Introduction
Hallam and Gaunt (Reference HALLAM and GAUNT2012, p. 1) observe that ‘pursuing a career in music is one of the most challenging and satisfying things you can do’. In this paper we emphasise ‘reconciling the work-life balance’ (Thévenon & Horko, Reference THÉVENON and HORKO2009) from among the challenges, and argue that it is important, therefore, for the higher music education community to address this area with and for students about to embark upon careers in the professional music field for which they are being prepared. The local context of the study is a music college in London, UK (hereafter ‘the School’), a small, private institution offering four undergraduate degrees – in popular music performance, songwriting, music business and creative musicianship – and one postgraduate degree in popular music performance. Degrees are awarded by a validating university partner. The School offers students the opportunity to specialise in guitar, bass, drums, vocals, songwriting or music business. The first author is a professional drummer who recently graduated from the School's BMus in Popular Music Performance; the second author is a lecturer at the School, and also a professional drummer. The authors co-designed this study, with the first author primarily gathering data, and the second author developing the paper's theoretical underpinning.
There is a high volume of interest in the music education research literature on preparing student musicians for careers in music. While work-life balance has received considerable attention in such fields as vocational behaviour (e.g. Greenhaus et al., Reference GREENHAUS, COLLINS and SHAW2003) and industrial relations (e.g. White et al., Reference WHITE, HILL, MCGOVERN, MILLS and SMEATON2003), it has been largely unexamined in relation to music education. Existing studies explore career options (e.g. Hallam & Gaunt, Reference HALLAM and GAUNT2012), self-efficacy and aspirations (Long, 2013), portfolio careers (Bennett, Reference BENNETT2008), identity (Bennett, Reference BENNETT and Burnard2013), creativities (Burnard, 2012; Smith & Shafighian 2013), gender (Smith, Reference SMITH2013a, Reference SMITH, Burnard, Hofstander and Dyndahl2014), notions of success (Smith, Reference SMITH, Gaunt and Westerlund2013b), collaboration (Gaunt & Westerlund, Reference GAUNT and WESTERLUND2013), improvisation (Philip, Reference PHILIP2013) and the working lives of classical musicians (Cottrell, Reference COTTRELL2004; Bennett, Reference BENNETT2008); but few if any studies explore work-life balance for career musicians. Gregory and Connolly (Reference GREGORY and CONNOLLY2008, p. F5) suggest that ‘as work-life balance moves up the political agenda this is a major challenge to policy makers’. This being the case, we see it also as an imperative for those preparing career musicians in higher education institutions, especially in light of Parkinson and Smith's (Reference CARTWRIGHT, SMITH, Pfeffermann, Marshall and Mortara2014) observation that ‘in the last decade employability has arguably become the principal concept through which the value and purpose of higher education has been rationalised in official discourse in the UK’. Smith (Reference SMITH2013c, p. 27) argues that an ‘epistemological deficit’ in higher music education ‘is accompanied and exacerbated by the adherence to . . . assumptions regarding success in popular music, both by scholars in the field of popular music studies, and by commentators in the wider public consciousness and the mainstream media’ that ignore much (perhaps most) of what it means to be a musician. We therefore position this paper primarily in the growing area of research in higher popular music education (hereafter, HPME) (Lebler, Reference LEBLER2007, Reference LEBLER2008; Feichas, Reference FEICHAS2010; Carey & Lebler, Reference CAREY and LEBLER2012; Smith Reference SMITH, Gaunt and Westerlund2013b, Reference SMITH2013c, Smith & Shafighian, 2013; Parkinson & Smith, Reference PARKINSON and SMITH2014, Reference PARKINSON and SMITH2015), with the hope that it also proves relevant to colleagues in other areas of higher music education.
Berger (Reference BERGER2002, p. 176) observes ‘a huge gap between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life’. In recognition of this being the case in higher music education, Bennett (Reference BENNETT and Burnard2013, p. 238) urges students to adopt ‘a future-oriented epistemology developed within a safe study environment’. To this end, and encouraged by the assertion of Hill et al. that ‘the work-family imbalance that was problematic for employees in the twilight of the 20th century can become the balance that so many seek in the 21st century’ (2001, p. 57), the authors contend that such an epistemology must at least allow for discussion of work-life balance. This imperative is all the more pressing in light of Menger's observation of:
An occupational characteristic that goes along with artistic life or, to be more precise, that blurs the boundaries between occupation and private life, and between their respective rationales. However, once this trait is regarded as belonging to the initial socialization process of the artist . . . such an explanation turns out to be highly deterministic and ultimately tautological. (Menger, Reference MENGER1999, p. 554)
Being intimately bound-up in the career-orientated socialisation of musicians, HPME tends to focus on (indeed, arguably to over-emphasise) training students in acquisition of virtuosic performance and/or compositional skills (Smith, Reference SMITH2013c). Bennett (Reference BENNETT and Burnard2013, p. 236) explains that such a culture is unlikely ‘to encourage broad purviews of career or broad definitions of what it is to be a successful musician’, excluding in the process vital discussion around issues of work-life balance.
