Portfolio careers and work-life balance among musicians: An initial study into implications for...

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Portfolio careers and work-life balance among musicians:An initial study into implications for higher musiceducation

Adele Teague and Gareth Dylan Smith

British Journal of Music Education / FirstView Article / June 2015, pp 1 - 17DOI: 10.1017/S0265051715000121, Published online: 24 June 2015

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0265051715000121

How to cite this article:Adele Teague and Gareth Dylan Smith Portfolio careers and work-life balance among musicians:An initial study into implications for higher music education. British Journal of Music Education,Available on CJO 2015 doi:10.1017/S0265051715000121

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B. J. Music Ed. page 1 of 17 C© Cambridge University Press 2015doi:10.1017/S0265051715000121

Portfolio careers and work-life balance among musicians:An initial study into implications for higher music education

A d e l e Te a g u e a n d G a r e t h D y l a n S m i t h

Institute of Contemporary Music Performance, 1A Dyne Road, London NW6 7XG, UK

[email protected], [email protected]

Musicians are acknowledged to lead complex working lives, often characterised as portfoliocareers. The higher music education research literature has tended to focus on preparingstudents for rich working lives and multiple identity realisations across potential roles.Extant literature does not address the area of work-life balance, which this paper begins toexplore, as the authors seek to better understand potential challenges around combiningmusic graduates’ multivariate ambitions, commitments and identities as musicians in theworld. Rich data are presented, following interviews with professional musicians in London,UK, discussing health, portfolio careers and family. The authors conclude that moreresearch is required to gain a deeper understanding of work-life balance for musicians,and that pedagogical approaches in higher music education could more effectively helpstudents to prepare for their futures in a more holistic way.

I n t r o d u c t i o n

Hallam and Gaunt (2012, p. 1) observe that ‘pursuing a career in music is one of the mostchallenging and satisfying things you can do’. In this paper we emphasise ‘reconciling thework-life balance’ (Thévenon & Horko, 2009) from among the challenges, and argue that itis important, therefore, for the higher music education community to address this area withand for students about to embark upon careers in the professional music field for whichthey 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 avalidating university partner. The School offers students the opportunity to specialise inguitar, bass, drums, vocals, songwriting or music business. The first author is a professionaldrummer 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 authorsco-designed this study, with the first author primarily gathering data, and the second authordeveloping the paper’s theoretical underpinning.

There is a high volume of interest in the music education research literature onpreparing student musicians for careers in music. While work-life balance has receivedconsiderable attention in such fields as vocational behaviour (e.g. Greenhaus et al.,2003) and industrial relations (e.g. White et al., 2003), it has been largely unexamined inrelation to music education. Existing studies explore career options (e.g. Hallam & Gaunt,

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Ade l e Tea gue and G a re th D y l an Sm i t h

2012), self-efficacy and aspirations (Long, 2013), portfolio careers (Bennett, 2008), identity(Bennett, 2013), creativities (Burnard, 2012; Smith & Shafighian 2013), gender (Smith,2013a, 2014), notions of success (Smith, 2013b), collaboration (Gaunt & Westerlund,2013), improvisation (Philip, 2013) and the working lives of classical musicians (Cottrell,2004; Bennett, 2008); but few if any studies explore work-life balance for career musicians.Gregory and Connolly (2008, p. F5) suggest that ‘as work-life balance moves up the politicalagenda this is a major challenge to policy makers’. This being the case, we see it also as animperative for those preparing career musicians in higher education institutions, especiallyin light of Parkinson and Smith’s (2014) observation that ‘in the last decade employabilityhas arguably become the principal concept through which the value and purpose of highereducation has been rationalised in official discourse in the UK’. Smith (2013c, p. 27)argues that an ‘epistemological deficit’ in higher music education ‘is accompanied andexacerbated 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 widerpublic consciousness and the mainstream media’ that ignore much (perhaps most) of whatit means to be a musician. We therefore position this paper primarily in the growing area ofresearch in higher popular music education (hereafter, HPME) (Lebler, 2007, 2008; Feichas,2010; Carey & Lebler, 2012; Smith 2013b, 2013c, Smith & Shafighian, 2013; Parkinson &Smith, 2014, 2015), with the hope that it also proves relevant to colleagues in other areasof higher music education.

