Music as Labour (Dagmar Abfalter & Rosa Reitsamer eds.)
Edited By Dagmar Abfalter and Rosa Reitsamer
DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003150480

ABSTRACT
This book brings together research at the intersection of music, cultural industries, management, antiracist politics and gender studies to analyse music as labour, in particular highlighting social inequalities and activism.
Providing insights into labour processes and practices, the authors investigate the changing role of manifold actors, institutions and technologies and the corresponding shifts in the valuation and evaluation of music achievements that have shaped the relationship between music, labour, the economy and politics. With research into a variety of geographic regions, chapters shed light on the various ways by which musicians’ work is performed, constructed and managed at different times and show that musicians’ working practices have been marked by precarity, insecurity and short-term contracts long before capitalism invited everybody to ‘be creative’. In doing so, they specifically examine the dynamics in music professions and educational institutions, as well as gatekeepers and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion.
With a specific emphasis on inequalities in the music industries, this book will be essential reading for scholars seeking to understand the collective actions and initiatives that foster participation, inclusion, diversity and fair pay amongst musicians and other workers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |22 pages
Introduction
By Rosa Reitsamer, Dagmar Abfalter
chapter 1|14 pages
Ironworks as Venues of Music Production
The Ostrava/Vítkovice Case from the 1890s to the 1910s
By Fritz Trümpi
chapter 2|15 pages
From Bohemia to the Balkans
Towards a Socioeconomic History of Itinerant Women Musicians, 1860–1889
By Nuppu Koivisto
chapter 3|14 pages
The MGM Lion’s Ominous Roar
(New) Technologies and the Disappearing Profession of Silent Movie Theatre Musicians in Croatia of the Late 1920s
By Mojca Piškor
chapter 4|15 pages
‘Work that Body’
Disco, Counterculture and the Promise of the Transformation of Work
By Tim Lawrence
chapter 5|16 pages
Hope, Labour and Privilege in American New Music
By John R. Pippen
chapter 6|15 pages
A Lockdown Recording Project
Jazz Musicians and Metaphors for a Working Life
By Michael L. Jones
chapter 7|16 pages
Emotional and Relational Labour in Music from a Feminist Perspective
By Emília Barna
chapter 8|16 pages
Afghan Pop in Europe
Migration, Affect and Musical Labour
By Marko Kölbl
chapter 9|15 pages
‘It’s a Kind of Macho Culture’
Changes and Continuities in Young Female Musicians’ Talk about Inequalities
By Christina Scharff
chapter 10|16 pages
Women Working in the Music Business
An Alumni Study
By Sally Anne Gross
chapter 11|15 pages
Musicians of the World Unite!
The Initial Years of the International Federation of Musicians
By Martin Cloonan
chapter 12|14 pages
Towards More Inclusion in the Music Industry
By Sophie Hennekam
chapter 13|15 pages
Moving Beyond @operaisracist
Exploring Blacktivism as a Pathway to Antiracism and Creative Justice in Opera
By Antonio C. Cuyler
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
pierrebataille (May 19, 2022). Music as Labour (Dagmar Abfalter & Rosa Reitsamer eds.). Working in Music. Retrieved May 11, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/vasx

