Introduction

Mark Banks asserts that too little is known about the conditions under which the creative cultural worker produces their work, often because it is regarded as ‘fun’ and not work at all.¹ It is described as a ‘vocation’ because it is committed to values of a ‘higher’ nature whereby creativity is seen as a ‘calling’.² David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker argue that, ‘some of the celebrations of creative labour are deeply complacent about the conditions of such work and the reality of the labour markets involved’,³ in which a highly skilled workforce is expected (and deemed willing) to endure the vagaries of a precarious, insecure, and often poorly paid working life to pursue their ‘calling’. This lack of criticality serves to fetishise creativity,⁴ while simultaneously invoking a neoliberal economic ideology that emphasises individualism, competition, and entrepreneurialism, whereby the individual is held responsible for their own successes and failures, and where hard work pays, and success is rewarded.⁵ Problematically, neoliberal orthodoxies redirect our gaze away from the sociopolitical sphere and towards the self: it is the self that is deemed lacking and in need of change and improvement, so a lack of work or opportunities is read as ‘self-inflicted’.⁶ As Rosalind Gill rightly notes, ‘sexism, racism and other patterns of structural discrimination remain unspoken because there is a reluctance to puncture neoliberal mythologies of individual achievement’.⁷

Too often, governments and policy makers are quick to laud the success of the creative industries and its contribution to the UK economy,⁸ while ignoring the working conditions of those who contribute to its success. In 2012, income from musical theatre and classical ticket sales to overseas tourists visiting London was estimated to be £67 million, with British orchestras alone generating a total income of £150 million during that period, and yet, having surveyed 2,000 musicians across the UK, a report by the Musicians’ Union (MU) found that 56 per cent had earned less than £20,000 that year and 60 per cent reported working for free in the previous twelve months.⁹ This lack of critical engagement with cultural work results in a failure to acknowledge the structural inequalities in these industries, where their gender, ethnicity, or socio-economic background can profoundly shape cultural workers’ experiences because they rely on a model of production which can exacerbate social inequalities in the workplace.¹⁰

Women account for 32 per cent of all music-industry-related jobs in the UK, but in comparison to men they earn less, experience greater barriers to progression, and exit the workforce sooner.¹¹ Women also experience both vertical segregation, such as being under-represented in positions of authority, and horizontal segregation, which, in the classical music profession,¹² results in a persistent under-representation of women in the fields of composition, conducting, and music technology.¹³ In contrast, Dawn Bennett notes that women are over-represented in the teaching profession, which is viewed as both less prestigious and less desirable as a career.¹⁴ Therefore, in a cultural economy that insists individuals take personal responsibility for their successes and failures with little or no regard for the material challenges and constraints in which they work, women warrant particular attention because gendered structures, attitudes, and cultures inevitably shape and inform their experiences of work in ways that are significantly different to those encountered by men.

‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Work in the Cultural Industries

Despite the inequalities and discrimination they are likely to face together with the uncertainties of pursuing a professional career, female musicians assert there are significant rewards and challenges which enable them to forge meaningful, successful, and fulfilling musical lives and careers.¹⁵ Herein lies the contradiction at the centre of recent critiques of cultural work, in that the very qualities which supposedly attract people to this type of work also form the basis for exploitation and self-exploitation in an already precarious and insecure labour market.

As noted earlier, within policy discourse, cultural work is invariably presented as a neoliberal ‘ideal’, whereby the (mainly) self-employed, freelance, ‘protean’ worker develops and thrives within a competitive marketplace. These self-improving ‘entrepreneurs’ are continually networking,¹⁶ and constantly generating new projects and ideas while taking personal responsibility for their success or failure.¹⁷ This ‘permanently transitional’ work is characterised by self-advancement and self-reliance,¹⁸ and the desire to embrace the supposed ‘freedom’ that labour mobility brings with this peripatetic career. In this conceptualisation of cultural work, individuals seamlessly move from job to job, developing ‘DIY biographies’,¹⁹ their rewards derived from finding outlets for self-expression and creativity. It is argued that cultural work is attractive because of its potential for personal creativity, autonomy, self-actualisation, self-expression, and personal growth. Taken together, these characteristics offer a validation of creative work as a model of what Hesmondhalgh and Baker describe as ‘good work’.²⁰

In contrast, recent critiques focus on the precarious, insecure nature of cultural work, which is invariably determined and constrained by factors beyond the individual’s control. In fact, cultural work can result in low self-esteem, overwork, boredom, risk, poor-quality work, and frustrated self-realisation, which Hesmondhalgh and Baker suggest characterises ‘bad work’.²¹ Recognising the precarious, insecure nature of cultural work, which is invariably determined and constrained by factors beyond the individual’s control, challenges the romantic and over-celebratory notions of creative work as a ‘calling’, or a ‘self-actuating pleasure’.²²