Berger (2002, p. 176) observes ‘a huge gap between the experience of living a normallife at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense tothat life’. In recognition of this being the case in higher music education, Bennett (2013, p.238) urges students to adopt ‘a future-oriented epistemology developed within a safe studyenvironment’. 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 centurycan become the balance that so many seek in the 21st century’ (2001, p. 57), the authorscontend 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 theirrespective rationales. However, once this trait is regarded as belonging to the initialsocialization process of the artist . . . such an explanation turns out to be highlydeterministic and ultimately tautological. (Menger, 1999, p. 554)

Being intimately bound-up in the career-orientated socialisation of musicians, HPME tendsto focus on (indeed, arguably to over-emphasise) training students in acquisition of virtuosicperformance and/or compositional skills (Smith, 2013c). Bennett (2013, p. 236) explainsthat such a culture is unlikely ‘to encourage broad purviews of career or broad definitionsof what it is to be a successful musician’, excluding in the process vital discussion aroundissues of work-life balance.

While studying at the School, and subsequently in the workplace, focusing increasinglyon developing a career as a professional musician, the first author became aware of oldermusicians who were very successful in their careers, but, possibly as a result, appeared

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Po r t f o l i o ca r ee r s and wo rk - l i f e ba l ance among m us i c i ans

to have ‘missed out’ in other aspects of life including, for instance, having children, orwhose 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 theirart or career? Or vice versa? Reynolds (2005, p. 1313) has observed how many adults‘find that the demands of their work and personal or family lives are at least partiallyincompatible 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 lifecan improve psychological and physical health’. In this paper, we explore some of thetensions, challenges, and ebb-and-flow that exist between the family lives and work patternsof professional musicians, with the aim of benefiting future music professionals throughpotential incorporation of understandings from this study into curricular planning in HPME.

M e t h o d

A qualitative approach (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Cresswell, 2007) was selected for thisstudy. As Bennett reassuringly reminds researchers in her pioneering study Understandingthe Classical Music Profession, ‘qualitative research is based on the notion that realityis subjectively created rather than objectively defined’ (Bennett, 2008, p. 3). Thus thiswas 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 recentexplorations of the working lives of musicians (e.g. Cottrell, 2004; Bennett, 2008; Burnard,2012; Philip, 2013; Smith, 2013a, 2013b). By carrying out audio-recorded, semi-structuredinterviews we were able to collect rich data on individuals’ views and experiences.1 Ourstudy used convenience sampling – the participants were musicians to whom we hadeasy access through our work at the School. This was an appropriate use of conveniencesampling, as in this initial investigation we were ‘getting a feeling for the issues involved’(Robson, 2011, p. 275), rather than attempting to generalise our findings.

The participants were mostly drummers and drum teachers at the School, knownpersonally to the researchers, and were aged between 25 and 45. They were selected onthe basis of comprising a manageable data set for the research project, and drummers wereselected 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 fromthe School. A female drummer from outside the School was also interviewed. Including afemale drummer in the sample renders the sample statistically unrepresentative of genderingin the drumming community and HPME (Green, 1997; Whiteley, 1997; Tom Tom Magazine,2013; Smith, 2014), but is in line with other studies of the drumming community (Smith,2013a), and was felt to provide an easily overlooked and important perspective, especiallysince the first author is also female. Some participants wished to be identified here withtheir real names, and others have been anonymised in accordance with their wishes bygiving 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.

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Lucy – female, singer, married, one young child, another on the way, teaches at theSchool.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 hisearly twenties) that she (or he) wanted to be a professional musician.

Although participants are nearly all drummers, we suggest that the findings are relevantto other musicians, since the issues discussed do not appear to be instrument-specific.Indeed, as Menger (1999, p. 541), for instance, observes, ‘artistic labor markets arepuzzling and challenging’ for researchers owing to the flexibility and unpredictabilityof 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 trainingground of HPME. A limitation of our research could be that the findings arguably havelittle relevance or resonance beyond the scope of the study. However, we see this paperas a response to calls such as those from Lamb et al. (2002, p. 659) for more scholarshipthat ‘challenges’ music education, and from Jorgensen (2009) for on-going reflexive andcritical writing in the field. Furthermore, the authors’ acquaintance with the School locatesthe study in a tradition of qualitative explorations seeking ‘understandings of particularsituations’ (Bresler & Stake, 2006, p. 278). As Muncey (2010, p. 8) explains, ‘subjectivitydoesn’t infect your work, it enhances it. Making links between your own experience andyour [scholarly] work is healthy.’ We hope, therefore, that the issues discussed are pertinentand thought-provoking to those embarking on and preparing others for careers in popularmusic.

