The speaker, a forty-year-old Vietnam veteran, had recently turned to songwriting and had answered my ad in the paper about recording. After two hours in which we got some of his songs on tape, we got to talking about his music and where he was going with it. He saw music as something fun, something that he enjoyed doing and that helped him to digest his war experience. When I brought up recording and selling records, he got belligerent. He saw music as a sacred art that would be spoiled if it came into contact with money. At that point, I knew I wouldn't get paid for my recording time. I'm sure he thought I was glad to help in the creation of the art he loved.
A fellow guitarist told me about a new coffeehouse that was interested in having live music in the evenings. "When I told her how much I charge' he said, "there was silence at the other end of the line. Then she said 'Oh dear, I was hoping you'd do it for free. I hadn't thought about paying the musicians..."
In a conversation with a friend who directs a church choir, I discovered that the many hours she put in every week were on a volunteer basis. "I've been trying to get a stipend for years," she said, "but people in the church have the attitude that you should share your God-given gifts."
Assumptions about music and money are rampant. All the time, I talk to musicians, usually inexperienced ones, who feel that their talent is a gift and that they shouldn't charge money for it. I get the same attitude from music appreciators. Playing in bars, I often come across people who want to buy me a drink. When I suggest that they put the price of a drink in my tip jar, they are offended. Somehow, my asking for money in return for my services is seen as bad or dirty.
This viewpoint has a certain amount of validity. Music and gifts lie in the realm of Eros, while money lies in the realm of Logos. Exchanging money for music is a mismatched situation. However, in our society it is a perfectly reasonable one.
Lewis Hyde, in The Gift, outlines the differences between erotic and logical economy. Logical economies create commodities, put dollar values on them, and separate buyers from sellers. People exchange real value for symbols of value. Every transaction is a complete event, and requires no more contact between the people involved. The exchange of money separates them, or at least does nothing to connect them.
Erotic economy, however, is marked by the exchange of gifts. In giving a gift, you do not reckon its worth, and you do not expect equal return. When the return gift comes, it is given freely, with no expectations. The exchange has a quality of joining - you feel bonded to someone who has gifted you, and you feel moved to respond in kind. Typically, Hyde asserts, a gift will come back with added value. Rather than hoarding gifts as people hoard money, gifts are generally consumed or passed on. They are not owned by anyone.
Ideally, music should be transferred under these circumstances. Music is something that passes through you. It is not "yours," and so you have no right to sell it. Music should be put freely out for people to hear. However, the exchange needs to be two-sided. To function as a gift economy, the audience needs to reciprocate, to give something of equal or greater value back to the performer. The result should be a positive feeling-bond between the musician and the audience. If you are a full-time musician, your audience should reciprocate to the point where all your needs - food, clothing, shelter - are met.
I have fond memories of two instances of musical gift exchange in my life. In 1985,.I was performing at a restaurant in Los Angeles. A woman at a table near me asked the waiter for some paper and a pen. As I played, she sketched me. In fifteen minutes, she had produced two extremely skilled portraits of me, both of which she deposited in my tip jar. In 1987, I was commissioned by a silversmith friend to compose a piece of music as a memorial for a relative who had passed away. In return, she created a silver box inset with stones, using a favorite turquoise of mine as the lid.
Each of these experiences left me feeling warm and free. In both instances, I was left with the feeling that I had received more than I had given - the gift had grown in passing, as is typical of gift exchange.
Unfortunately, these experiences have been few. People in our culture don't want to be joined by gift exchange. They see themselves as separate, discrete units to whom any bond is a burden. Giving tips to a musician is embarrassing because it implies that bond, and so it is not done. People would rather assume that somebody else is taking responsibility for paying the musician.
Money is our primary means of showing value. When I'm playing music in a situation where my compensation is mostly tips, the amount of money I receive has a direct bearing on my self-worth. If people are stingy, then I feel it's my fault, that I've played badly. When people pass my tip jar without contributing at all, my playing suffers. I feel that I am not connecting with them, even if they give verbal approval, saying they enjoyed the music. I know that if I have inspired people to give up money then I have affected them.
This is not a good situation. When money, an abstract symbol for value, carries enough weight to affect my self-valuation, then the culture is out of kilter.
Money is the primary carrier of value in America, and art is given a low value. (1) In the free enterprise system, each man is expected to earn his living. Art is not seen as a necessary commodity, and so it is not considered worth money. On the other hand, gift exchange is not widely accepted in this system. While musicians are expected to share their gifts, they are usually not gifted in return. In my experience, a musician in America cannot expect to make a decent living solely accepting gifts. The alternative is to consider yourself a skilled tradesman with a service to offer, and set reasonable fees for that service.
