Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society

SUNY Series in Integral Theory

by Edward W. Sarath

Jazz, America s original art form, can be a catalyst for creative and spiritual development. With its unique emphasis on improvisation, jazz offers new paradigms for educational and societal change. In this provocative book, musician and educator Edward W. Sarath illuminates how jazz offers a continuum for transformation. Inspired by the long legacy of jazz innovators who have used meditation and related practices to bring the transcendent into their lives and work, Sarath sees a coming shift in consciousness, one essential to positive change. Both theoretical and practical, the book uses the emergent worldview known as Integral Theory to discuss the consciousness at the heart of jazz and the new models and perspectives it offers. On a more personal level, the author provides examples of his own involvement in educational reform. His design of the first curriculum at a mainstream educational institution to incorporate a significant meditation and consciousness studies component grounds a radical new vision."

Genres: Music

488 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2013

Reviews

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just couldn't go there with Sarath. There is good material in here, a lot worth pondering, but the 2x4 bludgeoning dogma of "one spiritual path" for the good of all mankind, and improvisation as the only/best way to attain it, was much too narrow-minded for me. By privileging improvisation over other forms of meditation, art, or living, he marginalizes every other possible path to personal truth and wholeness.