Correspondence and improvisation: An autoethnographic exploration of drumming in nature

Abstract

The author explores the liberatory experience of improvised, woodland drumming as DIY music-making music and DIY learning in nature. A drummer and music education professor, he presents descriptive vignettes on the transformative possibilities of making music amongst trees and by water. The method is autoethnographic, itself a DIY type of doing and recording research. Using Tim Ingold's lens of correspondence, the author suggests that, more than making music merely on trees and on ice, we channel music together with non-human co-musicians. The author draws on research in eco-psychology and eco-literacy to suggest, more than indulgence, being and making music in nature might be foundational to humanity recovering respect for our world and taking seriously how we might continue to live in it. Moreover, this article explores music making as a DIY pedagogical practice, grounded in the depth of listening and engagement with nature.

The Courage to Teach Free Improvisation In and Through a Graduate Music Education Class

“…We like to walk in the woods with no particular destination or goal in mind, beyond spending time there, and we take the opportunity to do so as often as possible, absorbed in the soundscape (Schafer 1969). I have noted elsewhere (Smith 2023) how this "allows me to breathe, expand and relax," and that the woods are "a wonderful place for spontaneous, joyful improvisation with the world" (2).…”