If I perform at a restaurant, I arrive at a prescribed time, play for a certain length of time, I present my material in ways that are appropriate to the situation. I take breaks at regular intervals to let tables clear. I contribute to the atmosphere of the restaurant, making people want to come back. In this way, I contribute to the earning power of the establishment, whether or not I am a known player who "draws" an audience.
To many musicians, putting a monetary value on this service is difficult. Even if they accept the uneasy marriage between music and business, they find it hard to justify. And even when they have no problems at all with the idea of marketing their services and products, they often have difficulty breaking into the market. This is something that is true of artists in all fields. The more connection an artist has to his inner life, with his dreams and creative drives, the less facility and patience he will have with the outer, objective world of business. After spending your time wrestling with demons and angels deep in your creative soul, who wants to devote an entire afternoon to stuffing resumes into envelopes, addressing them and sending them, in the hopes that someone will hire you for the weekend? Let's face it: business is boring. For me, the tendency is strong to live in my fantasy world, where offers of gigs pour in without any effort on my part. Unfortunately, the real world is not so easy.
Many musicians dream about being "discovered," becoming an overnight sensation. They think that all they have to do is to be in the right place at the right time. While it's true that this does sometimes happen to a few isolated individuals, chances are that they spent long years working, refining their craft, pounding the pavement for gigs, taking every opportunity they could to get themselves heard before that one magical day when the right person heard them. Most of us need to be discovered many times before we break into the "big time." In any case, it is the musician who does the hard work building his career - a manager or promotions agency won't do it for you.
Musicians are, on the whole, intuitive. They can see the potential in what they do, and so like to imagine themselves already famous and rich. What they don't see, or refuse to acknowledge, is the series of mundane, business-world steps that lead to that situation. They lack the insights of the sensation function.
Sensation is the Logos complement to the Eros function of intuition.(2) People who are sensation types get all their information about the world from their five senses. They tend to see only what is there, but they see objects and facts very clearly and without illusions. Sensation is the psychological type of the accountant or the photorealist painter. Sensation types are very good at business.
Intuitives, on the other hand, do not see the world very well at all. The sense impressions are processed as they come in. They gain emotional meaning through association. The world that is a literal fact for the sensate is a metaphor for the intuitive. Intuition sees possibilities inherent in every situation. He sees both sides of every question, and he makes emotional bonds to objects and facts. The intuitive becomes a film director or impressionist or surrealist painter. Or a musician.
Intuitive musicians may not see themselves in a realistic way.
Able to see the possibilities inherent in their art, they focus
on the potential. They don't hear that their technique needs work.
When they play, they hear the ideal performance in their mind.
Intuitive musicians therefore often overlook the need for practice
and discipline. They don't realize that the audience hears something
different than they imagine.(3)
Intuitives lack a solid sense of cause and effect. The intuitive is quick to see the intangible connections between events - similarities, synchronicities, affinities - and knows that not all events happen because of a string of cause-and-effect relationships. He knows that fate and chance have a role in his life. He knows that even if he does go through all the hard work and discipline there is no guarantee he will profit from it. He also knows that a turn of the wheel could bring. fame his way without any work of his own.
It's true that such things have happened. Generally it happens because the musician has done his homework perfected his craft and. practiced it for many years, so that it is inevitable that he would eventually be in the right place at the right time. The musician who has not done even the most rudimentary work of study, practice, and performance, is only losing himself in daydreams if he thinks a talent scout is waiting behind a bush to discover him.
The sensation type, on the other hand, sees his present situation clearly, sees the way the market works, and understands the steps necessary to get from point A - obscurity - to point F - fame. He can hear exactly how he's playing and how it needs to improve.
What the sensation type can't do is invent, associate, and create in ways that reflect anything deeper than his own mundane thoughts. He lacks the fantasy world and the connection to Eros. He is unable to use music to create metaphors for his life. It takes intuition to express the unspoken.
What sensation is good for is business. Finance lends itself especially well to factual analysis. Numbers have a certain repertoire of tricks, and they perform them in predictable ways. The sensate is perfectly at home with good hard statistical facts that boggle the intuitive who can only see what the numbers stand for.
A close friend of mine is an accountant and dancer. Perfectly at home with numbers, she is the first person I call with a bookkeeping or tax question. She in turn calls me for help with music. Unless it has a beat she can dance to or words she can understand and agree with, it makes no sense to her at all. In her words, "it's just notes."
