Our local paper had an interview today with a local musician who plays in a band and runs his own recording studio. I'm always interested in hearing about local musicians and happy to know that local music is well supported here. However, one question posed by the interviewer made me clench my fists: "What is your 'real' job?"
The gentleman in the article does hold a job in a non-musical field, but does that make his music and recording studio less worthy? It was difficult to determine the interviewee's emotional response to this question from the brief article. Maybe he enjoys all of his jobs. Maybe he does the non-musical job to pay bills. Maybe he hopes to leave the 'real' job soon in order to focus solely on his band and recording studio. Whatever the situation, he's certainly entitled to make his living without it being trivialized in any way. Below is my email to the reporter: "Thank you for the "In The Spotlight" article in today's LNP newspaper on Gary Conahan. As a musician myself, I am always interested in reading about other local musicians. However, I was dismayed to read the question, "What's your 'real' job?" Using the phrase 'real job' trivializes our work. Being a musician is my real job! It sounds to me that Mr. Conahan, like many musicians I know, wears many hats, as do I. I'm a professional flutist, adjunct professor, private instructor, and I've blogged about collegiate music auditions. Do some of us take on other work that is not musically related? Of course, but doing so doesn't make our music less important or a side job. In the future, could the question be phrased differently so that our musical abilities are not diminished or looked at simply as a minor portion of our lives? Please consider this for the future. Thank you again for covering musicians in Lancaster County. I think we can all agree that we are lucky to live in an area with so many talented musicians." Fellow musicians--please, the next time you are asked that question, politely remind people that this IS a real job!
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I Write too!I write about flute, classical music, college auditions, positive mindset, and music advocacy. Archives
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