While studying at the School, and subsequently in the workplace, focusing increasingly on developing a career as a professional musician, the first author became aware of older musicians who were very successful in their careers, but, possibly as a result, appeared to have ‘missed out’ in other aspects of life including, for instance, having children, or whose personal relationships had stretched and broken, at least partly as a result of work. Do musicians end up having to sacrifice a family life for the love or pursuit of their art or career? Or vice versa? Reynolds (Reference REYNOLDS2005, p. 1313) has observed how many adults ‘find that the demands of their work and personal or family lives are at least partially incompatible and thus cause some degree of work-family conflict or more generally work-life conflict’; moreover, he notes that ‘striving to satisfy the demands of work and life can improve psychological and physical health’. In this paper, we explore some of the tensions, challenges, and ebb-and-flow that exist between the family lives and work patterns of professional musicians, with the aim of benefiting future music professionals through potential incorporation of understandings from this study into curricular planning in HPME.
Method
A qualitative approach (Denzin & Lincoln, Reference DENZIN and LINCOLN2000; Cresswell, Reference CRESWELL2007) was selected for this study. As Bennett reassuringly reminds researchers in her pioneering study Understanding the Classical Music Profession, ‘qualitative research is based on the notion that reality is subjectively created rather than objectively defined’ (Bennett, Reference BENNETT2008, p. 3). Thus this was felt to be the most fitting approach to gaining an understanding of the particularities, nuances and richness of musicians' lives for the present study, in keeping with other recent explorations of the working lives of musicians (e.g. Cottrell, Reference COTTRELL2004; Bennett, Reference BENNETT2008; Burnard, 2012; Philip, Reference PHILIP2013; Smith, Reference SMITH2013a, Reference SMITH, Gaunt and Westerlund2013b). By carrying out audio-recorded, semi-structured interviews we were able to collect rich data on individuals' views and experiences.Footnote 1 Our study used convenience sampling – the participants were musicians to whom we had easy access through our work at the School. This was an appropriate use of convenience sampling, as in this initial investigation we were ‘getting a feeling for the issues involved’ (Robson, Reference ROBSON2011, p. 275), rather than attempting to generalise our findings.
The participants were mostly drummers and drum teachers at the School, known personally to the researchers, and were aged between 25 and 45. They were selected on the basis of comprising a manageable data set for the research project, and drummers were selected in order for the study to have the maximum relevance to the first author's future. To this end, in addition to drummers we interviewed a female singer/singing teacher from the School. A female drummer from outside the School was also interviewed. Including a female drummer in the sample renders the sample statistically unrepresentative of gendering in the drumming community and HPME (Green, Reference GREEN1997; Whiteley, Reference WHITELEY and Whiteley1997; Tom Tom Magazine, 2013; Smith, Reference SMITH, Burnard, Hofstander and Dyndahl2014), but is in line with other studies of the drumming community (Smith, Reference SMITH2013a), and was felt to provide an easily overlooked and important perspective, especially since the first author is also female. Some participants wished to be identified here with their real names, and others have been anonymised in accordance with their wishes by giving them alternative names. We refer to participants throughout using first names only. The participants were:
Darren – male, drummer, in a relationship, no children, teaches at the School.
Dave – male, drummer, married, children aged eight and 10, teaches at the School.
Greg – male, drummer, married, expecting first child, teaches at the School.
Lucy – female, singer, married, one young child, another on the way, teaches at the School.
Gemma – female, drummer, in a relationship, no children, does not teach at the School.
Each of the participants had come to a realisation in early adolescence (in one case, in his early twenties) that she (or he) wanted to be a professional musician.
