ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses supplementation of existing popular music education (PME) models with an approach to free-form, improvised music-making. It argues that informal learning models – characteristic of much institutional and non-institutional popular music education – provide a platform to support such development. The chapter also discusses 'Afrological' improvisation, which permits improvisers to embrace established musical styles, through a review of literature and in vignettes recalling a freely improvised musicking practice. Feral Pop opens up popular music structures to exploratory, wild, free-form improvisation and emphasizes performer agency. The Feral Pop approach maximizes performer/creator agency, as performer-improvisers create music in the moment. PME in educational institutions frequently includes models of learning that are based on real-world music-learning experiences of popular musicians, integrating informal and non-formal learning processes. PME represents a collective movement to attempt to work beyond more transmission-based modes of learning that are typical of much school-based music education.
