Passion without penalty
“It is scary to think that when we see someone in a bad work situation, our mind may jump to the conclusion that they must be passionate about their work.” - Troy Campbell, University of Oregon
“Everybody equal.” - Haruna Tominaga
My week started with pianist Brady Bunch - a Zoom call populated with collabs and coaches. The discussion had turned to publicity materials for a recital that omitted the accompanist’s name. Some of the folks on screen had wanted to contact the presenter about it, but when they reached out to the accompanist first, the word came back for them not to take action. The pianist had insisted that they hated that sort of focused attention: no need to advertise their presence, playing the concert was enough recognition.
(That might sound nutty coming from someone who makes their living playing the piano in public. I know. Read on.)
At this point, the biggest fish of the group - a person of considerable fame and influence - posited that the lesser compensation and prestige afforded collaborative pianists in the classical music industry was due to exactly this attitude. “I think this profession attracts people who suffer from problems with self-esteem,” they said. “We just have to face it - many of us are accompanists because we don’t think we deserve better.”
I was a guest on this call, so response felt tricky and I stayed silent. But several things stayed with me. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a powerful colleague - someone who enjoys fame and position and has influence over who advances in our profession - lay the professional inequities pianists face at the feet of their individual psychologies. And it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard of a pianist insisting they didn’t need recognition. Multiple colleagues of mine remember being told by their teachers to only pursue accompanying if they didn’t care about the spotlight, holding self-effacement up as a virtue.
But mostly, I was thinking about a 2019 Duke University study I read in the course of working on Accompaniment in America (yes, I’ll be shilling this book all summer, you’ve been warned).
Brace yourself for a long academic title:
“Understanding contemporary forms of exploitation: Attributions of passion serve to legitimize the poor treatment of workers.” (whew!)
The PubMed citation is here, and the Duke University Fuqua School of Business page has a good introductory article about the study with a more eye-grabbing headline:
“Love your job? Someone may be taking advantage of you.”
Authors Aaron Kay, Troy Campbell, Steven Shepherd, and Jae Kim found “passion exploitation” consistently in eight studies involving more than 2400 diverse participants who considered a variety of professions. The study found that employers were consistently more likely to exploit employees who expressed passion about their work, through such actions as demanding work outside of the contracted job description or schedule, and requiring unpaid or uncredited work. Crucially, the study found that these attitudes also worked in reverse: employers and colleagues were more likely to attribute an employee’s exploited status as evidence of passion for their work.
This study made a huge impression during work on the book, and it keeps coming back to me every time I realize how much my profession has internalized this passion narrative. All creatives have to face this cultural narrative and figure out how to navigate it, how to seek a stable living while seeming kind of artistically pure about it. How many times have you (I) said some version of “it’s not really about the money?” How many time have you (I) put off asking about contract details so you didn’t seem greedy when getting the offer?
Yikes, maybe the big fish on the Brady Bunch screen had a point.
Except, no.
We’re not attracted to this profession because we lack self-esteem (that fish got my goat)! We learn that we succeed when we refuse to center ourselves, when we pose no problem, when we don’t complain. That’s what gets us hired again. All of the current big fish know this, because they’ve been through it. I wish they’d think twice before framing this fact, though, and take care not to position self-negation as a sad fact of the business and therefore something it’s your fault to choose. Maybe they’re so used to playing the self-effacement game that they’ve forgotten how impactful their words are.
How powerful would it be for all the big fish to lead a different kind of discussion, framing equity in employment practice as the responsibility of employers and presenters, having nothing to do with any individual’s opinions, needs, or fears?
On the other hand, those fish are swimming in the same water with the rest of us. Fish (okay, humans - time to drop the metaphor) of every size are pretty skilled at tuning out injustice. Listen to the messaging all around us in the United States right now: work requirements for public assistance, natural immunity and “we’re all going to die” in the public health care discourse. As the gulf between the haves and have-nots grows wider, voices get louder who are saying the have-nots deserve it, that they’ve brought poverty and ill health on themselves.
The flip side of that attitude is that the speaker believes themselves to deserve security and care. To have earned it.
Here’s one of the Duke study authors, Aaron Kay:
“We want to see the world as fair and just, When we are confronted with injustice, rather than fix it, sometimes we rationalize the situation and assume the victims of injustice must benefit in some other way…I have found that when faced with massive disparities between rich and poor, people can downplay injustice by telling themselves that wealth brings its own set of problems, or that having less money makes it easier to be happy by keeping life simple.”
Jae Kim emphasizes that the Duke Study is not anti-passion.
“There is excellent evidence that passionate workers benefit in many ways…we should not let passion in our work be co-opted by the human tendency to legitimize or ignore exploitation.”
Every musician is personally sensitive to this. We must work to increase our communal sensitivity and try to keep this exploitation out of our own spaces. We must not use any individual’s reticence as an excuse to pay them less or keep them in the background.
My week ended at a recital given by two alums of the New National Theater Opera Studio. It was great to see them again after working with them for the past two years. Each performed with their own pianist partner. As each pianist set up their tablets and bluetooth pedals, each singer stood at ease in the crook of the piano, watching their partner get ready. And, among the songs, arias, and duets, each pianist took a solo turn. The performances of these young musicians were excellent. After the last group bow, I went up to congratulate the musicians.
I hadn’t seen Haruna, the soprano, since last summer. We embraced. “What a beautiful concert!” I said.
Haruna smiled warmly. “Everybody equal,” she said.
Collaborative solidarity, y’all.
Equal font size forever!
Thanks tonight to Shugo, Haruna, Andrea, David, Elvia, Casey, Lisa, and Brad. Working with you is awesome.
thanks for reading.