Improvised Song in Schools: Breaking Away from the Perception of Traditional Song as Infantile by Introducing a Traditional Adult Practice

Within the repertoire of songs coming from the oral tradition of Catalonia there is an interesting corpus of melodies that have been used--and continue to be used--for the improvisation of verses. As is well known, this type of oral communication is not exclusive to Catalonia but forms part of a broad tradition deeply rooted in Mediterranean culture (Scarnecchia 1998) and in the Ibero-American world (Trapero, Santana, et al. 2000). And it is also allied to the rap music that originated in the United States that has had such enormous commercial success (Munar 2005).