Giving Back Time: Improvisation in Australian Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Performance

This article documents improvisatory practices in Australian community-based hip-hop, with reference to the work of Australian hip-hop artists Morganics and Wire. It places their teaching work with disadvantaged Indigenous communities in context with the work of free improvisation teachers and theories of improvisation and history, drawn from key critical texts in improvisation studies. Improvisation is shown as key to hip-hop practice and pedagogy in Australia. This paper argues, by employing a performance studies model of the archive and the repertoire, that improvisation in these case studies offers participants the chance to be part of a type of history making that accepts the constructed and performed nature of history and forwards improvisation-led challenges to social injustice.