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    Can Music Make You Sick?

    Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition

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    Author(s)
    Gross, Sally Anne
    Musgrave, George
    Language
    English
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    “Musicians often pay a high price for sharing their art with us. Underneath the glow of success can often lie loneliness and exhaustion, not to mention the basic struggles of paying the rent or buying food. Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave raise important questions – and we need to listen to what the musicians have to tell us about their working conditions and their mental health.” Emma Warren (Music Journalist and Author). “Singing is crying for grown-ups. To create great songs or play them with meaning music's creators reach far into emotion and fragility seeking the communion we demand of it. However, music’s toll on musicians can leave deep scars. In this important book, Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave investigate the relationship between the wellbeing music brings to society and the wellbeing of those who create. It’s a much needed reality check, deglamorising the romantic image of the tortured artist.” Crispin Hunt (Multi-Platinum Songwriter/Record Producer, Chair of the Ivors Academy). It is often assumed that creative people are prone to psychological instability, and that this explains apparent associations between cultural production and mental health problems. In their detailed study of recording and performing artists in the British music industry, Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave turn this view on its head. By listening to how musicians understand and experience their working lives, this book proposes that whilst making music is therapeutic, making a career from music can be traumatic. The authors show how careers based on an all-consuming passion have become more insecure and devalued. Artistic merit and intimate, often painful, self-disclosures are the subject of unremitting scrutiny and data metrics. Personal relationships and social support networks are increasingly bound up with calculative transactions. Drawing on original empirical research and a wide-ranging survey of scholarship from across the social sciences, their findings will be provocative for future research on mental health, wellbeing and working conditions in the music industries and across the creative economy. Going beyond self-help strategies, they challenge the industry to make transformative structural change. Until then, the book provides an invaluable guide for anyone currently making their career in music, as well as those tasked with training and educating the next generation
    URI
    https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/42591
    Keywords
    popular music; mental health; gig economy; digital culture; music industries; music professions
    DOI
    10.16997/book43
    Publisher
    University of Westminster Press
    Publisher website
    https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/
    Publication date and place
    London, 2020
    Grantor
    • University of Westminster - [grantnumber unknown]
    Classification
    Music
    Occupational and industrial psychology
    Sociology: work and labour
    Cultural studies
    Psychology of ageing
    Social and ethical issues
    Pages
    198
    Rights
    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
    • Imported or submitted locally

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    License

    • If not noted otherwise all contents are available under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

    Credits

    • logo EU
    • This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 683680, 810640, 871069 and 964352.

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