Chapter 3: Radio as Collective Improvisation

Relation

By definition, everything in a complex system is always already in relation to everything else, making it repetitive to cite relation as a key ethic of radiophonic improvisation in a dissertation founded largely on the idea that community radio is a complex system. I believe, though, that it is a productive repetition in that naming it takes relation out of the realm of the taken-for-granted. Examining the relationships within a system like WFHB, which runs every day on a fairly consistent schedule, may often seem a repetitive exercise itself. This does not take away from the richness of the system’s informative relational aspects. In 1997, philosopher Jacques Derrida and composer and improviser Ornette Coleman addressed this exact phenomenon in conversation with one another for French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, later translated into English by Timothy S. Murphy:

JD: I am not an “Ornette Coleman expert,” but if I translate what you are doing into a domain that I know better, that of written language, the unique event that is produced only one time is nevertheless repeated in its very structure. Thus there is a repetition, in the work, that is intrinsic to the initial creation—that which compromises or complicates the concept of improvisation. Repetition is already in improvisation: thus when people want to trap you between improvisation and the pre-written, they are wrong.

OC: Repetition is as natural as the fact that the earth rotates. (2004, 322-323)

Often considered one of the most important figures in the development of free jazz (having used the term in the title of his 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation), Coleman’s approach to improvisation is deeply focused on relationality. Perhaps one of his most distinct contributions to music is the concept of Harmolodics, which he describes as “the use of the physical and mental of one’s own logic made into an expression of sound to bring about the musical sensation of unison executed by a single person or with a group” (1983, 54). The pertinent relationships are many, linking musicians, listeners, logics, affects, and sounds in complicated and dynamic ways.

Harmolodics insists on social-sonic egalitarian participation. Stephen Rush writes that it “respects every single voice in an ensemble, without creating a preference or elevated function for any one instrument… Harmolodics is also the science, one might say, of exploring the basic premise for improvisation: the empowerment of each human voice within the ensemble, or, more broadly, within society” (2017, 3). In addition, Coleman explains that the school of Harmolodics recognizes no dominant aspect between harmony, melody, speed, rhythm, and time (1983). This does not mean that Harmolodic thought values everything equally without regard for thought and quality. Coleman and his compatriots in the Prime Time band and beyond had specific ideas about what sonic maneuvers fit into Harmolodic thought and what did not. Even so, Harmolodics in practice offers a breadth of possibilities for what constitutes such a fit. “I tell everybody, ‘Play all the notes you want,’” says Coleman in conversation with Stephen Rush, “’cause the one note you play that you don’t want stands out for a modulation, and everybody knows that when they hear it. So you’re doing a bonus! When they’re playing what they’re playing, and you’re playing notes that they’re not, you are showing them ways to go they hadn’t thought. And that is so happy then!” (in Rush 2017, 33). Every ensemble member’s ideas, expressed sonically within the logic of the performance situation, are welcome for the ideas they spark for the other ensemble members.

In community radio, musicking works in much this way, programmers leading each other down new routes, sharing knowledge through the combinations of sounds they produce. At WFHB, programmers have a small set of actual sonic requirements and are encouraged to both draw from music housed onsite at the station (CDs, digital files, records, etc.) and to bring music from their own collections to the airwaves. The restrictions are few. Weekday programmers are given a small quota of new music and music by artists scheduled to come to town that they are required to fill each hour but otherwise have significant freedom in their programming. “That’s what makes community radio,” said one of my colleagues, “so many unique and awesome people that have this knowledge base, sharing” (10). Mused another: “Listening to people’s shows, you learn stuff about them… the best parts about people are the things you don’t expect” (Interview 1). In treating musical selections as extensions of the programmers themselves, these participants recognize the individuals within the community radio ensemble and their relationships to one another.

While most of Coleman’s discussions of Harmolodics focus on music, some of his works also depict it as having more expansive uses. In an article from 1996, he describes Harmolodics as “a theoretical method not exclusively applied to music… a noun that can be applied for the use of participating in any form of information [production] equally without erasing or altering the information” (1996, 22). Ultimately, the foundation of Harmolodics is a philosophy of collaborative creation predicated on a very broad sense of what practices and products can emerge from a guiding formation and meaningfully belong in a performance event.

The term riff comes to mind for its borderline contronymic musical and extramusical uses. Legendary jazz trailblazer Jelly Roll Morton, in an account taken by Alan Lomax, explains the riff as “something that gives an orchestra a great background and is the main idea in playing jazz” (1952, 65). Riffs are ideas central to improvisatory practice, whether understood as strictly dictating the parameters of the improvisatory responses or acting as a more abstract foundation. On the other hand, a riff can refer to a distinct interpretation of a set of principles, a creative and improvisatory act based on known situated tenets. Behavioral scientists Maya Rossignac-Milon and Erica Boothby cite the riff as a means for building interpersonal bonds both quickly and deeply:

What makes someone feel like a lifelong friend after just a couple of minutes? People tend to assume it’s similarity—that they are especially likely to hit it off with someone who shares their background or personality traits.

But in our research, we’ve found that many of the strongest bonds come less from existing similarity and more from riffing playfully. In these moments, people create a little world that belongs to them, a process we call “building a shared reality.” Collaborative riffs are surprisingly central to our mental well-being: They’re the glue that binds us together, adds color to our lives and gives us a sense of purpose. (2025, emphasis mine)

Rossignac-Milon and Boothby frame riffing as a style of communication, a rendering of the term that works in considering musical, verbal, and written contact alike. Riffing is low-barrier; it “doesn’t require being naturally funny or witty, just being attentive and embracing spontaneity” (ibid.). It is imaginative and generative; “over time, it creates a feeling of having merged minds and inhabiting a private universe” (ibid.). Riffing in its ideal form is an emergent, egalitarian practice. Harmolodic thought emphasizes the importance of each participant’s agency in maximizing the capacious potentials of riffs and riffing as processes of relation.