Although participants are nearly all drummers, we suggest that the findings are relevant to other musicians, since the issues discussed do not appear to be instrument-specific. Indeed, as Menger (Reference MENGER1999, p. 541), for instance, observes, ‘artistic labor markets are puzzling and challenging’ for researchers owing to the flexibility and unpredictability of work patterns, and popular music is among ‘the most speculative art markets’ (1999, p. 548). This paper, then, raises some important issues for the professional musical training ground of HPME. A limitation of our research could be that the findings arguably have little relevance or resonance beyond the scope of the study. However, we see this paper as a response to calls such as those from Lamb et al. (Reference LAMB, DOLLOFF, HOWE, Colwell and Richardson2002, p. 659) for more scholarship that ‘challenges’ music education, and from Jorgensen (Reference JORGENSEN2009) for on-going reflexive and critical writing in the field. Furthermore, the authors' acquaintance with the School locates the study in a tradition of qualitative explorations seeking ‘understandings of particular situations’ (Bresler & Stake, Reference BRESLER, STAKE and Colwell2006, p. 278). As Muncey (Reference MUNCEY2010, p. 8) explains, ‘subjectivity doesn't infect your work, it enhances it. Making links between your own experience and your [scholarly] work is healthy.’ We hope, therefore, that the issues discussed are pertinent and thought-provoking to those embarking on and preparing others for careers in popular music.
Data were gathered within two weeks in the month of December. For professional musicians in the UK, this is a busy period, perhaps especially so for those with family commitments and children. For these reasons, interviews were conducted in a range of locations including a classroom, a restaurant, a theatre, a car, and via video call. Interview questions were open, and designed to uncover the participants' sense of work-life balance, and of the priority that they placed or felt they would be likely to place on children/family. Following Smith's (Reference SMITH2013a, pp. 15–22) model of identity realisation and the Snowball Self, we asked participants to identify what they considered to be their main identity, and to discuss the priority that they assigned to their various roles and activities (including sports and other leisure interests). We asked about career duration and structure, including work portfolio. We asked about views on family, its importance to participants, and whether/how their work life has changed or would change to accommodate family life; following the work of Bayton (Reference BAYTON1998), Green (Reference GREEN1997) and Smith (Reference SMITH2013a), we asked whether, how and to what extent participants felt their sex or gender affects their views on having or taking care of children. We asked about what, if any, effect working as a professional musician has on personal relationships, and, again following Bayton (Reference BAYTON1998), Green (Reference GREEN1997) and Smith (Reference SMITH2013a, Reference CARTWRIGHT, SMITH, Pfeffermann, Marshall and Mortara2014), we asked whether, how and to what extent participants felt that sex or gender is an issue in music and whether it might affect the desire to have a family. All participants were sent copies of this paper prior to submission for publication, and all approved our use of their words.
A grounded approach (Glaser & Strauss, Reference GLASER and STRAUSS1968) was used to recognise, iteratively code, and pursue emergent themes for analysis. Throughout the process of interview, transcription and analysis we remained aware of the need to reflect critically on the information from participants to ensure that we did not misrepresent them. We coded the results according to recurring themes among participants' interview responses, and have grouped results accordingly, below. We present substantial quotes from our participants, allowing them to ‘speak’. We then discuss and interpret the participants' experiences, following an interpretative phenomenological approach typical of qualitative sociological and social-psychological studies in music and music education (e.g. Green, 2002; Smith et al., Reference SMITH, FLOWERS and LARKIN2009; Rinsema, Reference RINSEMA2012; Cremata et al., Reference CREMATA, PIGNATO, POWELL and SMITH2013; Smith, Reference SMITH2013a).
Findings
Health
One of the common, multifaceted themes that emerged was health – both mental and physical. Gemma, alongside her work as a professional drummer, is studying a Naturopathic Nutritional Therapy course. Dave leads an active lifestyle that includes martial arts activities. Greg reflected that ‘I used to be really into sport, but as I got better at music and more involved in that, I do less and less sport, which is terribly sad’. He remarked that his views and priorities around health have changed recently, saying ‘in the last couple of years, I've thought about it a lot more, because various people have got ill . . . earlier than they should have done. And also because I've got a kid on the way . . . Family, yeah massively important’. Greg's attitude towards his health has been changed by his experience of others' ill-health, and by the imminent arrival of his first child. This newfound awareness of his wellbeing ‘completely changed everything, in every single way I've approached my work. Completely.’ For instance, Greg recently took up playing badminton with friends: ‘I was actually deppingFootnote 2 the show out, and totally unheard of behaviour from me – to dep something out not to go and do another job . . . because I was hanging out with people who had nothing to do with music . . . playing badminton and having a laugh . . . really enjoyed it’. Although sacrificing a small amount of work, doing this created a balance outside of work for Greg, a sound investment physically, psychologically and socially.
Darren, too, expressed a very keen interest in health and fitness. His Twitter page describes him as a ‘self confessed gym rat’ (Twitter.com) and several years ago he:
Enrolled on a course to become a personal trainer, and then I got the Drifters [touring pop band] gig. And then I just didn't have time to do the course because I was away all of the time, for a number of years . . . I even paid for it and never got the money back.
Greg and Darren have both experienced situations where people close to them have died, which have brought about increased awareness of their own health and wellbeing. Greg recalls a friend dying, just after he (Greg) got married and while he was on honeymoon, recalling how ‘that really affected me . . . and within 24 hours of coming back from [honeymoon in] Thailand I had to fly to Dublin and do [a musical theatre production] for about a month . . . and share an apartment with another musician who's basically having a complete nervous breakdown, and I was on my own’. This was clearly a very challenging experience for Greg, especially emotionally, and provoked a big change in his career. He said
I just got married, my mate's died, I'm sharing with someone who's got some serious mental health issues, and I just don't want to be here . . . and I missed his funeral because I'd taken up all the time to dep out to go on honeymoon . . . I can't do this anymore, it's just not cool.
Darren also describes being profoundly affected by bereavement:
Since my dad died it's [wellbeing has] definitely been my thing, it was like, ‘OK I must make sure I have some time off’. I will do all that I can to make something work and rehearse, do a gig and make it as good as I can possibly make it. But there comes a point where I know that . . . the saying if you don't catch up with sleep, sleep will catch up with you, is very true. I've been to the point where I've had accidents because I've fallen asleep, and luckily lived to tell the tale, and many people haven't.
Darren continued to describe a situation that could have resulted in a fatal incident:
I did a gig in Liverpool, came back from Liverpool. The gig was supposed to be at eight o'clock, turned out to be half ten. We had no digs booked, it just so happened I think I did the majority of the driving, I just kept going . . . I was in the van and the rest of the band were in the back. I had to drop them off in London then come home to Buckinghamshire . . . four and a half hours maybe five hours. So it got to about five o'clock in the morning and I was about a mile and a half from home, ‘voom’ just fell asleep! Came off the road, hit a road sign, missed a bus stop by inches, bounced around a bit, managed to get it back on the road but the van, with the front all smashed in . . . It was a bit of a wake up call really, to the point where, there are limits and you can't push past them. It's as simple as that . . . it's always better to err on the side of caution.
Darren's story recalls an account by Smith (Reference SMITH2013a, p. 69) whose health and life commitments appear compromised by taking the opportunity to perform:
A gig that is a dreadfully long way from home, the temptation of the music, the thrill of playing this wonderful instrument with those musicians, providing the groove, making me feel alive, is too much for me to resist. It is only on the way back to London in the early hours of a Tuesday from a gig at the other end of the country, in the back of an unheated van in late December, with barely a seat to myself and time for only an hour's sleep before I must rise for work, that I wonder why I do this. As for finding the time to mark students' work, plan lessons and write papers, these factors result in further late nights and more sleep deprivation.
Having witnessed how working in music can affect their health, these musicians are attempting to look after themselves, despite – and because of – the nature of their careers.
In light of these data, it should come as little surprise that Bennett (Reference BENNETT2008, p. 49) reports ‘there is a higher rate of injury amongst musicians than athletes . . . musicians have long been acknowledged to be susceptible to physical and psychological injury’. Musicians' health – both mental and physical – appears threatened by the very nature of the profession. The experience of this pressurised professional environment is sometimes further intensified by the ubiquity in some circles of drug abuse. Miller and Quigley (Reference MILLER and QUIGLEY2012, p. 401) report cocaine usage among musicians at between three and four times that of the general population. Darren had an unpleasant experience when, he explained, his career did not benefit from a particular West-EndFootnote 3 encounter because ‘I wasn't in the coke club’; he decided not to follow a career path into professional musical theatre, saying ‘that was basically my West End experience, was that, and after that it kind of left a little sour taste’.
Portfolio careers
Menger observes how:
The careers of self-employed artists display most of the attributes of the entrepreneurial career form: the capacity to create valued output through the production of works for sale, the motivation for deep commitment and high productivity associated with their occupational independence – control over their own work, a strong sense of personal achievement through the production of tangible outputs, the ability to set their own pace, but also a high degree of risk-taking. (Menger, Reference MENGER1999, p. 552)
This form of working has been recognised as the norm for musicians for centuries. Weber (Reference WEBER and Weber2004, p. 5) observes that:
The history of musical life amounts to a series of successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurial efforts to make an impact on established tastes and institutions. In order to succeed as a high-level professional, a musician had to acquire a broad set of social skills by which to identify and accomplish promising opportunities. It was insufficient just to be a good performer or composer.
