One concept that I have been exploring with students recently answers several important questions:
1. Why go to college to study jazz or music?
2. What is the point of having a jazz curriculum if our goal is to have our own sound?
3. How do we make money playing music?
This is all answered very simply: every young musician needs to embrace the idea of a DUAL MUSICAL IDENTITY. No this is not something that you can look up on wikipedia or ask a chatbot, but I can explain:
A “dual musical identity” is the ability to function as a musician with distinct identities, which might or might not overlap. One thing that is clearly important to our current generation of jazz students is “having an individual voice.” This is marvelous because a few decades ago, aging jazz musicians would hear students and complain that they are all imitators.
“Having an individual voice”
The primary motivation for most of my students right now is to have their own voice. This is what draws my students to improvising—to not play written music on the page. I cannot disagree because it is absolutely thrilling to play music and improvise with other musicians, but is having an individual voice enough to lead to success—either financial or musical success?
The inconvenient truths about success in music is that we often have to:
play and interpret other peoples’ music
rely on gigs for income
These are two reasons why we have to have a DUAL MUSICAL IDENTITY. If we want to have the ability to interpret other peoples’ compositions and get gigs, then we have to go beyond being our own creative selves. We have to step outside of our own comfort zones and expand our capabilities.
Don’t settle for just being Clark Kent!
Now, I want to revisit the first three questions with the Dual Musical Identity in mind.
1. Why go to college to study jazz or music?
I have recently heard accusations that the study of music stifles creativity. That’s completely preposterous because every great musician that I have ever encountered is addicted to learning and expanding skills. What college offers (in addition to a lot of networking and connections) is the opportunity to develop a Dual Musical Identity. This means learning:
-a lot of repertoire
-a wide variety of genres and sounds
-the varied approaches of great players (learned by transcription)
This expansion of knowledge puts a student musician in a better position to adapt to various given musical situations and be hirable! So often the humanities are attacked for not creating “hirable” people for the workforce, but I would argue on the contrary that if young people do not study music formally, then they very well might be relegated to making solo videos for online posts rather than making music with groups and being hired for gigs that pay money!
2. What is the point of having a jazz curriculum if our goal is to have our own sound?
The goal of a curriculum is to guide talented musicians to expand on their existing skill sets, to broaden their ears and knowledge of styles, and to make them even more marketable. Again, the humanities are attacked with regards to marketability, but I will argue that a codified curriculum of study will only serve to make a young person more hirable!
3. How do we make money playing music?
Music is a “portfolio career,” which means that the income sources come from various places. There are some notable musicians who have played hundreds of weddings and functions to make their artistic endeavors possible. For those of us who do not have trust funds, having the ability to adapt to various musical situations is an absolute must! Every wedding band in the world plays the song “My Girl” so if a young musician wants to launch a career in music performance, it is helpful to have the skill to learn the tune, play it with the right groove, play it in tune, and play confidently. I am suggesting that instead of thinking of this as “selling out” that it is rather a part of our DUAL MUSICAL IDENTITY. Playing “Sweet Caroline” at a function does not define a musician with a dual identity. It just simply might make other, more artistically fulfilling gigs possible.
A lot of student musicians talk about “selling out” but maybe it would be a more healthy discussion to think about having a multifaceted musical identity.
I am curious what you think: