In last week’s blog we looked at the creativity and working life of two groups of jazz and
classical musicians. Today’s writing explores another study by the same researcher using the
same group of people but looking at their feelings around autonomy and self-expression.
In the study, two themes were discovered: music-related demands and the challenges of negotiating these demands. Within the first theme, both demographics regarded their level of autonomy as good enough, but also as situation and context dependent. Interestingly, the jazz musicians overall found the levels of autonomy, spontaneity, self-expression and freedom in their profession to be sufficient and valued. This freedom within the jazz genre was counter- balanced by the stress and impact of low income, financial precarity and the need to supplement with additional work, by playing what called ‘standard pop music’. I get the impression that they deemed their pop music engagement in a lesser esteem than their other classical work!
The struggle to differentiate between work and life was also identified as a negative factor in the musicians’ lives. In this theme, the string players acknowledged how their musical freedom was hindered due to a lack of autonomy within their genre, due to the emphasis on performing an accurate representation of the score rather than improvising etc. This focus on accuracy was considered a hinderance, yet an inevitable part of the environment within the orchestral world. The group also described feeling guilty and under pressure if they had not invested the high amounts of practice expected of them within their peer groups.
Identifying the challenges for musicians of negotiating these demands highlighted how the string player demographic of musicians were more able to treat their professional musicking as a vocation and could therefore separate themselves from their jobs. This was different for the jazz group, who more openly expressed the need to ‘put something in of yourself’ adding that it (their musicking) was ‘all about what you get back from it’. In a sense, their work was intertwined with their identity which was reported to be psychologically problematic in certain environments. This is a key area of musicians and mental health in which both the personal and performing self can become intertwined leading to potential difficulty in a work life balance.
Within this theme, both groups spoke about their personality and persona within their musicking. The jazz musicians expressed a greater amount of self-investment in their playing, contrasting with the concern for the self-preservation and the distancing strategy of the string players. This investment was illustrated through the jazz musicians’ descriptions of their musicking as ‘who they are’ contrasting with the vocational separation of the string players. This jazz demographic also highlighted the importance of expressing themselves rather than a persona, often mirrored in other non-classical environments. Overall, the study demonstrated the continuum between performer, entertainer or expressive artist, and the impact on self- identity and mental health when identity provides an emotionally regulating resource to musicians.
In the study, the researcher also further suggests that aligning identity and performance too closely can be detrimental to wellbeing and mental health. This emotionally detrimental factor was reported to be more prominent in training environments where students are actively encouraged to live and breathe their music. This culture of total absorption was eased in the working environments experienced post-college or conservatoire. This study highlighted the contradiction between how musicians are expected to embrace both their worker and their expressive artist perspective. This is always a delicate balance and often something that needs in exploring in the clinical work and the peer groups that I am involved in. If you are involved in the music industry and trying to navigate your ‘worker’ and ‘artist’ perspective (I’ve written about this musicking continuum in previous blogs) then don’t forget the support network that Tonic Music can provide through Tonic Rider's Peer Support Groups.
Adam Ficek hosts a monthly show 'Tonic Music' on Totally Wired Radio, where he talks to various guests about music and mental health. You can listen again to any of the previous show on the Tonic Music Mixcloud page.
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