While Weber writes about musicians in the 200 years prior, up to and including 1914, scholars recognising the entrepreneurial nature of contemporary musicians' working lives include Bennett (Reference BENNETT2008, Reference BENNETT and Burnard2013); Gaunt and Papageorgi (Reference GAUNT, PAPAGEORGI, Hallam and Creech2010); Hallam and Gaunt (Reference HALLAM and GAUNT2012); and Partti (Reference PARTTI2012). Bennett (Reference BENNETT2008, p. 8) also uses the term ‘protean careers’, which are ‘defined as careers in which multiple roles are undertaken . . . protean careerists self-manage their careers and adapt their practice as necessary to meet personal and professional needs’. The participants described a range of ways in which their work patterns fitted this description. As the (UK) Musicians' Union states, ‘there is no such thing as a typical musician . . . above all [musicians] need to be adaptable’ (Musicians' Union, 2012, p. 10). The participants in our study displayed versatility, entrepreneurship (Cartwright & Smith, Reference CARTWRIGHT, SMITH, Pfeffermann, Marshall and Mortara2014) and entrepreneurial creativity (Burnard, 2012, p. 43) that are central to musicians' lives. The interview data support the observations of Arthur et al. (Reference ARTHUR, KHAPOVA and WILDEROM2005) – that career success is ‘idiosyncratic to the person, not only in terms of personal preferences but also in terms of accommodating work and family or other issues of life-work balance . . . [and that] people who exhibit boundaryless career behavior report considerably higher levels of career success’ (Arthur et al., Reference ARTHUR, KHAPOVA and WILDEROM2005, p. 178).
Dave works as both a life coach and a certified practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP) alongside drumming and teaching, remarking that ‘as of January we launch our new business . . . a life consultancy company.’ Lucy has ‘got my own business as well, so that's quite important’. Greg is ‘a director of a company with this other guy . . . I've been learning loads of things that aren't anything to do with playing the drums, but have kind of excited me to do something else with my life’. Greg is currently spending a lot of his time building up the business so that in the future it will be a reliable source of income for him and his family:
The band that I run, which I work really night and day on to be honest . . . I've made it that because otherwise I'd still be just in the West End, but I don't wanna be, ‘cause I wanna be at home at night and changing nappies and stuff . . . It's pretty depressing dealing with not knowing . . . the whole point is I've got a company that I co-own with someone and that is a proper job really . . . That's my proper job, that's what I hope will be my security.
In contrast to Greg's sense of relief and freedom at not relying on West End work, for Dave the West End appeared to offer job security. Dave remarked that if he had not followed his current career route, ‘yeah I would have probably gone into management. . . . or probably the West End route . . . but again it's regular, so you can plan around it’. However, the previous section on health highlights complicating issues that Darren experienced with West End work. Perceptions of working in London's prestigious musical theatre circuit are clearly varied among the participants, highlighting the subjective, individualised nature of entrepreneurial careers.
In its survey of 1,966 working musicians in the UK, the Musicians' Union found that 60% of musicians earned a portion of their income from teaching, and 81% from working as a performing artist (Musicians' Union, 2012, p. 10). This study's participants described how they incorporated teaching into a portfolio career. For Greg ‘the teaching thing's been brilliant because I'm reconnecting with people who love [music]’, while Lucy described her teaching job as ‘rewarding’. Darren explained:
A lot of people take on teaching as musicians, because it's something they can rely on. If they get into a good post it could be a nice sort of regular income from one or two days. . . . I teach only degree, my teaching goes from the end of September . . . up to the end of May I think it is. And then all summer off, so I don't teach during the summer, only privately and then I'm gigging and working on my own projects and stuff like that.
Darren's comments, reflecting a more pragmatic approach than Lucy's or Greg's, support's Bennett's findings that musicians ‘noted the attraction of teaching in providing regular income, regular hours and a level of artistic and administrative control’ (Bennett, Reference BENNETT2008, p. 108). Gemma reflected these sentiments, also commenting on the benefit of teaching close to her home: ‘I think probably the hours, because I could determine them to fit around what I needed them to fit around and also I think distance as well’. Dave, too, enjoys the flexibility of teaching, and that it can adjust to fit around family commitments:
There's a lot of flexibility, with the kind of teaching I do. Obviously a lot of it is from home and at the independent schools that I'm at, it's down to me what I do, so the flexibility is there . . . So for instance, if one of [my] kids has got his school pantomime, I will make sure I'm at that, as opposed to teaching.
The reliability and flexibility of teaching allows Dave to prioritise time with his family, which was another theme to emerge from the study.
