How To Be A ‘Real Musician’ | The Millennial Edit
Rosie Bennet shares her thoughts around the music community’s perceptions of what makes a ‘real musician.’
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If you have ever delved into the social media fitness industry, then you may recognize ‘bikini body’ and ‘beach body’ as phrases that are usually used in relation to fitness plans as synonymous with a fit body.
In recent years, there has been a distinct push back against these terms, with campaigners forcing businesses and media outlets to take responsibility for the unhealthy habits they promote towards our health.
Every body is a ‘bikini body’ so long has you have a body and put a bikini on it. Every body is a ‘beach body’ so long as you have a body and go to the beach.
It is quite simple, our actions should not be restricted by judgements dictated by other people.
Enter the classical music world.
There are so many old tropes in our industry surrounding our attitudes to performing, practicing and pretty much everything.
But there is one that overarches all — the ‘real musician.’
What does it mean to be a real musician?
It seems to me that a ‘real musician’ is a person who is not just a ‘player’ but someone who has the ‘X factor.’ In laymen terms ‘someone who doesn’t just play the notes.’
It’s certainly a funny way of seeing what we do. We must all realize by now that the way people play does not differ massively.
People may be invested in a particular story, or have heard good things about a certain player, but ultimately what we hear as the audience is our own projection of what we think about this person.
Art is entirely subjective, and music is one of the most ambiguous forms.
After all we are all listening on different levels. Aside from recordings, we cannot return to listen to a particular performance in a couple of years once our tastes have developed or our opinions have changed.
It is a temporary art form and one that we often have opinions on formed by reputations and preconceived judgements only.
Taking the time to be a musician requires dedication enough without having yet more hoops to jump through, especially when they are hoops that we don’t even want to jump through.
Why should our enjoyment of music be dictated by people who don’t know us, don’t care for us and don’t like what we do?
Surely our musical choices and our enjoyment of music should be led by the people that most care about us, most enjoy our work and most want to see us succeed.
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About The Writer — Rosie Bennet
Born in London in 1996, Rosie started playing guitar at age seven. She received her early musical education at The Yehudi Menuhin School of Music and went on to study with Zoran Dukic (The Hague, NL), Johan Fostier (Tilburg, NL), Rene Izquierdo (Milwaukee, USA) and Raphaella Smits (Leuven, BE). She has performed in festivals all over Europe, including Open Guitar Festival in Křivoklát, Czech Republic, Glasgow’s Big Guitar Weekend, Scotland, Porziano Music Festival, Italy and the West Dean guitar Festival, UK. Highlights of her concert career include performances at Wigmore Hall, London, The North Wall, Oxford and concerts given on El Camino De Santiago.