In the remainder of this chapter, I will explore this model of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ work drawing on data from my recent UK-based ethnographic study into the working lives of twenty-four professional, classically trained female composers, conductors, and performers through an examination of the subjective, lived experiences of their working lives. Their portfolio careers involve juggling numerous roles and jobs under challenging conditions; dealing with the uncertainties of irregular work; having to engage in considerable strenuous self-activity to market and promote themselves, while ensuring they are always ‘work ready’; and dedicating regular time to practice and preparation. Their musical lives may appear to be characterised by high levels of autonomy, which supposedly makes creative work desirable, but, as Hesmondhalgh has commented, ‘All autonomy is limited, in that individuals and groups are, to some extent at least, socially constituted by others beyond themselves. Total autonomy in any sphere of a life is an impossible ideal, because there is no life without constraints and determinants.’²³

Consequently, while the women in my study did experience much of their musical lives as rewarding, fulfilling, and as providing opportunities for creative and personally satisfying work – what would be considered ‘good work’ – their narratives revealed that certain factors (the constraints and determinants outlined above) could significantly alter their perception and subjective experiences of work previously characterised as ‘good work’ and turn it into ‘bad work’. (For a study of the gendered dimensions facing female freelance musicians in the contemporary popular-music industry, see Chapter 16, ‘Women in the Music Industries: The Art of Juggling’.)

Overview of the Study

The study involved twenty-four freelance, classically trained, professional female musicians, aged between twenty-three and sixty-five, working in a wide range of genres and contexts both at national and international level, and was undertaken during the period 2012–2017. Many of the subjects described themselves as composer-performers and adhered to Bennett’s notion of a musician as ‘someone who practices within the profession of music in one or more specialist fields’,²⁴ and were located in London, the South East, and South West of England, encompassing both city and rural locations. The aim of the study was to gain insights into their subjective experiences of work, and their ‘day-to-day’ experiences of building and sustaining a freelance career.

Given the itinerant nature of their professional commitments, it was not possible to take the ‘traditional’ ethnographic approach, where the researcher embeds herself in the lives of the participants. To address this I developed a digital ethnographic approach, which involved each participant generating her own weekly ‘digital diary’ over a five-week period, uploaded to a designated Dropbox account. This resulted in a rich and diverse array of ‘found’ data, including photographs, audio clips, marketing and promotional material, written diaries, screenshots of scores, and rehearsal and performance videos that they felt best represented their working lives; this method gave ownership of data generation to the women, and allowed them to decide what was important and relevant to them.²⁵ At the end of this five-week period, the data was used as a basis for a one-to-one interview lasting from around ninety minutes to two hours. Stephanie Taylor suggests that a career is largely about identity; asking ‘who am I’, and positioning oneself in relation to others in the field.²⁶ The notion of professional identity is very strongly presented in my participants’ narrative and can inform whether work is experienced as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. In the remainder of the chapter I will focus on four themes emerging from the data: professional identity relating to paid and unpaid work; the affective qualities of work; motherhood and caring responsibilities; and aesthetic labour.

Paid and Unpaid Work

While the ‘gifting of free labour’ is common amongst creative workers,²⁷ generally rationalised as investing in the future in the hope that it might lead to paid work, for the composers in my study the lack of payment for their work profoundly shaped their sense of self, in ways that resulted in them feeling ambivalent about their status and that led them to question whether they could even call themselves professionals:

Despite the lack of payment for their compositions, these women’s works are regularly performed nationally and internationally, often by well-known players, but as funding is difficult to obtain, ensembles and performers rarely bother to apply for commissioning fees; it is time-consuming and more often than not futile. Therefore, what should have been experienced as ‘good work’, takes on aspects of ‘bad work’ for the composers, because being paid for their creative work is strongly associated with self-perception: when judging themselves against the criteria of what constitutes a professional, they feel they do not match up.

This sense of professional identity can also be undermined even when work is paid, in that it may not be experienced as ‘good work’ if the composer feels she has compromised over artistic quality. Libby (Composer/performer, 20s) had been taken on by an agency who commissioned music for TV indents and jingles, work that she viewed positively for the following reason:

To secure more paid work in this field, Libby was required to react to the needs of the client, resulting in a significant lack of creative autonomy and relinquishing artistic control. Consequently, the financial security this work afforded was counteracted by elements that are characterised as ‘bad work’, such as frustrated self-actualisation and limited control over the artistic product.