Data were gathered within two weeks in the month of December. For professionalmusicians in the UK, this is a busy period, perhaps especially so for those with familycommitments and children. For these reasons, interviews were conducted in a range oflocations including a classroom, a restaurant, a theatre, a car, and via video call. Interviewquestions 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 (2013a, 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 todiscuss the priority that they assigned to their various roles and activities (including sportsand other leisure interests). We asked about career duration and structure, including workportfolio. We asked about views on family, its importance to participants, and whether/howtheir work life has changed or would change to accommodate family life; following thework of Bayton (1998), Green (1997) and Smith (2013a), we asked whether, how and towhat extent participants felt their sex or gender affects their views on having or taking careof children. We asked about what, if any, effect working as a professional musician hason personal relationships, and, again following Bayton (1998), Green (1997) and Smith(2013a, 2014), we asked whether, how and to what extent participants felt that sex orgender is an issue in music and whether it might affect the desire to have a family. Allparticipants were sent copies of this paper prior to submission for publication, and allapproved our use of their words.

A grounded approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1968) was used to recognise, iterativelycode, and pursue emergent themes for analysis. Throughout the process of interview,

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transcription and analysis we remained aware of the need to reflect critically on theinformation from participants to ensure that we did not misrepresent them. We coded theresults according to recurring themes among participants’ interview responses, and havegrouped 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 sociologicaland social-psychological studies in music and music education (e.g. Green, 2002; Smithet al., 2009; Rinsema, 2012; Cremata et al., 2013; Smith, 2013a).

F i n d i n g s

Hea l t h

One of the common, multifaceted themes that emerged was health – both mental andphysical. Gemma, alongside her work as a professional drummer, is studying a NaturopathicNutritional Therapy course. Dave leads an active lifestyle that includes martial artsactivities. Greg reflected that ‘I used to be really into sport, but as I got better at musicand more involved in that, I do less and less sport, which is terribly sad’. He remarked thathis views and priorities around health have changed recently, saying ‘in the last coupleof years, I’ve thought about it a lot more, because various people have got ill . . . earlierthan they should have done. And also because I’ve got a kid on the way . . . Family, yeahmassively important’. Greg’s attitude towards his health has been changed by his experienceof others’ ill-health, and by the imminent arrival of his first child. This newfound awarenessof his wellbeing ‘completely changed everything, in every single way I’ve approached mywork. Completely.’ For instance, Greg recently took up playing badminton with friends: ‘Iwas actually depping2 the show out, and totally unheard of behaviour from me – to depsomething out not to go and do another job . . . because I was hanging out with peoplewho had nothing to do with music . . . playing badminton and having a laugh . . . reallyenjoyed it’. Although sacrificing a small amount of work, doing this created a balanceoutside of work for Greg, a sound investment physically, psychologically and socially.

Darren, too, expressed a very keen interest in health and fitness. His Twitter pagedescribes 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 [touringpop band] gig. And then I just didn’t have time to do the course because I was awayall of the time, for a number of years . . . I even paid for it and never got the moneyback.

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. Gregrecalls 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] forabout a month . . . and share an apartment with another musician who’s basically having acomplete nervous breakdown, and I was on my own’. This was clearly a very challenging

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experience for Greg, especially emotionally, and provoked a big change in his career. Hesaid

I just got married, my mate’s died, I’m sharing with someone who’s got some seriousmental health issues, and I just don’t want to be here . . . and I missed his funeralbecause I’d taken up all the time to dep out to go on honeymoon . . . I can’t do thisanymore, 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 mustmake sure I have some time off’. I will do all that I can to make something work andrehearse, do a gig and make it as good as I can possibly make it. But there comes apoint where I know that . . . the saying if you don’t catch up with sleep, sleep willcatch up with you, is very true. I’ve been to the point where I’ve had accidents becauseI’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 ateight o’clock, turned out to be half ten. We had no digs booked, it just so happenedI think I did the majority of the driving, I just kept going . . . I was in the van and therest of the band were in the back. I had to drop them off in London then come hometo Buckinghamshire . . . four and a half hours maybe five hours. So it got to aboutfive o’clock in the morning and I was about a mile and a half from home, ‘voom’ justfell asleep! Came off the road, hit a road sign, missed a bus stop by inches, bouncedaround a bit, managed to get it back on the road but the van, with the front all smashedin . . . It was a bit of a wake up call really, to the point where, there are limits and youcan’t push past them. It’s as simple as that . . . it’s always better to err on the side ofcaution.

