On musical shame…

Ahhh, musical shame. 

Just like mama guilt, parent wounds and imposter syndrome – musical shame has somehow become a standardised part of the human experience. The modern world has commodified music and turned it into a privilege, to be owned only by the rich and highly educated. 

Throughout most of human history music was made in community, together. In groups, in circles, around fires and in ceremony. And then, some time around the mid 19th century,as more sovereign lands were stolen, music became established as a form of entertainment, provided by the highly educated and offered to the rich. 

Suddenly, music went from being a collective experience, a part of our ancestral culture, to something very divided. It became an “us” and “them”, performer/listener, musician/non-musician thing. The privileged became musicians and were able to access music, and everybody else became the listener or, for many people, not even able to access the listening, or the viewing of musical performance. 

Even now, to be considered musical we need lessons (expensive), instruments (expensive and less accessible to the disabled community), western theory knowledge (cognitively demanding, excludes non-colonial music knowledge), ability to perform (requires high levels of regulatory capacity) and to be considered ‘good’ at it (excludes most people!).

So many young musicians give up when they feel they have peaked, or aren’t ‘good enough’ at their instrument. So many musicians are kicked out of the school choir or told to mime, and believe that they are tone deaf or non-musical for the rest of their lives! Many don’t ever try to experience music in a meaningful way because they never had access to instruments or lessons. Many believe they are bad singers because someone in their family once told them ‘not to give up their day job’ as they sang and danced their way around the house. 

To think that only those whose parents could afford piano lessons or those physically able to play an instrument or those who can work their media skills on YouTube can attain the status of what we consider to be “musical” is literally abhorrent.