The KCB research group "Jazz, Improvised and Popular Music" was established in the 2021–22, and currently has seven members. It is open to all forms of jazz, (non-idiomatic) improvised and popular music with a focus on contemporary perspectives in a performance-oriented context. Two research themes drive the vision of the research group: hybridity and historicity. For hybridity, the central idea is that jazz and related genres, both historical and contemporary, are hybrid in that it freely draws on other musical styles, genres, and periods, both Western and non-Western. This hybridity is both implicitly and explicitly central to jazz, reflected in concert practice, education, and research. For historicity, we foreground the cultural-musical contextualization and demystification of historical figures, repertoire, techniques and stylisms from jazz. This line of research is inherent in jazz, too, where a thorough—and historically accurate—knowledge of tradition is essential to creating a present-day, personal artistic identity.
All ongoing research projects within the research group fall under one or both research themes, either in the interdisciplinary and intercultural combining of influences, techniques and stylisms, or in the analysis and practice-oriented application of historical insights. Consequently, cross-disciplinary work is inherent. Several group members are active in multiple research groups, such as Collective Creation, which makes for a broad-based, dynamic research environment where collaboration is inherent.
The vision of the research group is embedded in the overarching research vision of KCB, in particular in the four generic research lines. All members focus on artistic research processes, particularly in the fields of creation and improvisation, but the necessary attention is given also to broader musical-cultural contextualization. This is done by, depending on the central theme of the research project in question, framing specific sub-aspects in organology, technology, and Brussels, national, and international contexts.
Contact
Matthias Heyman