For a long time, her inability to connect to instrumental music was a puzzle to me. I took it as a natural fact (as we intuitives are wont to do), but still it was an affront and a challenge. I finally realized that it is not through lack of interest or even talent that she can't grasp the music. It is not the notes or harmonic relationships in themselves that make music meaningful, but the emotions and images that arise by association. Lacking a strong positive intuition, my friend is unable to create the string of associations that make the music a living metaphor for her life. It's literally "just notes."
Is instrumental music, then, created only by and for intuitives? Are all sensation types hearing "just notes?"
Thankfully, life is not so black and white. Like introversion and extroversion, we all have sensation and intuition built into us. They are the perception modes of Eros and Logos. To function with both, we need to able to perceive with our unclouded senses and with our free-ranging intuition. The intuitive needs sensation in order to function in the business world. The sensate needs intuition to create new and meaningful work.
There is danger for the intuitive in integrating the sensation function. Our culture is split so fundamentally between the two perception modes that to court sensation can mean denying intuition. The world of the sensate, like the world of business, law, and science, tends to mock and belittle anything that doesn't yield to logic and display hard facts and strings of cause-and-effect. Intuition, being in the cultural shadow, is perceived as inferior. Hunches, associations, and metaphors don't cut it in our modern world, and yet they are equally important as the overvalued sensation function traits.
The musician who shies away from business for fear it will corrupt
them is coming from a valid perspective. Many musicians are corrupted
by "the system." Musicians "sell out" by compromising
their artistic vision in order to make more money. Under the strain
of the business world, they let their intuition wither and die.
Commercialism of music is not a necessarily bad thing. Through
the introduction of common elements, music is made more accessible,
reaches more people. But the line between commercialization and
overcommercialization is sufficiently vague that it remains a
sensitive emotional issue for musicians. Exactly how far can
you go before you have "sold out?"
There are several ways in which musicians deal with the business end of music. Some take business courses, market themselves, develop their own sensation functions enough so that they can understand and function in that arena. They learn to demand a reasonable fee, negotiate and write a contract. They learn to copyright their material and offer it to publishers and artists in ways that don't endanger their rights to the material.
Others work through agents or managers. This means putting the business end of their career entirely in someone else's hands. The main issue here is trust. Often, the musician doesn't know anything about business, or doesn't want to know. That is a choice you have the right to make, but it puts a lot of power in the hands of the agent, power that can be misused by someone who is less than honest. Remember that agents handle many different artists, and they might not always be doing everything they can to further your career.
Agents and managers are often the people who suggest changes in your act, material, or image in order to make you more salable. This is constructive criticism and should be taken as such. The agent/manager is a salesman, and wants your "packaging" to be as attractive as possible. It is up to you to decide whether that packaging betrays your artistic sensibilities. If it does, and you decide not to take those suggestions, be prepared to take the consequences in the form of less work or lower fees. On the other hand, if you remain true to your own vision, chances are it will eventually pay off.
Some musicians play in a band as a sideman, someone who shows up, plays, and goes home, without having to deal with the business aspects of the gig. The bandleader takes care of all the booking, and takes a larger cut for doing so. As a musician, you can concentrate on the music and band relations, without having to worry about contracts and business. Again, it is important to play for a band whose leader you trust. Otherwise, your undeveloped business sense could become suspicious and cause personality conflicts that may or may not have any bearing on reality.
For musicians who want nothing to do with the business world at all, the path to take is a day job. Music is then a hobby, rather than a full-time profession. Many of the best musicians I've known have been amateurs, working at a desk all day, or pushing sliders and dials at a recording studio all night in order to be able to play music the rest of the time.
Another route for someone who is serious about music but doesn't want to charge money for it is to apply for a grant. Unfortunately, grant money is scarce, and only a few out of the -thousands that apply receive them. Still, for the serious musician who wants to work at his art full-time, it can be ideal. Grants range from free housing at an arts retreat, with a small food stipend, to multi-thousand dollar grants of funds to create and stage musical productions.
Music for money will always be a compromise, coming out of a clash
between the artist's need for a gift economy and the commodity-oriented
economy that is the basis of American culture. For a musician,
finding a Medici or Rockefeller who will support him while he
creates is an ultimate goal, and for most an impossible dream.
It is up to each musician to decide where in the economic spectrum
he is comfortable and to take the steps necessary to establish
a lifestyle that accommodates him.