Jussi Reijonen

Introduction

TRANSIENT: Creative Affordances of Recontextualized Musical Elements in Transcultural Composition, Improvisation and Performance

This interdisciplinary practice-based research (Candy, 2006) aims to create methodologies for the composition, improvisation and performance of musical forms that source musical elements from diverse musical aesthetic value systems (Reijonen, 2025), conceptualized in this context as dynamic, mutable, bounded but permeable information systems (Kramer, 2019, p. 4) that are governed by and reflect internal hierarchies of aesthetic values. By questioning representational aesthetic dichotomies while examining both the challenges and creative potential of negotiating and integrating aesthetically diverse perspectives, the research seeks to stimulate and innovate new discoveries of musical expression, seeking forms perhaps fully representational only of themselves.

My work draws from the fields of music composition and improvisation, music theory, musicology, psychology of perception, narrative theory and semiotics from within the frame of reference of a third culture individual or TCI (Moore & Barker, 2012; Useem & Downie, 1976), whose cultural hybridity (Bhabha, 2012; Croucher & Kramer, 2016) is a reflection of my formative life phases in northern Finland, Jordan, Tanzania, Oman, Lebanon and the United States.

Through a resultant evolving creative praxis that does not neatly fit into explicitly defined categories of aesthetic representation, I seek a musical corollary of this hybridity by examining an intersection of affordance theory (Gibson, 1979), cultural fusion theory (Kramer, 2019), theory of musical narrative (Almén, 2008; Micznik, 2001), theory of musical semiotics (Tarasti, 1994) and acoustemology (Feld, 2015). As composer, improviser and performer exploring the creation of musical form, I apply this theoretical-conceptual framework to the recontextualization of musical elements and phenomena related to aesthetic practices from my autobiographical environments – Levantine and khaliji Arabic art and folk music, Zanzibari taarab, American jazz, and European and American art and popular music.

My research output will consist of three artistic components presenting new music in hybrid album/video/concert format made available to the public; two peer-reviewed articles analyzing uncovered musical-aesthetic phenomena and developed compositional/improvisational methodologies; and a summary thesis aiming to re-examine notions of aesthetic representation and provide tools for composers, improvisers, and/or performers liminally positioned between aesthetic value systems.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. To what degree is it possible for musical elements sourced from multiple diverse musical aesthetic value systems to become so emulsified in new musical forms that they are all viscerally present, yet indistinguishable or inseparable from the whole?

2. How can a methodology of recontextualizing aesthetic elements and phenomena of Levantine and khaliji Arabic art and folk music, Zanzibari taarab, American jazz, and European and American art and popular music prompt the creation of new musical forms that transcend representational aesthetic dichotomies?

3. What more generally applicable insight can be extracted to contribute to research and education in the fields of music composition, improvisation and performance that isn’t conditional on the interaction of these specific traditions?

KEYWORDS
transculturality, music composition, music improvisation, music performance, affordance theory, musical narrative, musical semiotics, aesthetic representation, acoustemology

SUPERVISORY TEAM
Dr. Kristiina Ilmonen (chair), Professor of Folk Music, Sibelius Academy;
Dr. Lauri Suurpää, Professor of Music Theory, Sibelius Academy;
Dr. Sergio Castrillón Argila, Lecturer of Global Music, Sibelius Academy

SPECIALIST ADVISORS
Dr. Eero Tarasti, University of Helsinki;
Dr. Katarina Miljkovic, New England Conservatory;
Dr. Nima Janmohammadi, New England Conservatory;
Dr. Paolo S.H. Favéro, University of Antwerp;
Dr. Nizar Rohana, independent researcher;
Simon Shaheen, M.M., Berklee College of Music;
Ahmad al-Khatib, M.A., University of Gothenburg Academy of Music and Drama

COLLABORATING MUSICIANS
Jason Palmer (USA); Hermon Mehari (USA); Robin Eubanks (USA); Bulut Gülen (Turkey); Layth Sidiq (Jordan/Iraq); Naseem Alatrash (Palestine); Utar Artun (Turkey); Maxim Lubarsky (Ukraine); Kyle Miles (USA); Keita Ogawa (Japan); Vancil Cooper (USA); Zach Mullings (USA); others to be included as research progresses

ORCID ID: 0009-0003-2173-3457
LinkedIn
Homepage of the researcher / research