvised music is placed in opposition, and as an alternative to, a socio-cultural and/or musical system that seeks to either absorb or marginalise originality and difference. In a hostile milieu of co-optation and commodification, improvised music presents both a way out, and a critique of, normative and conforming practices and forces. As the editors note, the very fact that improvised music seeks to foster and sustain originality constitutes a "dissonant critique" of wider assimilative socio-cultural forces.