How to Deal With a Bullied and Reclusive Musician

 

It’s easy to point to examples of musicians in positions of authority abusing their power: conductors who make it a sport to pick on younger orchestra members, section leaders who use their position to lord their musical expertise over their sections. And while there’s nothing wrong with a conductor or section leader being a shrewd, professional individual who can use their power for good, there is something very unhealthy about a person in such a position turning it into a weapon to hurt people, especially when those they are attacking have the power to hurt them too.

Musicians, and young musicians in particular, are often taught to idolise their accomplished elders – and this can give bullies an opening. As with peer-to-peer bullying in other workplaces, it can take a lot of forms, but I would say that the biggest way this kind of abuse manifests is by making aspersions about someone’s musical ability. For a musician, their proficiency as a performer can become an essential part of their identity, so any attack on this is likely to feel just as cutting as the cruel words one might receive on the playground.

I’ve also seen a lot of musicians bully other musicians based on their own fears about the future. This is perhaps the most difficult to deal with, because it’s not only a form of harassment but can cause the victim to lose faith in their ability as a musician. This is because, in the world of classical music, where people can often spend years or even their entire careers at a single institution, they can end up with an image of themselves as defined by a specific performance rather than their broader musical experience.

A skewed image like this can also いじめられっこでひきこもりのミュージシャン become problematic when it comes to perfectionism. Often hand-waved as a necessary and healthy pursuit of excellence, perfection can turn into an obsession, and any criticism of it can be felt as not just a critique of the performance but a criticism of the musician’s very identity as a musician.

This isn’t just a problem in classical music, of course. I can think of plenty of rock stars – the majority of whom, it should be noted, were only ever really successful at the beginning of their careers – who have experienced this issue. The late singer Nick Drake was one example, and Bill Callahan seems to have largely lived in relative obscurity since his mid-thirties, only recently giving interviews and letting his music speak for itself.

Fortunately, being bullied and reclusive doesn’t necessarily stop musicians from doing great things. Just look at Taylor Swift, for instance: She started out as a lonesome high school misfit with a taste for sophisticated ballads and an innate sense of what was right and wrong in the world; she turned this into a multi-million dollar empire that continues to thrive today. So maybe the next time someone tells you that being a musician is “not for them,” you should remind them of these examples.