Affective Labour

The allure of creative labour, even when poorly paid or even unpaid, is said to lie in its affective qualities, which results in the work being experienced as ‘good’: feelings of satisfaction, connectedness to others, a sense of well-being, and emotional involvement. Angela McRobbie suggests that these affective elements have become a normative requirement in cultural labour,²⁸ leading us to overlook less appealing and potentially exploitative aspects of such work. For my participants, the reality was more complicated and could not easily be categorised as simply ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Mia (Composer, 40s) received a large grant to ‘write music for people who know nothing about music whatsoever’ supported by ‘a couple of millionaires who own properties all over the world’. Despite being paid well she felt no emotional connection to the work she was producing, stating that, ‘although I was earning money it wasn’t really where my heart was’. At that point, Mia said that she had started to wonder: ‘Why I was even doing it? Why was I writing this stuff?’ Shortly after, she was commissioned by an all-female international ensemble, for which she was less well paid, but she expressed a great deal of pride in this work as she felt it was ‘useful’ and ‘purposeful’, turning what might be considered ‘bad work’ (because it was poorly paid) into ‘good work’.

This affective element was also discernible in Charlotte’s (Composer/performer, 40s) description of successfully running singing workshop weekends held at her home. Her digital diaries were dominated by preparations for one of her madrigal weekends. She noted that the amount she earned from the event was not commensurate with the amount of effort required to make it a success. Few of the attendees could read music, so she spent a whole week recording the separate vocal parts, which she then sent to them in advance. She observed:

This highlights how paid work also has the potential for self-exploitation and therefore constitutes ‘bad work’. Charlotte vehemently refuted this notion because she considered this ‘personalised service’ gave her singers ‘a better experience’ from which she took great pleasure, also offering ‘that extra bit of attentiveness’, which included providing home-made cakes and biscuits. When I pointed out that it sounded like very hard work, she replied, ‘I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it’. For Charlotte, the opportunity to engage in fulfilling music-making activities, underpinned by the affective qualities of relationship building and care, and the ability to run this from her home, outweighed the relatively poor financial return.

Motherhood and Family Life

As also discussed in Chapter 16, ‘Women in the Music Industries: The Art of Juggling’, freelancers operate outside of conventional employment models which protect workers’ rights, as they have limited access to social welfare and associated benefits such as maternity leave. Perhaps not surprisingly, the creative industries are dominated by workers without children, as they are perceived as more willing to accept poor working conditions involving long and irregular hours (in my study, nearly two-thirds of the participants did not have children). This reinforces McRobbie’s point that the ‘traditional conditions of youthfulness are normatively expected’,²⁹ where the cultural worker, irrespective of age, is expected to be independent of family, flexible, mobile, and able to work beyond the confines of the nine to five. As Gill argues, it is not motherhood that is the ‘issue’, but the fact that caring responsibilities largely remain in the hands of women, a situation which is rarely challenged.³⁰

This certainly characterises the experiences of those participants with children, who combined childcare with working long and unsociable hours involving extensive travel. When coupled with the need to juggle childcare, the rhetoric of ‘choice’, agency, and autonomy, as positive characteristics of cultural labour, become problematic. Stephanie Taylor and Karen Littleton observe that ‘many women would now claim to be freed from the constraints which society placed on former generations but these supposed freedoms can be questioned’.³¹ This point is exemplified in Adele Teague and Gareth Dylan Smith’s study of five London-based professional drummers, in which the authors argue that men also have to ‘reposition’ their careers to accommodate changes in family circumstances.³² However, it was telling that one of the male participants, who regularly played at gigs but stated he no longer toured due to family commitments, acknowledged that it was his wife who undertook most of the childcare responsibilities and it was she who had taken a nine-year career break from her performing career to bring up their family.

Without exception, those with childcare responsibilities powerfully describe a range of factors which have profoundly impacted hard-won professional achievements and work that had previously been experienced as fulfilling and rewarding. Earlier in her career, Margaret (Conductor, 50s) was appointed as the first female music director of a major organisation, a much-coveted position, which coincided with the birth of her child. She recounts the challenges of juggling family and professional life, and how this impacted her ability to maintain the professional standards necessary for the post. She believed this was one of the main reasons she ended up relinquishing the role:

