IN LATIN AMERICAN MUSICS

stylistic norms or rules proper to a given culture. The degree of permissiveness allowed within a particular music system (which is culturespecific) determines the bounds of improvisation and the extent of its existence in it. Moreover, it is the nature of music performance, as conceived by the members of a given culture, that becomes the indicator of the essential peculiarity of a given improvisational practice and determines what might actually constitute "improvisation" in that culture. The standard distinction between fixed or composed music and improvisation has little useful application to oral music traditions, as shown by Bruno Nettl.' Nettl takes the view that all performers improvise to some extent, and refutes the idea that improvisation is a process separate and distinct from composition.2 In Latin American music traditions, specific improvisatory performance characteristics have been elaborated upon models or standard formulas that are in