Darren’s story recalls an account by Smith (2013a, p. 69) whose health and lifecommitments 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 ofplaying this wonderful instrument with those musicians, providing the groove, makingme feel alive, is too much for me to resist. It is only on the way back to London inthe early hours of a Tuesday from a gig at the other end of the country, in the backof an unheated van in late December, with barely a seat to myself and time for onlyan hour’s sleep before I must rise for work, that I wonder why I do this. As for findingthe time to mark students’ work, plan lessons and write papers, these factors result infurther late nights and more sleep deprivation.

Having witnessed how working in music can affect their health, these musicians areattempting 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 (2008, p. 49)reports ‘there is a higher rate of injury amongst musicians than athletes . . . musicians

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have long been acknowledged to be susceptible to physical and psychological injury’.Musicians’ health – both mental and physical – appears threatened by the very nature ofthe profession. The experience of this pressurised professional environment is sometimesfurther intensified by the ubiquity in some circles of drug abuse. Miller and Quigley (2012,p. 401) report cocaine usage among musicians at between three and four times that of thegeneral population. Darren had an unpleasant experience when, he explained, his careerdid not benefit from a particular West-End3 encounter because ‘I wasn’t in the coke club’;he decided not to follow a career path into professional musical theatre, saying ‘that wasbasically my West End experience, was that, and after that it kind of left a little sour taste’.

P o r t f o l i o c a r e e r s

Menger observes how:

The careers of self-employed artists display most of the attributes of the entrepreneurialcareer form: the capacity to create valued output through the production of works forsale, the motivation for deep commitment and high productivity associated with theiroccupational independence – control over their own work, a strong sense of personalachievement through the production of tangible outputs, the ability to set their ownpace, but also a high degree of risk-taking. (Menger, 1999, p. 552)

This form of working has been recognised as the norm for musicians for centuries. Weber(2004, p. 5) observes that:

The history of musical life amounts to a series of successful and unsuccessfulentrepreneurial efforts to make an impact on established tastes and institutions. Inorder to succeed as a high-level professional, a musician had to acquire a broad setof social skills by which to identify and accomplish promising opportunities. It wasinsufficient 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 livesinclude Bennett (2008, 2013); Gaunt and Papageorgi (2010); Hallam and Gaunt (2012); andPartti (2012). Bennett (2008, p. 8) also uses the term ‘protean careers’, which are ‘definedas careers in which multiple roles are undertaken . . . protean careerists self-manage theircareers and adapt their practice as necessary to meet personal and professional needs’. Theparticipants described a range of ways in which their work patterns fitted this description. Asthe (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 ourstudy displayed versatility, entrepreneurship (Cartwright & Smith, 2014) and entrepreneurialcreativity (Burnard, 2012, p. 43) that are central to musicians’ lives. The interview datasupport the observations of Arthur et al. (2005) – that career success is ‘idiosyncratic tothe person, not only in terms of personal preferences but also in terms of accommodatingwork and family or other issues of life-work balance . . . [and that] people who exhibit

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boundaryless career behavior report considerably higher levels of career success’ (Arthuret al., 2005, 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 welaunch our new business . . . a life consultancy company.’ Lucy has ‘got my own businessas 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, buthave kind of excited me to do something else with my life’. Greg is currently spending alot of his time building up the business so that in the future it will be a reliable source ofincome for him and his family:

The band that I run, which I work really night and day on to be honest . . . I’ve madeit that because otherwise I’d still be just in the West End, but I don’t wanna be, ‘causeI wanna be at home at night and changing nappies and stuff . . . It’s pretty depressingdealing with not knowing . . . the whole point is I’ve got a company that I co-ownwith someone and that is a proper job really . . . That’s my proper job, that’s what Ihope will be my security.

In contrast to Greg’s sense of relief and freedom at not relying on West End work, for Davethe West End appeared to offer job security. Dave remarked that if he had not followed hiscurrent career route, ‘yeah I would have probably gone into management. . . . or probablythe West End route . . . but again it’s regular, so you can plan around it’. However, theprevious section on health highlights complicating issues that Darren experienced withWest End work. Perceptions of working in London’s prestigious musical theatre circuit areclearly varied among the participants, highlighting the subjective, individualised nature ofentrepreneurial careers.