Family
While teaching appears to be one of the types of work best suited to fit around a family, participants agreed that touring is the least suitable. Greg recalls working in a musical theatre production that he ‘kind of didn't want to take, but it was pretty good money . . . I got married . . . and I took quite a lot of time off. I probably broke even on it . . . I took enough time off to keep the teaching going, and to try and see [his wife]’. A short time later, he ‘basically repositioned my career so that I was gonna be in a situation where I'd be someone who could be a dad and actually know the child, rather than just carrying on doing what I was doing’. This is in contrast to the ways in which Greg had seen others around him conduct their careers. He recalled from one tour ‘the guys that are sort of fifty-plus, and they'd all just been on tour forever, with a string of broken relationships behind them. Just sort of slightly strange OCD behaviour and just never depped.’ Dave describes how he similarly took steps to prioritise family life: ‘my main decision was before we had kids actually, when I first started going out with my wife, I was on tour . . . and just before we got married, I decided to not tour anymore. I actually turned down a big tour because I was getting married.’
Gemma, although currently without children, discussed potential changes to her career in order to have a family in the future. She said ‘I think definitely touring, things would have to change, initially, or you know, maybe I would feel completely different once I had a family – I might not want to tour anymore at all.’ Following Smith's (Reference SMITH2013a, p. 17) model of identity realisation, we asked interview participants to say what they considered to be their principal role or identity. Participants with children said that their primary role is with their family. However, Gemma said,
At the moment I would still say I am a drummer . . . I'm changing my mind a bit about things because, I think, of the [undisclosed] age I'm at and stuff, but yeah I would still say I am a drummer . . . I think [family]'s something very important to me, with whatever [job] I would have done.
Darren said ‘I think if I had a family, if I had kids and stuff like that then I would definitely say that, but I don't. So my prime identity, I think, is a musician, I hope.’
These responses confirm the perceived benefits for musicians of flexible, entrepreneurial working, whilst highlighting the centrality of family to work-life balance. Darren's remarks also underscore the importance of musicians' identities in managing careers (Bennett, Reference BENNETT2008, Reference BENNETT and Burnard2013; Smith, Reference SMITH2013a).
Gender differences
Participants felt that the urge to have a family affects women more than, or earlier than, men. Darren said ‘I think in the classic way, generally women tend to be more maternal. They have that thing in their psyche and in their thoughts from a much earlier age, where men don't, generally’. He added, however, that ‘I think that the maternal instinct in some people is stronger than others. And I think that is really based upon your own upbringing [rather than necessarily decided by gender]’. Lucy concurred with Darren's first comment, saying:
I think it's a female thing – the broodiness is definitely a female thing. It happens sooner for girls I think than it does for boys. I doubt any of the other drummers here [at the School] will be sitting behind a drum kit going ‘I want a baby’ . . . That is definitely a much more female thing to do.
Dave, too ‘think[s] there is obviously more of a natural disposition for women to want children than guys. I think it's just a biological thing’. These (perhaps learned or perceived) sex and gender (Butler, Reference BUTLER1999, Reference BUTLER2004; Bourdieu, Reference BOURDIEU2001; Lee, Reference LEE and Lee2010) differences seem to have the potential to affect differently males' and females' decisions regarding family and their careers.
Gregory and Connolly (Reference GREGORY and CONNOLLY2008, p. F2) found that across Britain ‘women reduce their work hours substantially following childbirth, particularly the arrival of a first child. The presence of children continues to shape their labour supply patterns for many years subsequently.’ Bayton (Reference BAYTON1998, p. 33), in turn, observes that ‘women [musicians] typically have to choose between motherhood and career . . . due to the demands placed on one's personal life by long, unsociable hours and incessant touring.’ Gemma again comments on changes she would expect to make to touring and performing aspects of her work portfolio in order to raise a family:
No matter how gender is or how it's perceived in music or, you know, however things change, the fact is women can only have children up until a certain age, and so that's always gonna come into it. Whereas men can do whatever – they can be rock and roll stars until they're 60 and, you know, maybe they can still father a family. So it's definitely something that women, if they want a family, they have to think about more than their male peers . . . It's definitely been on my mind that something's gonna have to change if I'm gonna have a family, so yeah, definitely down to my gender . . . I think I would prefer to be around to bring up a family, definitely. I would still want to carry on with music and I think that with my partner it would be a situation where I would be able to do that anyway. So I would fit my work around the family.
Gemma's anticipated domestic/work situation is perhaps more equitable than the UK norm, where McDowell asserts that: ‘[reproductive] labour is an essential part of the total amount of work undertaken in any economy and it is, moreover, carried out in the main by women’ (McDowell, Reference MCDOWELL2001, p. 453).
