"The revised edition of Sync or Swarm provides a study of musical improvisation, using theories from cultural and cognitive studies and the emerging sciences of chaos and complexity. David Borgo explores this topic with a systems approach, as individual chapters expand outward in scope: from the perspective of a solo improviser (English saxophonist Evan Parker); to that of a group interacting in performance and over time (the Sam Rivers trio); to the network dynamics that bind together performers, listeners, educators, and promoters into a musical community. Each chapter is paired with a different aspect of the emerging sciences, including perspectives from the study of embodied cognition, nonlinear dynamics, self-organizing systems, social networks, and situated and distributed learning. Winner of the Society for Ethnomusicology's Alan Merriam prize in its first edition, the revised edition features new sections that highlight electro-acoustic improvisation, transcultural improvisation, and concomitant issues of human-machine interaction and postcolonial cultural studies, the revised edition serves as a resource for the history, practice, and issues surrounding free improvisation."--