In its survey of 1,966 working musicians in the UK, the Musicians’ Union found that60% of musicians earned a portion of their income from teaching, and 81% from workingas a performing artist (Musicians’ Union, 2012, p. 10). This study’s participants describedhow they incorporated teaching into a portfolio career. For Greg ‘the teaching thing’s beenbrilliant because I’m reconnecting with people who love [music]’, while Lucy describedher teaching job as ‘rewarding’. Darren explained:

A lot of people take on teaching as musicians, because it’s something they can relyon. If they get into a good post it could be a nice sort of regular income from one ortwo 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 duringthe summer, only privately and then I’m gigging and working on my own projects andstuff like that.

Darren’s comments, reflecting a more pragmatic approach than Lucy’s or Greg’s, support’sBennett’s findings that musicians ‘noted the attraction of teaching in providing regularincome, regular hours and a level of artistic and administrative control’ (Bennett, 2008, p.108). Gemma reflected these sentiments, also commenting on the benefit of teaching closeto her home: ‘I think probably the hours, because I could determine them to fit around

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what I needed them to fit around and also I think distance as well’. Dave, too, enjoys theflexibility 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 fromhome and at the independent schools that I’m at, it’s down to me what I do, so theflexibility 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.

Fam i l y

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 musicaltheatre production that he ‘kind of didn’t want to take, but it was pretty good money . . . Igot married . . . and I took quite a lot of time off. I probably broke even on it . . . I tookenough time off to keep the teaching going, and to try and see [his wife]’. A short timelater, he ‘basically repositioned my career so that I was gonna be in a situation where I’dbe someone who could be a dad and actually know the child, rather than just carrying ondoing what I was doing’. This is in contrast to the ways in which Greg had seen othersaround 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 behindthem. Just sort of slightly strange OCD behaviour and just never depped.’ Dave describeshow he similarly took steps to prioritise family life: ‘my main decision was before we hadkids actually, when I first started going out with my wife, I was on tour . . . and just beforewe got married, I decided to not tour anymore. I actually turned down a big tour becauseI was getting married.’

Gemma, although currently without children, discussed potential changes to her careerin order to have a family in the future. She said ‘I think definitely touring, things wouldhave to change, initially, or you know, maybe I would feel completely different once I hada family – I might not want to tour anymore at all.’ Following Smith’s (2013a, p. 17) modelof identity realisation, we asked interview participants to say what they considered to betheir principal role or identity. Participants with children said that their primary role is withtheir family. However, Gemma said,

At the moment I would still say I am a drummer . . . I’m changing my mind a bit aboutthings because, I think, of the [undisclosed] age I’m at and stuff, but yeah I wouldstill say I am a drummer . . . I think [family]’s something very important to me, withwhatever [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 definitelysay 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.

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Darren’s remarks also underscore the importance of musicians’ identities in managingcareers (Bennett, 2008, 2013; Smith, 2013a).

Gende r d i ff e r ences

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, wheremen don’t, generally’. He added, however, that ‘I think that the maternal instinct in somepeople 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 soonerfor girls I think than it does for boys. I doubt any of the other drummers here [at theSchool] will be sitting behind a drum kit going ‘I want a baby’ . . . That is definitely amuch more female thing to do.

Dave, too ‘think[s] there is obviously more of a natural disposition for women to wantchildren than guys. I think it’s just a biological thing’. These (perhaps learned or perceived)sex and gender (Butler, 1999, 2004; Bourdieu, 2001; Lee, 2010) differences seem to havethe potential to affect differently males’ and females’ decisions regarding family and theircareers.

Gregory and Connolly (2008, p. F2) found that across Britain ‘women reduce their workhours substantially following childbirth, particularly the arrival of a first child. The presenceof children continues to shape their labour supply patterns for many years subsequently.’Bayton (1998, p. 33), in turn, observes that ‘women [musicians] typically have to choosebetween motherhood and career . . . due to the demands placed on one’s personal life bylong, unsociable hours and incessant touring.’ Gemma again comments on changes shewould expect to make to touring and performing aspects of her work portfolio in order toraise a family:

No matter how gender is or how it’s perceived in music or, you know, however thingschange, the fact is women can only have children up until a certain age, and so that’salways gonna come into it. Whereas men can do whatever – they can be rock androll stars until they’re 60 and, you know, maybe they can still father a family. So it’sdefinitely something that women, if they want a family, they have to think about morethan their male peers . . . It’s definitely been on my mind that something’s gonna haveto change if I’m gonna have a family, so yeah, definitely down to my gender . . . Ithink I would prefer to be around to bring up a family, definitely. I would still want tocarry on with music and I think that with my partner it would be a situation where Iwould 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

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of work undertaken in any economy and it is, moreover, carried out in the main by women’(McDowell, 2001, p. 453).