In keeping with this trend, the women in our sample (and those whose male spouses were in the sample) tended to stay at home and raise their families, rather than men doing this. Dave's wife ‘looks after them more than I do, purely because I'm out most of the time’. Dave's wife recently returned to work after nine years of raising their children full-time. Lucy, about to have her second child, said ‘I'm happy to have taken a step back [in her musical career]. I definitely feel like I've changed since becoming a mother – my priorities have completely changed and I feel it's quite important for me to be around more than to be out more’. McDowell (Reference MCDOWELL2001, p. 453) goes on to observe, however, that for women ‘obligations in the labour market are increasing’, and that despite this increased pressure, in the majority of British homes ‘most of the domestic labour continues to be undertaken without financial reward by women family members’ (2001, p. 458). The life of a musician, though, appears to offer some opportunities for reprieve from this imbalance.
Gemma recently interviewed high-profile drummer Sheila E for a drummers' website, and asked Sheila E ‘about women in music and if there is a pressure to choose between a career and family’. Sheila E replied:
I don't think we have to choose. I think if this is our lifestyle and career then it can be whatever we want to do; sometimes it's hard on the child, sometimes it's not. You take them with you or you bring help; it depends how much you're gone. There are so many options now but I don't think we need to choose anymore. I think if we're going to do it we're going to do it. I see a lot more artists now that take the tour bus and the whole family goes and it's a lot of fun! (MikeDolbear.com)
Echoing McDowell's concerns, Gemma commented in her interview for this study that:
I was like, well it's great that she's in a position that you could do that, and if you're like Beyoncé or something then you know of course you can have all the help you need. But I think if you're a session musician it's completely different, it still is an issue.
Martie Maguire of The Dixie Chicks is another musician who has toured on the big-budget international stadium-tour circuit. Tellingly, she said about her career, ‘I don't know too many women who get to bring their husband and two children to work’ (Shut Up & Sing, 2006). Indeed, the musicians able to take their families with them on lengthy world tours number very few. In very high profile, high-income situations, the circumstances are different from those of the majority of working musicians.
In a relationship where one person is looking after children and may therefore not be in paid employment, the responsibility to provide falls to the other partner, whose working life can be affected as well. Lucy's husband is also a musician, and she explained how his work changed with their having a 20-month-old baby and a new arrival on the way:
He's gone from being busy, to being constantly working, so he's sort of gone into the hunter-gatherer mode . . . that instinct has definitely kicked in with him. He teaches here [at the School], gigs every weekend, he's in an originals band as well, he's recording as well and he's the programme leader now here for the part-time course as well, so he's taken on loads of extra jobs because of it . . . He doesn't like the thought of not providing.
Darren similarly felt that ‘thinking of that traditional role as the breadwinner . . . if the woman is having a baby then the man has to go out and earn the money’. Greg, with a baby arriving imminently, was ‘feeling the pressure a tiny bit because obviously there's gonna be a child in a way that there wasn't before . . . and I'd still take that [rather] than be on a show and not be around’. Likewise, Dave supported his family while his wife was on a nine-year career break raising their children. These views demonstrate how, very often, a male partner's traditional work role (Bourdieu, Reference BOURDIEU2001) – within a heterosexual relationship – can intensify or shift in order to provide for a family. This normative familial arrangement leads McDowell (Reference MCDOWELL2001, p. 461) to argue that ‘the division of labour between productive and reproductive labour needs to be renegotiated’, a feeling that was not expressed by male or female participants in this study. It is possible that the participants' responses appear anomalous because of the degree of agency expressed and afforded them by their entrepreneurial careers, typical among musicians.
Summary
These rich data provide valuable insights into issues around work-life balance for musicians, and a strong sense emerges of benefit for musicians working as ‘career actors’ for whom ‘responsibility for both career development and the interpretation of career success rests with the individual’ (Arthur et al., Reference ARTHUR, KHAPOVA and WILDEROM2005, p. 196). As Narvaez et al. (Reference NARVAEZ, MEYER, KERTZNER, OUELLETTE and GORDON2009, p. 64) describe, ‘various identities become active or inactive as people locate themselves in various social contexts’, a process captured in the model of the Snowball Self (Smith, Reference SMITH2013a, p. 15). Following Smith's model, a strong sense of agency among the musicians implies a high level of active identity realisation in a variety of roles and contexts, with both passive and active realisation of principal meta-identities (Smith, Reference SMITH2013a, p. 17) as ‘musician’ or ‘drummer’, ‘family man’ or ‘mother’ emerging. A recurring theme is the necessity for musicians to commit to ‘quite literally, take on more work than they can do’ (Cottrell, Reference COTTRELL2004, p. 60); this can lead to problems with physical and mental health, and with relationships. Participants described a need, discovered several years into intense musical careers, to (re)-prioritise their health. All participants explained that taking care of their children is or would be very important to them. Being part of a family was a key part of these musicians' identities, and they would be prepared to prioritise family over (musical) work. The participants indicated that women tend to be the primary carers of children, confirming societal ‘assumptions that women have a particular responsibility for reproductive labour’ (McDowell, Reference MCDOWELL2001, p. 454), while males take on additional work or alter their work patterns in order to provide for family – in apparent opposition to Gregory and Connolly's observation of ‘how little the working patterns of fathers respond to critical events or to changes in the mother's working hours’ (2008, p. F20).
