The Cult of Music in Academia

I have four music degrees, and I teach music at a university. For me, like a lot of music majors and graduate students, college teaching was the dream. But I didn’t realize that a university music department could be kind of like a religious cult. That might sound strange, but hear me out.

Sure, teaching college music is awesome. But there are some beliefs held by students and faculty and reinforced at every level that tend to keep people stuck in a place where it may not make sense for them to stay. Here are a few of these limiting beliefs.

You are not a real musician if you aren’t making a living in music: When I was in school, there seemed to be an unspoken rule that success in music means music is your primary source of income. In my mind, making a living in music was always the goal. Many musicians believe that they could never be happy in any other profession. 

If I change careers or take a job outside of music, it will be because I failed as a musician. Anytime we heard about someone in music deciding to change majors and careers, people usually reacted, sometimes silently and sometimes out loud, with something like  “well…that person was never much of a musician to begin with.” The message was pretty clear: make your living in music, or you’re a failed loser. 

If you do what you love, you never have to work a day in your life. In other words, if you make your living outside of music, you will be miserable and sad. 

If I had a job where all I had to do was practice and play music all day long, that would be pretty awesome. But that’s not what most college music teaching jobs are like. In fact, it is similar to a regular job in a lot of ways: there are meetings. So many meetings. And there is paperwork, scheduling, spreadsheets, emails…all of that. So the idea that music academia will be a life of following your musical bliss is not the reality. 

The Elephant in the Room

College teaching doesn’t pay well, at least not for most people in music. The number of people I have known with doctoral degrees in music who barely make a living is quite high. When I was a graduate student in music, money wasn’t something that any of us talked about much. Instead we practiced all the time, rarely slept, and figured we’d work it all out somehow. 

“We didn’t go into this for the money.” That’s what people say all the time, and it’s true, but you do need a certain amount of money. My solution to that low salary problem has always been to take on extra work. I’ve had a half-time job as a church music director for years, and I’ve always taken on side-gigs. But I started to notice that, even with the second job, I wasn’t putting much money away for retirement, and my student loan debt was not going away. My physical and mental health has also taken a hit. I wasn’t getting enough sleep, or eating well, and I wasn’t getting enough exercise. I was tired much of the time.

I had some friends who also played music, but they didn’t do it for a living. They had jobs during the day, but the rest of the time they were making music that they loved. They seemed to have more time for fun musical projects than I did. They were in bands, and many of them wrote songs and recorded albums. They also owned houses, saved up for retirement, and many of them could afford musical instruments and equipment, while I felt like I was barely getting by, still renting an apartment, and couldn’t afford a piano even if I had room for one. So instead of doing what I do in my spare time, which is take a second job, my friends were doing music for fun, and entirely on their own terms. 

Meanwhile there were some other new developments in my life. My daughter was diagnosed with autism at age four. There’s a good chance my daughter is going to need my help here whole life, not just until she graduates from college or high school. It was becoming obvious that my lifestyle of working all the time, barely making enough money was not sustainable. I needed a job that made more money in less time, so I could give my daughter the attention and love she needs. I need time to take care of basic things like keeping the house somewhat clean, grocery shopping, and just hanging out with my family.

Time for a career change, right? Seems pretty obvious, but I needed to overcome my programming (no pun intended?). 

I’m not a real musician if I’m not making a living doing music? Really? Says who? What’s a real musician anyway? Will I lose all my skills and suddenly forget all that knowledge and experience after I change jobs? Of course not. I always think about Charles Ives, one of the most well-known American composers of the 20th century. His music was highly innovative and experimental, but Ives had the freedom to explore the music he was interested in as much as he wanted. Why? Because he made his living not as a musician, but in the insurance business. Look it up! And nobody would say of Charles Ives that he wasn’t a real musician because he made his living in another field. In this famous quote from Ives about making his living outside of music Ives sums up the reason for making his living outside of his composition. 

“If [a composer] has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?”

Will I be miserable in a non-music job? There’s a little bit of misery in every job, including teaching music at a college. There’s no such thing as a job without misery. If there was a job that didn’t contain misery, we wouldn’t have to pay people to do it. The key is to find work that you enjoy most of the time, and even when it’s miserable, you kind of enjoy that too on some level. This is what I’ve found to be the case with programming. I really enjoy building things, and solving problems with code. As every programmer seems to say, there are times of great frustration, as well as moments of euphoria when you finally get something working. I enjoy the process, it is fulfilling and fun a lot of the time. It’s challenging, but I’ve learned to enjoy the challenging parts. Learning these skills has added some depth to my life. Will I be miserable? Probably from time to time, the just like I am now. That’s just life. But I also expected to have a better work-life balance, make more money, and have more time with my family. And on top of all those great things, I will have more time to do music on my own terms, without needing to please any institution or impress potential students or any of that. I can just play for the joy of it. Maybe take an occasional paying gig if I feel like it. 

Leaving any cult can be hard. There’s pressure to stay. But don’t blame the cult. That’s how cults are able to survive. If it was easy to leave the cult, the cult would cease to exist. 

If you are an academic in music considering leaving the faith, I encourage you to do it. Many have done so successfully before you and built successful careers in other fields, and still were able to keep music in their lives. You get to choose your path, so choose what works for you. Don’t worry about the ones you left behind. They have their path, you have yours. We’ll all be okay.