In contrast to her accounts of trying to maintain an acceptable work–life balance and not having sufficient time to prepare, she recounts that her male predecessor would just ‘block out’ the time prior to rehearsals two weeks before the rehearsals started; ‘nobody was allowed to call him or speak to him unless the house was burning down’, but ‘it was impossible for me to do that given what was happening at home’. He too had a family but, from Margaret’s perspective, there appeared to be little expectation that he should be similarly encumbered with domestic responsibilities. He appeared to be able to prioritise his professional responsibilities without recrimination and, from Margaret’s description, it was accepted that he should not be burdened with additional responsibilities while preparing for rehearsals. The difference between their two experiences is stark, as Margaret explained:

While many women are likely to experience challenges juggling work and childcare due to the continued expectation that they, rather than their male partners, will take on the majority of caring responsibilities, for these self-employed freelance musicians, taking maternity leave is a luxury few can afford, not only due to financial concerns, but also because they are worried about being viewed as ‘unavailable’, which might result in work ‘drying up’. Martha (Performer, 30s) completed her digital diaries during her maternity leave, but her fears about turning down work and not being asked again meant she was working regularly during this time, often driving long distances to rehearsals and performances, and getting home in the early hours of the morning. During the period she was uploading data, she had to take her baby to a concert as her babysitter had let her down, and her musician husband also had work commitments that he could not cancel. Her innate professionalism compelled her to honour her contract, but her fear of losing future work was an even greater incentive. This was prestigious, well-paid work, playing with other well-known and respected musicians, and a regular fixture in her concert diary, and Martha felt she could not ‘send a dep’ (i.e. find a deputy musician to replace her), in case the ‘dep’ was offered the work in the future. This left her with little choice but to take her six-month-old baby with her to the performance. About this three-hour journey and the subsequent rehearsal, she wrote in her digital diary:

This regular high-profile work, which she had always looked forward to and which fulfilled the definition of ‘good work’, was transformed by the stress and anxiety of having to manage childcare alongside fears of not being offered the gig again if she did not honour her contract.

Trudy (Performer, 60s), a specialist in twentieth-century and contemporary repertoire, had made several successful recordings during her career, touring frequently in the UK and abroad. During the first two years following the birth of her first child, she managed to continue playing and touring, but it was proving hard to sustain, artistically, emotionally, and financially. To eke out the time needed to learn this demanding and time-consuming new repertoire, she paid for a part-time nanny. This extra time was crucial for maintaining her international playing career, but it was not financially sustainable in the long term, as the cost of childcare exceeded the income generated from her concerts. Echoing Margaret’s experiences above, without this additional time, she was unable to prepare or perform to the standard required to sustain an international career. After the birth of her second child, she took on sole responsibility for childcare, relying on the income from her husband’s ‘stable’ job. Trudy stopped accepting concert invitations and set up a private teaching practice at home; she did not perform professionally for another sixteen years. Of that time, she says:

While her concert career had been demanding and not always well paid, she relished the musical and intellectual challenges of the repertoire; but due to her change in circumstances, her paid work became a source of anxiety and stress because she felt she was producing poor-quality work which was therefore no longer creatively fulfilling, both characteristics of ‘bad work’.

Aesthetic Labour

The role of ‘aesthetic labour’ and the different ways it shapes and informs attitudes towards work was also apparent in the women’s narratives in relation to self-promotion and marketing. Chris Warhurst, Dennis Nickson, Anne Witz, and Anne Marie Cullen describe aesthetic labour as placing particular importance on a person’s physical appearance.³³ It relies on an individual’s embodied capacities, which are deliberately geared towards appealing to the senses of ‘the customer’ and managing physical appearances potentially to enhance career prospects. In her recent work on early-career female classical musicians, Christina Scharff notes that selling and marketing oneself may evoke the spectre of prostitution for some musicians.³⁴ Although this particular concern was not raised by my participants, the ways in which they negotiated and rationalised the use of often hyper-feminine and sexualised images were very diverse, ranging from resistance to acceptance or even denial. For others, particularly the conductors in the study, this focus on their embodied capacities and perceived level of attractiveness was unwelcome and actively resisted.