Participants explained that the work most suitable to fit with having a family was teaching, West End musical theatre work, and other entrepreneurial activity such as running one's own company, whereas touring emerged as least suited to balancing with a family life. This view resonates with the authors as being especially relevant to aspiring musicians in HPMPE, since touring is purported to be an increasingly lucrative source of revenue for musicians, especially since the decline of record sales as a (the) major source of income for artists (Forbes.com, 2013). Of course ‘touring’ comes in many shapes and sizes – from regular and/or infrequent weekend trips in the back of a van to central Europe, to chartered flights and year-long global stadium tours or a never-ending UK playhouse circuit with one or more hit musical theatre productions. The inherent difficulties likely to arise from activity in this line of work, which forms a staple of many musicians' careers, are aspects of musical futures of which students in HPME and higher music education more widely should be made aware.
Conclusions and implications
We do not wish to overstate the value of this study, but hope that, despite the small size of the sample and the amount of data, the study will be relevant to colleagues in HPME and of interest to the broader field of music education research. The participants' responses and the authors' discussion present issues pertinent to professional musicians whose complex lives are likely to bear similarity to others' working in music (as well as other domains, especially in the arts). The uniqueness of many musicians' individual profiles, and the sheer complexity in the music professions, mean that one could never write about a truly representative sample. Therefore the authors feel that, while itself small, this study provides a relevant window on the working lives of musicians and their concerns regarding work-life balance.
The disparity between, on the one hand, the complex and diverse lives managed and negotiated by the participants, and, on the other hand, the ‘adherence to a tacit and under-interrogated epistemology of “success” in [and beyond] higher music education’ (Smith, Reference SMITH, Gaunt and Westerlund2013b, p. 27) based on conflation of ‘musician’ with ‘high-profile, full-time performer’ supports Bennett's (Reference BENNETT2008, p. 82) assertion that there is widespread, endemic ‘lack of understanding about the roles in which musicians engage’. We argue that there is all the more reason, then, to include pedagogies and curricula that afford such understanding at the undergraduate level. As Smith (Reference SMITH, Gaunt and Westerlund2013b, p. 34) notes, ‘“Success” for most musicians has yet to be determined; what seems certain is that it will not follow the patterns of the first 100 years of commercially available recorded music or the stories offered up by the mainstream media and many scholarly studies to describe it’. Smith suggests, therefore, that:
The challenge for those of us working in music education is to recognise and incorporate contemporary understandings of the work patterns of successful music professionals, and, where necessary, to alter discourses accordingly. As teachers, the personal narratives that we offer our students about life as musicians are thus essential – reflecting success for the majority of musicians in our culture and supportively guiding students towards realistic expectations of how they will likely work. (Smith, Reference SMITH, Gaunt and Westerlund2013b, p. 34)
In addition to focusing on how they will likely work, the higher music education sector has an obligation to help students to consider implications of these career patterns for their work-life balance.
Further research
We aim to undertake a follow-up to the present study, adding a ‘layer’, of substantial quantitative data, following Bennett who advocates for ‘an integrative approach . . . to provide increased opportunities for analysis’ (Bennett, Reference BENNETT2008, pp. 3–4). With future studies, it would be interesting and beneficial to explore more detailed analysis of demographic information for musicians, and to look far beyond one city and one School, considering survey data from other HPME institutions, the broader popular music community, and other areas of music and music education. Mary Stakelum's advice (2013, p. 1) supports the need for research into work-life balance for musicians. She calls music educators to consider: ‘the idea that versions of curriculum and norms of behaviour are contested and tentative. For learner and teacher, this calls for an articulation of one's goals at the earliest opportunity and for encouragement to devise the strategies which can achieve them’.
Adele Teague is a drummer and percussionist with a performance background based in musical theatre and stadium events. In addition to performing, Adele also teaches drumming. She completed her Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours in Popular Music Performance from the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London in 2014.
Gareth Dylan Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, where he teaches research, practice-as-research, drumming, and cultural and philosophical studies. He is a drummer, performing and recording in musical theatre, rock, punk, blues and pop bands. His principal research interests are popular music education (especially higher education), music making and leisure, democracy and feminism in music education, embodiment in music performance, identity and eudaimonia.
