It's easy to go to a musical performance and see the really good parts: The end results of all the hard work, the applause, and so on...but unless you've ever been a musician, you might not think about all of the grunt work that goes into what is seen on stage:
When we talk about full-time or professional musicians, we don't really look at the inglorious parts of being one: the practicing, the rehearsing, the chasing down of gigs and recordings, the way most actually make money. (It's not gigging, that's for sure.) And with good reason: That's boring to most people, usually.
Not to Luke Rabin. He's a drummer, and founded a group called FREEWAYarts: "a company that hopes to alternatively finance music through supportive communities while offering artists a more sustainable livelihood." And FREEWAYarts has started a series of short online interviews with musicians (mostly drummers so far) about the realities of making a living in music. Check out its Vimeo channel for more, including one feature with Rabin himself.
There's a lot more on the subject to be found in this
excellent post over at A Blog Supreme. Here's the money quote, in my opinion:
Musicians don't choose to do music — it chooses them. It's almost a cliche by now, but how else do you talk about an inexplicable driving passion? Time and time again, you get people saying things like this: "For me, the decision was kind of already made. It wasn't like I decided, 'Oh, I think I'm just going to do this.'"
As they say, read the whole thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment