Over the past few years, I've started to get frustrated with the music education institutions. When I am studying music, I feel like I am living in a bubble where the most important thing is to play right, and to work towards the next exam, audition or class concert. I think it's important at some point in your life to be in a community that pushes your development, but I've still felt that at these music education institutions we too often forget to put ourselves in context with the rest of society.
In 1998, the musician, educator and author Christopher Small published the book Musicking. In this book, he criticises the institutionalisation of music and argues that music is not a thing, but rather an activity that all people are born with the ability to do(Small 1998, p.2). If this is true, it means, as Small himself says, that ordinary people have been robbed of the musicality they were born with by the ‘talented few’ who have the ability to make music (Small 1998, p.8). In the book, he introduces the word Musicking. It's a verb that describes music as an action that all of us can do in one way or another. (Small 1998, p.2). Whether it's through playing, creating or listening, both passively and actively, we are all born with the ability to do music. (Small 1998, p.9).
My career as a musician began when I started playing the cello at the age of five. Since then, countless years in the music education have shaped me into the musician I am today. But why did I want to become a musician? Why have I always wanted to pursue a profession or lifestyle that is unstable, poorly paid and one that many people don't see as a real profession?
What I've known for many years is that my drive and motivation to pursue music has never come from outside, it has always come from within. I can't say one hundred percent exactly where this drive comes from, but I can say that I feel a constant urge to create and I feel very privileged to have always had a supportive community around me that has allowed and encouraged me to follow this urge.
This creative urge has also led me to change the direction of my education, from becoming a classical musician to now working towards becoming a creative performer in experimental music. By creative performer, I mean a performer who can play at a high level, improvise, compose and produce. In other words a self-employed musician. There are many reasons why I have changed career direction, but the main reason is that I felt the classical music education made it difficult for me to become the musician I wanted to be. Having gone from the classical music field to the experimental music field has helped me clarify these thoughts which has had a huge effect on my personal development as a musician, but also as a human being, largely because my thoughts on what music is have changed. I've realised how important music is to express, connect, communicate and feel, but also how quickly we educated musicians tend to judge music that isn't seen as art music.
I don't mean that you can't have these revelations as a classical musician, but for me, the change towards experimental music has given me a completely different approach to music, and therefore to the kind of musician I want to be. When I play experimental music I feel liberated, I feel that I can easily put my voice into the music, but the biggest change is that when I improvise, play and listen, it's about exploring, developing and being curious. The consequences of right or wrong and tradition are not as present, instead it's about letting curiosity lead the way.
How does all this relate to my research? When I was introduced to Christopher Small's ideas about Musicking, I felt that they aligned well with many of my views. Music is a universal language, something everyone can take part in, because music doesn't have a right or wrong answer. The cultivation of music tradition and music history has a right or wrong answer, but the concept of music is based on the subjectivity of each individual. The musician I want to become works to convey this inclusive definition of music, because I believe it can strengthen the position of music in society. That's why I started this journey with this research by creating a project that invites children to explore and co-create.