CAREER CHOICE the Voices of Music Students

CAREER CHOICE The voices of music students Edited by Taryn Arnott and Louise Saunders AFRICAN MINDS Published in 2008 by African Minds for the Centre for Indigenous Instrumental Music and Dance Practices of Africa (CIIMDA) 32 Fifteenth Street, Menlo Park, Pretoria, South Africa www.africanminds.co.za ISBN 978-1-920299-30-9 © 2008 Centre for Indigenous Instrumental Music and Dance Practices of Africa All rights reserved. Designed and typeset by Greymatter & Finch www.greymatterfinch.com CONTENTS Forewords Professor Wim Viljoen v Professor John Hinch vii Professor Meki Nzewi x Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1 Human factors influencing choice of specialisation 7 CHAPTER 2 Academic fulfilment through musical exploration, and music as a lifestyle 25 CHAPTER 3 Cultural and social factors influencing choice of specialisation 49 CHAPTER 4 Visionary factors influencing choice of specialisation 81 CHAPTER 5 Introspective views of musical study 97 CHAPTER 6 Fundamental observations occurring throughout the essays 127 CHAPTER 7 Retrospective research 131 References 134 iii Foreword Professor Wim Viljoen The Department of Music, University of Pretoria, South Africa, like any other music department anywhere, admits students on the basis of set criteria. The essence is to ensure that students, upon admission, can successfully cope with the demands of an area of study. This book is a welcome addition to the literature, especially as it relates to students’ experiences of the topic. It is not usual to investigate how candidates applying for admission achieve the entry requirements or whether they have the necessary temperament, or background, demanded by the career options in the discipline of study. Some students may have the intellectual capability to obtain an academic qualification but lack the needed emotional and innate disposition to pursue a rewarding career in the disciplinary field. This book is about young people talking about where they are coming from, and where they are aiming to go as responsible citizens whose ambition is to contribute positively to society and humanity in their chosen professional specialisation. It is also about young people making positive observations about their environment of intellectual grooming, such that would give them the knowledge grounding that is requisite for a fulfilling career. Although the self-reflective essays are specific to studying music, the principle and self-reflection apply equally to other disciplines. Hopefully the accounts contained herein will resonate appropriately with career choice and career-forming issues at tertiary institutions. The book also makes the point that our students are capable of making the v mature decisions that are needed to undertake the disciplinary challenges of independently editing and introducing a specialised book such as this. We as educators and mentors encourage professional projects such as this; the experience, competence, expertise and enterprise practically gained and manifested by students working with peers endure and energise the drive for original accomplishments in the professional arena. It is my sincere wish that this book will inform and enrich many prospective students’ lives! Professor Wim Viljoen Head: Department of Music University of Pretoria vi Foreword Professor John Hinch What would motivate anyone to suggest writing a major undergraduate essay on such a nebulous topic? Any topic that brings into the spotlight the multitude of questions that surround ‘the meaning of music’ must surely result in vague, complacent inexactitudes with little intrinsic meaning. And then compiling them into a book would surely and necessarily evoke scorn and derision from a variety of sectors. However, these young, second-year music-students-turned-essay-writers have obviously not considered the task in these terms and have generously poured out their inner thoughts and feelings in a rainbow of insights as seen through their individual prisms of experience. It’s apt, coming from this ‘rainbow nation’ and all the more apt, as it is the universality of their insights that shines through. To state that ‘I am a musician’ is as unenlightening as stating ‘I am a sportsman’! It proffers limited information, and begs a host of questions. Similarly, ‘I am a music student’ is not a definitive statement. But here, these often beautiful, always thought-provoking essays show the many faces of the ‘music student’. There are two oft-quoted statements that point to a myriad of mis- conceptions about this thing called ‘music’; innocent, quasi-philosophical traps for the unwary young essay writer. Firstly, ‘Music is a universal language.’ Music may well have the inherent possibility (task?) of transcending many vii global boundaries, but does music ‘say’ anything? Many of these essay writers appear to believe so. If so, what message does it convey? Again, these young music students render many versions of the ‘message’, some delightful, some enlightening. Is any one more valid than the next? Does it matter? Each version, as portrayed in these essays, is necessarily unique, and the validity thereof is inherent in the aggregate of each individual. Secondly, ‘Music is the language of the emotions.’ Clearly it cannot be, but these essays often allude to the students’ ‘love’ of and for music, and their involvement with it. Time and again their emotional link to music surfaces and soars above their more mundane explanations for music’s role in their lives. While music is obviously not the emotion itself, it certainly seems to massage their emotions in some inexplicable way. To misquote Marshall McLuhan,1 it appears that, to these young music students, ‘music is the massage’. How many students (and how many parents!) have asked the perennial question ‘Why study music?’ Career paths in music are crowded. Specifically, those that lead to professional, performing careers are inundated with pilgrims seeking the musical grail of self-expression through musical performance. Now that, increasingly, a degree with Music Technology gives entry to the vast world of the music industry; the stampede has begun. Then there are the two types of music teacher: those who choose to teach as their first priority; and those who wander from the performance path, who (hopefully) will discover Tryon Edwards’ maxim, ‘If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others,’ taking no cognizance of George Bernard Shaw’s oft-quoted, maligning statement that ‘He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.’ Yet these essays portray many students who view a bigger, brighter future with increasing possibilities offered by the electronic age. And others who view the essential truths of the past as being still valid today, to form the cornerstone of their careers, wherever and whatever those may be. Many essays espouse elements of both of these views. These students have – probably unbeknownst to themselves – fallen into step with Shaw, when he (benignly, this time) stated: ‘You see things and say “why”; but I dream of things and say “why not”?’ Indeed, why not a career in music! 1 www.quotationspage.com <accessed 3 June 2008> is the source of all the quotations in this Foreword. viii These essays are littered with beautiful, insightful statements and phrases, many of which will resonate with those lucky enough to pick up this tome. Many will linger on in my mind. All praise to the two undergraduate editors and their perspicacious mentor Professor Meki Nzewi. Professor John Hinch Department of Music University of Pretoria ix Foreword Professor Meki Nzewi Academic studies in tertiary institutions aim to equip students with the required disciplinary knowledge and appropriate degrees and certificates that would qualify them to embark on specific professional careers. Departments in tertiary institutions prescribe matriculation subjects, grades and other knowledge backgrounds for admitting students. The human and social backgrounds, and the self-assessment and visionary factors that influence a prospective student’s career ambitions, and which in turn help a student decide on a discipline of specialisation, are not commonly known. These personal histories impact strongly on a student’s focus and performance in academic studies as well as post-graduation career practice. Disciplines in academia are primarily concerned with the issues of lectures, research and the grades earned by students. Attention is seldom directed towards the critical but non-academic human and social backgrounds that discretely impact students’ devotion to studies, their failures and successes, their career decisions and fulfilment in the field after graduation. It is of central human concern that academia should stimulate students to aim for attaining job fulfilment in their chosen careers. This is predicated on constant self-reflection and self-assessment that would enable a suitable choice of areas of specialisation within broad disciplines. Measures that would engineer such constant self-reflection and self-assessment along with intellectual capability should be built into students’ professional training. x Self-understanding coupled with confidence in the knowledge gained could obviate the possibility of suffering frustration in a career, as much as in life generally. I joined the Department of Music of the University of Pretoria in 2000 to take charge of African music studies. In my second year of teaching, I decided that to gain insight into what motivates students to choose music as an area of career specialisation could be instructive

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