It is likely more people are making music or playing an instrument for enjoyment than there are professional musicians. What's the evidence?
It is from this pool, talent is plucked by managers, agents and promoters working in the music industry making amateurs integral to the music industry. One writer particularly concerned with musical creativity is anthropologist Ruth Finnegan.
Professor Finnegan at the UK's Open University conducted extensive research among 'invisible' musicians in 1989. She surveyed amateur, semi-professional and relatively unknown musicians who play music week in, week out, in orchestras, choral societies, rock and jazz bands, folk groups and brass bands.
The musicians Finnegan studied are mostly people who play music for the pleasure of the experience, rather than overtly attempting to 'make it' in the music business. However, most of their musical learning occurs in relation to existing music circulated by the recording industry. Hence, she argues, it would be misleading to think such musicians are 'outside' or independent of the music business. She argues they are connected through their purchase of instruments, amps and recordings, etc. to make music similar to that they have heard.
These musicians have been termed 'hidden' musicians or informal musicians.
Little up-to-date research has quantified the extent to which informal music-making exists in our communities. Add to this, it has a transient and unstable nature. Alf Clarke at the UK's Musicians' Union suggested amateur rock and pop bands (at various stages of development) last no longer than three to four years. However, what studies do exist perhaps give some indication of the prevalence of music-making:
A study of musical life in the UK town of Milton Keynes in the mid-1980s found 100 functioning rock and pop bands in a population of 120,000 (Finnegan, 1989).
The Liverpool Echo newspaper had undertaken a survey of the Merseyside region which concluded Merseyside had more than 1,000 bands in a population of 1.48m (Cohen, 1990).
In 1991 a survey in Leicestershire revealed that some 1,140 individuals were active in rock and pop, of which 96 per cent were semi-professional or amateur (Cummins, 1992).
The National Music Council reported at least 600,000 people actively participate in amateur and voluntary music-making (Hutchinson et al, 1991, pp.200-210).
In July 2005, The Observer newspaper published the results of a survey, What is Britain listening to? [6], undertaken by the ICM agency. It found more than one in four Britons play a musical instrument.
The success pyramid
It is perhaps not commonly appreciated the large part of being a musician involves rehearsing on your own and with others, not in front of an audience. To date, the provision of professional rehearsal spaces largely exist within the commercial sector, with very little insight in to their importance by other sectors of the music industry.
The progression from music space to performing in a small venue in front of a paying audience is critical to a musician’s career.
Access to a music rehearsal space prior to performance is obviously an important part of this ecology.
Suitably equipped and affordable spaces play as significant a role as small venues in honing musicians’ skills. Access to such places equally represent a critical entry point for many interested in music as a leisure or professional pursuit. Access to a high quality music space is likely to sustain music-making across all social strata, where amateurs and professionals can exchange ideas and practice with potentially far reaching social, economic and artistic benefits.
Anthropological evidence
Two academics have suggested that perhaps we have lost what it is to make music amongst ourselves. Margaret Mead sums up a great deal of the position of music in traditional Balinese society in her book The strolling players in the mountains of Bali: "Nor is there any gap between rehearsal and performance.
From the moment an orchestra begins to practise an old piece of music, there is a ring of spectators, aspiring players, substitute players, small boys and old men, all equally engrossed in the ever-fresh creation of a new way of playing an old piece of music” (p.43-44, Mead, 1939).
Christopher Small in his book Music, Education, Society has also investigated how we have become divorced from making music for our own entertainment: "The separation of producer from consumer is confirmed by the ever greater and greater technical skills of performers… in setting standards of technical proficiency that non-professionals cannot begin to approach, they are removing the practice of music ever further from the ordinary citizen and confirming him even more completely in the role of consumer” (p.94-95, Small, 1977).
Groups who play together for any length of time find a group style and an empathy. They place little importance on technical prowess for its own sake. One plays as well as one can, and work’s harder at developing group awareness than individual virtuosity. As Cornelius Cardew said: "Training is substituted for rehearsal, and a certain moral discipline is an essential part of this training" (p. xviii, Cardew, 1971).
Intangible musical heritage
Important bodies have recognised the importance of music as an heritage asset. In 2016 the UNESCO Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage added Musical Traditions to its Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
In the UK, the Heritage Lottery Fund has financially supported a number of projects including historic music venues, archives of legendary rock bands and exhibitions on how a genre has shaped a generation.
In 2019, the Manchester venue Band on the Wall was granted £1.4million from The National Lottery to host a wider range of events and unveil the musical heritage of the city’s migrant communities. The venue is well known to music fans across the country for hosting some of the earliest shows from Manchester legends Joy Division, The Fall and The Buzzcocks.
Whether it is telling the stories of grime in Walthamstow or early rock and roll, such bodies recognise the impact on people and places.
Music shapes communities and defines cultures.
Music spaces play a practical and often active role in supporting the development of talent. Without a network of local groups there will be no stadium-touring bands and musicians of tomorrow.
References
[4] http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1528542,00.html
[5] http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1528542,00.html
[6] http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1528542,00.html
Ruth Finnegan - The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town, 1989, Cambridge University Press
Margaret Mead - The strolling players in the mountains of Bali, American Museum of Natural History, 1939
Christopher Small - Music, Education, Society 1977
Cornelius Cardew - Towards An Ethic of Improvisation, Treatise Handbook, 1971, p. xviii
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