In keeping with this trend, the women in our sample (and those whose male spouseswere in the sample) tended to stay at home and raise their families, rather than men doingthis. 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 hermusical career]. I definitely feel like I’ve changed since becoming a mother – my prioritieshave completely changed and I feel it’s quite important for me to be around more thanto be out more’. McDowell (2001, 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 undertakenwithout 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 acareer and family’. Sheila E replied:

I don’t think we have to choose. I think if this is our lifestyle and career then it canbe whatever we want to do; sometimes it’s hard on the child, sometimes it’s not. Youtake them with you or you bring help; it depends how much you’re gone. There are somany options now but I don’t think we need to choose anymore. I think if we’re goingto do it we’re going to do it. I see a lot more artists now that take the tour bus and thewhole 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’relike Beyoncé or something then you know of course you can have all the help youneed. 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-budgetinternational stadium-tour circuit. Tellingly, she said about her career, ‘I don’t know toomany 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 worldtours number very few. In very high profile, high-income situations, the circumstances aredifferent from those of the majority of working musicians.

In a relationship where one person is looking after children and may therefore not bein paid employment, the responsibility to provide falls to the other partner, whose workinglife can be affected as well. Lucy’s husband is also a musician, and she explained how hiswork 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 thehunter-gatherer mode . . . that instinct has definitely kicked in with him. He teacheshere [at the School], gigs every weekend, he’s in an originals band as well, he’srecording as well and he’s the programme leader now here for the part-time course as

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well, so he’s taken on loads of extra jobs because of it . . . He doesn’t like the thoughtof not providing.

Darren similarly felt that ‘thinking of that traditional role as the breadwinner . . . if thewoman is having a baby then the man has to go out and earn the money’. Greg, with ababy arriving imminently, was ‘feeling the pressure a tiny bit because obviously there’sgonna be a child in a way that there wasn’t before . . . and I’d still take that [rather] than beon a show and not be around’. Likewise, Dave supported his family while his wife was ona nine-year career break raising their children. These views demonstrate how, very often, amale partner’s traditional work role (Bourdieu, 2001) – within a heterosexual relationship– can intensify or shift in order to provide for a family. This normative familial arrangementleads McDowell (2001, p. 461) to argue that ‘the division of labour between productiveand reproductive labour needs to be renegotiated’, a feeling that was not expressed bymale or female participants in this study. It is possible that the participants’ responsesappear anomalous because of the degree of agency expressed and afforded them by theirentrepreneurial careers, typical among musicians.

Summar y

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 restswith the individual’ (Arthur et al., 2005, p. 196). As Narvaez et al. (2009, p. 64) describe,‘various identities become active or inactive as people locate themselves in various socialcontexts’, a process captured in the model of the Snowball Self (Smith, 2013a, p. 15).Following Smith’s model, a strong sense of agency among the musicians implies a high levelof active identity realisation in a variety of roles and contexts, with both passive and activerealisation of principal meta-identities (Smith, 2013a, p. 17) as ‘musician’ or ‘drummer’,‘family man’ or ‘mother’ emerging. A recurring theme is the necessity for musicians tocommit to ‘quite literally, take on more work than they can do’ (Cottrell, 2004, p. 60); thiscan lead to problems with physical and mental health, and with relationships. Participantsdescribed a need, discovered several years into intense musical careers, to (re)-prioritisetheir health. All participants explained that taking care of their children is or would be veryimportant to them. Being part of a family was a key part of these musicians’ identities, andthey would be prepared to prioritise family over (musical) work. The participants indicatedthat women tend to be the primary carers of children, confirming societal ‘assumptionsthat women have a particular responsibility for reproductive labour’ (McDowell, 2001, p.454), while males take on additional work or alter their work patterns in order to providefor family – in apparent opposition to Gregory and Connolly’s observation of ‘how little theworking patterns of fathers respond to critical events or to changes in the mother’s workinghours’ (2008, p. F20).

