The Field of Cultural Production and the Limits of Freedom in Improvisation

Abstract

In this paper I apply Pierre Bourdieu's work on the field of cultural production to understand the limits of freedom in improvisationally-based music practices. While arguing for an awareness of the limitations of Bourdieu's theory, I argue that the strategies of social elevation he points out as so pervasive in cultural practices complicate assumptions of an anti-orthodox essence of "free improvisation." In order to therefore hold on to such a possibility, greater attention needs to be paid to the ways in which audiences are themselves constitutive of musical experiences, and to how this can be best realized by improvising performers, a process I begin by examining the practices of Sun Ra and the Grateful Dead.