Experimental Practices in Academic and Popular Music: Balancing Heritage and Innovation

This study examines how experimental approaches in academic and popular music mediate between musical heritage and innovation. Rather than being simply preserved or rejected, inherited musical traditions are reinterpreted through contemporary creative practices. The research employed a qualitative documentary musicological analysis of 30 documentary units published or publicly available between 2016 and 2026. The dataset included musical projects, performances, recordings, program materials, digital content, and institutional descriptions related to repertoire reperformance, music revival, genre hybridity, AI-assisted music production, and experimental staging. The findings revealed that hybrid and intercultural projects constituted the largest category (8 units), followed by academic reperformance of inherited repertoire (7 units). Five units each focused on music revival, digital and AI-mediated practices, and experimental performance formats. Heritage was found to be rooted in traditional repertoire, performance practices, genres, cultural memory, musician identity, and recognizable stylistic features. Innovation emerged through reinterpretation, stylistic fusion, improvisation, digital technologies, algorithmic creativity, and experimental visual and spatial performance approaches. The results demonstrate that the most effective experimental practices maintain recognizable connections to musical heritage while adapting it to contemporary cultural and technological contexts. These findings support integrating experimental approaches into music education, enabling students and future music teachers to view heritage as a dynamic resource for creativity, transformation, and cultural renewal rather than as a static object of preservation.