Art & Creativity Quote by Derek Bailey

Bailey’s line lands like a polite refusal to let music be domesticated. Coming from a guitarist who helped define “free improvisation,” it isn’t anti-intellectual so much as anti-capture: theory can describe habits after the fact, but it can’t reliably predict what happens when sound is made under pressure, in a room, with particular people, bodies, and equipment. He’s arguing for music as an event, not a text.

“Not really susceptible” is doing sly work. It concedes that theory has uses, then quietly limits its jurisdiction. The deeper claim is about power. Theory tends to authorize certain lineages (the conservatory, the score, the “correct” analysis) and sideline others (noise, accident, vernacular technique, the unrepeatable). Bailey, whose practice often treated the guitar as a site of friction rather than virtuoso fluency, is insisting that meaning emerges from contingencies: amplifier hum, a bad monitor mix, a partner’s unexpected entrance, the audience’s mood, the musician’s fatigue. These aren’t impurities; they’re the medium.

The second sentence is the tell: “Circumstances affect it so much.” That’s a defense of responsiveness, but also a critique of the fantasy that mastery equals control. In improvisation, listening is the real “method,” and it’s inseparable from context. Bailey’s intent is to protect a kind of musical ethics: stay alert, don’t over-plan, don’t confuse explanation with experience. Theory can map the terrain; it can’t substitute for weather.