Creativity and Culture. International Perspectives

International Perspectives. Creativity is a pan-human phenomenon, and yet it is differently defined and demonstrated from one culture to the next. From Germany to Japan, and from Canada to Kenya, references to creativity are frequently accompanied by descriptions of creative people and processes as “original," “imaginative," “curious," “flexible," “open-minded," and “intelligent" (Campbell, 1991; Amabile, 1988; Torrance, 1988). Creativity spans a spectrum of cultural allowances, from a reinterpretation of tradition to an invention that completely breaks with tradition. As well, a creative product, be it a new poem, a painting, or a piece of music, does not emerge out of “thin air," disconnected from all that came before. It operates within a set of cultural understandings, or “rules."

Whether at the meta- or micro-level, creativity is bound to culture. In music, there are broad regional distinctions of approach to creativity, such as the preference by sub-Saharan African cultures to create collectively in groups as opposed to adhering to Western ideals of individualist creativity. A collectivist approach is apparent across the African diaspora, where, for example, co-creative musical productions in the form of spontaneously expressed improvisation is shared and supported by all members of a musical group—be it African American-inspired jazz, Afro-Brazilian samba, or Afro- Cuban salsa. The individualist composer, by contrast, is the honored one in Western art music, where European and Euro-American works for orchestra, opera, and chamber music groups are attributed to a sole creator.

There are also discrete facets that influence creative processes and products, such that local culture, and even the model of a particular artist, can significantly impact a newly emergent work. Consider, for example, “schools,” styles, and movements such as Claude Monet’s wide-scale influence on the development of decades of French Impressionist paintings, the contributions of Langston Hughes in the intensely creative time of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and the impact of the Beatles on the development of guitar bands in the UK and US in the second half of the 20th century. The artistic styles were sparked by creative forces that led to the development of cultures all their own, in which shared beliefs and values inspired a particular expressive way.

Perspectives on the act of musical composition appeal to an interdisciplinary mix of scholars inside and outside the field of music and are held also by the composers themselves (and by performing musicians and those who are responsible for teaching them, mentoring them, and inspiring them). These perspectives may be emic, that is, coming from musicians themselves, or etic, arising from others who are intrigued with various manifestations of human creativity but are not themselves engaged in the compositional process. Taken together, the various views are frames of mind for understanding the musically creative process.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives. The process of defining and conceptualizing creativity, exploring and experimenting with it, theorizing and modeling it, and assessing and evaluating it has been an interdisciplinary one (Wallas, 1926). From the musically distant social sciences, especially psychology (Glaveanu, 2010; Sternberg, 1985) and sociology (Weiner, 2000), has come an external yet thoroughly provocative set of empirical studies (MacDonald, Byrne, & Carlton, 2006; Goncy & Waehler, 2006), many of which have led to an in- tellectualization of artistic creativity as a manifestation of the human propensity for original expressions to be steered by the rules of a given cultural system. Based upon observations, interviews, score study, and deliberation, theories have arisen that thoughtfully underscore the critical components of cultural beliefs and behaviors as core to the compositional process, as well as the processes of improvisation and interpretation (Berliner, 1994; Hill, 2018).

Within the field of music alone, composers have written of the process (Craft, 2006), as have musicologists (Bent, 1984; Blackburn, 1987) and ethnomusicologists (Nettl, 1974, 1998). In cracking the mysteries of the compositional process, research by Garrido, Bernard, and Davidson (2013) revealed that composers tend toward autonomy, im- pulsivity, and cognitive originality, even as they are tuned to the cultural norms of the musical works they invent. Composers seek to craft compositions as sounding newly unusual, original, and often edgy, and they tend to recognize that their listeners are coming from a culture of standards, rules, and regularities. They generally accept that there is a tipping point beyond which composers may not go if they expect to relate to and be accepted by a listening audience. The cultural norms that composers attend to are coming from their formal and focused musical study as well as from the “ambient” or informal experiences that govern their expressions.

For practicing musicians, many of whom are insiders to the creative process (although perhaps more in ways of improvisation and interpretation rather than through the compositional process itself), creative invention is embraced as vital to the performance art itself. A violinist will work up ideas for a virtuosic cadenza at the close of a concerto, a saxophone player will emit a riveting improvisation that launches from the “head” of the jazz tune, a singer of North Indian Hindustani khyal will strive for a novel expression within the parameters of raga and tala, and a classical pianist will closely follow the score of a work by Brahms and Ravel but with the potential for the nuanced shaping of dynamics and tempo. Depending upon the instrument, the repertoire, the practice, and the culture, creativity will manifest itself variously as to what one does “in the course of performance” (Nettl, 1998). Performing musicians on the inside track of creative invention will adhere to the standards of their culture in determining the nature and extent of their creative work. They may engage in a stepwise progression that typifies the compositional process or express themselves spontaneously through the immediacy of the improvisational experience, or even maintain the substance of the precomposed music even while they provide subtle shadings of tempo, dynamics, melodic nuances, and ornamentations, too.