The Times they are a-changin'
When I first started out as a professional musician the main driving force behind everything
A bit of background.
When I first started out as a professional musician the main driving force behind everything that I did was to keep myself out of an office job, and to run a vibrant and buzzing recording studio in the heart of the community of musicians that I loved to hang out in. I managed to do that for about eight years, but now the recording studio has gone and I spend a large part of my time in an office sending out emails, researching funding opportunities and chasing up jobs. That is the day-to-day reality for many musicians up and down the country, especially in light of the cutbacks and the general attitude that this current administration has to the arts in general.
When I started out it seemed that funding was available left, right and centre. I was running music projects all over the place, different community centres, different schools…even in different continents. Africa …. If you wondered? Things are very different now. One interesting thing to come out of the current economic climate though has been the ever-decreasing pool of work requiring musicians to examine their own practise, to offer something unique and to ensure that musicianship is as good as it can get … if not better!
Make a change and listen to your clients!
I have to admit that as a fully paid up member of the anti ‘happy clappy squad’ it is refreshing to see a new breed of ‘community musician’ going through the process of evolution and re-definition. Let me just explain what I mean by the ‘happy clappy squad’; for me the squad comprises of workshop artists who don’t either listen or respond to the needs of the young people that they are working with. They just run the same old woolly workshop with everyone sat in a circle, clapping their hands and being made to sit through excruciatingly bad icebreaker exercises. These days when an organisation or funding body wants a job done there just aren’t the resources to take a chance on someone who doesn’t quite make the grade. I’m all for nurturing new talent, but the ‘happy clappy squad’ who were once to be found in large numbers are a thing of the past.
This hit home when it became obvious that the skill sets that organisations were seeking from musicians changed radically. Young people have become a lot more sophisticated now with what they can access in terms of music making. This means that community musicians need to be one step ahead, creatively, skilfully and resourcefully. For example, about two years ago Youth Music approached me to be a mentor on a new initiative. Although personal and social outcomes for participants have always been a very important part of my delivery it seemed that in many cases it was almost as important, if not more than, the music activity itself.
Give 100% of yourself.
What made the role of music mentor so fulfilling for me was that it forced me to question and re-evaluate why I had chosen to work within the field of community music in the first place. After all when you are working in a situation on a one to one basis with a young person there is no hiding place. Not only were my musical skills tested, but also so were my own communication skills. Many of the young people I worked with came from very challenging backgrounds and faced on-going problems within a mainstream educational setting. Within this context then, not only was my role to be that of an educator and enabler, but also it was to build a constructive relationship with each individual. After all, to be an effective music mentor, practitioners should be using music as a common ground and shared interest to develop a meaningful relationship with a mentee in order to support them in making significant changes in knowledge, behaviour and thinking. I learned that by giving 100% of myself, if possible, to each individual my work became far more effective and personally rewarding. One memorable experience was mentoring a young person who had had a difficult upbringing and family life and coping with mental health issues. Their attendance at school was sporadic and when in school behavior was challenging for teachers and other pupils. During the weekly music mentoring with, we developed a good relationship that meant they attended these sessions (and school!) regularly… I recognized that this was a huge achievement and as a result I gave 100% to the young person - on the same day I had booked her into a studio to record the tracks we had been working on together my wife gave birth to our 3rd child; I kept the appointment! Set yourself a standard and don’t dip! This is now the benchmark for me to work towards regardless of the types of music workshops that I deliver. This, I believe is also what any decent music organisation should expect from the workshop artists that it employs. Of course it goes without saying that artists should be an expert in their own particular field of specialism, but the ability to inspire, communicate and listen are paramount. I’m not taking that office job just yet ….. So based on all this where am I going now? How do I keep myself from succumbing to the 9-5 office job that I have so far avoided for the last 25 years? Well it’s by taking the lead from young people and from new technologies. In order to have a unique selling point and to be able to offer value for money to potential employers I have recently invested in a suite of iPads, loading them up with innovative, hands on and educational music making applications. This is my most recent attempt to re – invent the way in which I work. Obviously I still offer my pre-existing music skills, after all the iPads as a resource in themselves might be viewed by some as a bit of a gimmick, but for some young people the combination of myself as a human face plus an iPad has made music making very accessible to some. After all, isn’t that what community music is all about?