Participants explained that the work most suitable to fit with having a family wasteaching, West End musical theatre work, and other entrepreneurial activity such as runningone’s own company, whereas touring emerged as least suited to balancing with a familylife. This view resonates with the authors as being especially relevant to aspiring musicians

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in HPMPE, since touring is purported to be an increasingly lucrative source of revenue formusicians, especially since the decline of record sales as a (the) major source of incomefor artists (Forbes.com, 2013). Of course ‘touring’ comes in many shapes and sizes – fromregular and/or infrequent weekend trips in the back of a van to central Europe, to charteredflights and year-long global stadium tours or a never-ending UK playhouse circuit withone or more hit musical theatre productions. The inherent difficulties likely to arise fromactivity in this line of work, which forms a staple of many musicians’ careers, are aspectsof musical futures of which students in HPME and higher music education more widelyshould be made aware.

C o n c l u s i o n s a n d i m p l i c a t i o n s

We do not wish to overstate the value of this study, but hope that, despite the small size ofthe sample and the amount of data, the study will be relevant to colleagues in HPME andof interest to the broader field of music education research. The participants’ responses andthe authors’ discussion present issues pertinent to professional musicians whose complexlives 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 thesheer complexity in the music professions, mean that one could never write about a trulyrepresentative sample. Therefore the authors feel that, while itself small, this study providesa relevant window on the working lives of musicians and their concerns regarding work-lifebalance.

The disparity between, on the one hand, the complex and diverse lives managed andnegotiated 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,2013b, p. 27) based on conflation of ‘musician’ with ‘high-profile, full-time performer’supports Bennett’s (2008, p. 82) assertion that there is widespread, endemic ‘lack ofunderstanding about the roles in which musicians engage’. We argue that there is allthe more reason, then, to include pedagogies and curricula that afford such understandingat the undergraduate level. As Smith (2013b, p. 34) notes, ‘“Success” for most musicianshas yet to be determined; what seems certain is that it will not follow the patterns of thefirst 100 years of commercially available recorded music or the stories offered up by themainstream 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 andincorporate contemporary understandings of the work patterns of successful musicprofessionals, and, where necessary, to alter discourses accordingly. As teachers, thepersonal 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 guidingstudents towards realistic expectations of how they will likely work. (Smith, 2013b,p. 34)

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In addition to focusing on how they will likely work, the higher music education sectorhas an obligation to help students to consider implications of these career patterns for theirwork-life balance.

Fu r t he r r e sea r ch

We aim to undertake a follow-up to the present study, adding a ‘layer’, of substantialquantitative data, following Bennett who advocates for ‘an integrative approach . . . toprovide increased opportunities for analysis’ (Bennett, 2008, pp. 3–4). With future studies,it would be interesting and beneficial to explore more detailed analysis of demographicinformation for musicians, and to look far beyond one city and one School, consideringsurvey data from other HPME institutions, the broader popular music community, andother areas of music and music education. Mary Stakelum’s advice (2013, p. 1) supportsthe need for research into work-life balance for musicians. She calls music educators toconsider: ‘the idea that versions of curriculum and norms of behaviour are contested andtentative. For learner and teacher, this calls for an articulation of one’s goals at the earliestopportunity and for encouragement to devise the strategies which can achieve them’.

N o t e s

1 Although the data gathering for this study was undertaken by the first author, for the remainder ofthe paper the authors refer to ourselves and one another interchangeably in the first-person plural, toenable a smoother reading of the article.

2 ‘Depping’ or ‘deputising’ is the name in the UK given to the practice of musicians hiring replacementprofessionals to cover for them in a job, a practice that Cottrell (2004, p. 60) explains is ‘a necessarystrategy for musicians in a highly competitive environment’.

3 The ‘West End’ is the term applied to the highest level of professional musical theatre in London.

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Adele Teague is a drummer and percussionist with a performance background basedin musical theatre and stadium events. In addition to performing, Adele also teachesdrumming. She completed her Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours in PopularMusic Performance from the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London in2014.

Gareth Dylan Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at the Institute of ContemporaryMusic Performance in London, where he teaches research, practice-as-research, drumming,and cultural and philosophical studies. He is a drummer, performing and recordingin musical theatre, rock, punk, blues and pop bands. His principal research interestsare popular music education (especially higher education), music making and leisure,democracy and feminism in music education, embodiment in music performance, identityand eudaimonia.

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