Sexuality, as a dimension of aesthetic labour, was especially evident in the promotional images of the younger women in my cohort. Conventional images of femininity and heterosexuality would often involve shots of slim legs, short black dresses, or long dresses with thigh-high splits in marketing material. Only two of the participants had representation, so publicity shots were paid for by the musicians and they were in control of which images to use. The digital diaries included many of these images and there was some resistance to the idea that they might be using their bodies to sell their ‘product’. This is exemplified in Martha’s interview (Performer, 30s) in which she initiated a discussion about the marketing materials used by her all-female quartet (they did not have representation so were responsible for their own publicity materials), all aged between their late twenties and early thirties. Without prompting, Martha pointed to one of their publicity photos, in which they were wearing short, black dresses and high heels while holding their instruments, and asserted:

While Martha acknowledges that the dresses in the publicity shot were ‘short’, it is interesting to note her use of language, and there was a sense that she felt she had to ‘defend’ their choice of clothing. She refers to what they wore as ‘classy short’ (looking stylish and sophisticated) as opposed to appearing ‘tarty’ (an informal term used to describe a woman dressed in a sexually provocative manner). Martha was at pains to downplay the potentially sexual interpretation of their clothing choices, but it was evident from her later comment that she was aware that the ensemble may project a certain look that makes full use of their ‘embodied capacities’ and that has a level of commercial usefulness. She noted that, ‘it just so happens that none of us are particularly large in size [and as we’re] doing a lot of evening and drinks parties and corporate events it seems more natural to wear a shorter dress’. This suggests that she assumes corporate clients will have certain expectations of how a young, all-female ensemble should dress, and her allusion to adhering to notions of conventional femininity (young and slim) appears to collude with this.

However, others were more overt about the benefits of explicitly engaging in aesthetic labour, asserting their image could help raise their profile:

As a woman without an agent, looking to self-release a CD, it is perhaps not surprising that Alisha rationalises the use of her body to market herself in monetary terms. (The sexualisation, image, and marketing of female classical performers is also discussed in Chapter 6, ‘Soloists and Divas: Evolving Opportunities, Identity, and Reception’.)

The issue of aesthetic labour for the conductors in the study revealed a completely different problem: the need to downplay and minimise their femininity for fear that their looks, bodies, or clothing choices might contribute to not being taken seriously, potentially undermining their professionalism. This was reinforced by their experiences of being a ‘female conductor’, and the very fact of them being a woman in the role resulting in discontent or resentment by others with whom they worked. This ranged from passive-aggressive behaviours such as being ‘stared at the whole time by the male lead cellist as if being conducted by a woman was the worst thing that had ever happened’ to gendered challenges to their authority, ‘if a man is insistent, he’s strong, if a woman is insistent, she’s a bitch’ (Margaret, Conductor, 50s). The conductors in the study expressed the need to ‘emanate authority’ when in front of an orchestra and were conscious of their clothing choices, not wearing anything tight-fitting where ‘things are going to move around and be a distraction’ (Kay, Conductor, 40s).

In contrast with Martha’s narrative above, a (perceived) lack of attractiveness was considered a professional asset for conductors. Layla (Conductor, 20s), a talented young conductor in demand in the UK and Europe noted:

Layla deliberately downplayed her femininity and made careful choices about her clothes on the podium, insisting she was ‘grateful’ she was not conventionally attractive; she felt it gave her an advantage because she felt her professional abilities were taken more seriously by the players. How women respond to the demands of managing personal aesthetics appears to vary across age and stage of career, and the type of musical activity in which they are involved, shaping their professional experiences in important ways. (The image of female conductors – with particular reference to Ethel Leginska and Marin Alsop – is also discussed in Chapter 5, ‘On the Podium: Women Conductors’.)

Conclusion

Regardless of the uncertainties of such work, there is significant pleasure to be gained despite the long hours, financial insecurity,³⁵ and other challenges outlined above. As my study suggests, it is possible for women to sustain a fulfilling and rewarding career in music.³⁶ It is important when undertaking critical work about the creative industries to take into account that there are opportunities for positive and rewarding experiences, which should not be simply dismissed ‘as the product of ideology or disciplinary discourse’.³⁷ In particular, paying greater attention to the affective aspects of cultural work provides interesting and more nuanced insights into how this work is experienced. Acknowledging this ‘affective messiness’ neither celebrates nor denies the negative aspects of cultural work but, instead, recognises ‘the far more common quotidian problems and strengths of negotiating creative employment’.³⁸ In attempting to interrogate both the challenges and opportunities women experience in their working lives it becomes evident that there are serious limitations when defining work as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because, as discussed above, the context in which work is undertaken is key to understanding how it is experienced.

However, while recognising there are positive aspects to work in the music industries for women, this should not detract from the fact that this work is experienced as highly gendered and can result in discrimination and exploitation. Much is made of personal autonomy in policy discourses, and having freedom to make choices about one’s life is the marker of an autonomous individual and important in the notion of agency. But the contexts in which the women undertake their work demonstrate the gendered dimensions of cultural work, and emphasise the importance of engaging with, and trying to understand, the materiality of their musical lives in order to uncover how these contexts shape and inform women’s working lives.