Is art worth paying for?

 

Art encompasses music, visuals, applied, recording, performing and performance art and creative writing. Art takes effort. All artistic work takes years of study and training and hours upon hours of work to accomplish perfection or close to it.

There is a strange idea among non-artist(e)s that art is easy or that a mysterious muse comes and naturally, talented artist(e)s just quickly jot or sketch down their inspiration. In reality, it is a craft. For example, as a writer, one needs to:

• read, extensively,
• study the history of the genre,
• study all aspects of the plot, setting, character, dialogue, scene, narrative structure, emotional content, thematic content, voice, tone, climax, foreshadowing, syntax, diction, word connotations, assonance, alliteration, consonance, anaphora, rhythm and many other parts that must be blended seamlessly together so the reader can experience a perfectly coherent world and a satisfying story line with lovable characters that feel real,
• Then after you have written thousands of pages and read thousands upon thousands more, studying and practicing every aspect, you must generate material. Writers could spend from a year to a couple of decades just writing a novel, or a collection of poetry.
• Then you spend double that length of time revising, revising, revising again, then editing, then having others critique it, then revising more. You rewrite. You edit again.  Hmph!
• Merely crafting a title for a blog, crafting a slogan, writing a short copy for an advert or writing a short curator's forward for an art exhibition causes a lot of task to the brain.

Likewise, a musician needs to;

• spend time to rehearse solo and or with a band,
• incure cost of purchasing musical instruments,
• incure cost of maintaining the musical instrument,
• incure cost of recording, transportation and fashion to look the part,
• do continuous study of the history and current trends in music,
• promote and market his music on and offline,
• manage the business side of music with respect to legal, accounting, tax, management and logistics.

So when you pay a musician to come and perform or entertain, you are not just paying for that performance, you are paying for all the items on the list mentioned above including the fact that the musician has bills to pay just like a plumber, tailor, doctor does. Those people will never work for free. Try taking a ride in a Lagos public transport for free. I will like to hear your hopefully, sweet experience with a Lagos conductor.

Similar challenges go for other forms of art. All of these are not joyous, exciting, relaxing. It is not a hobby. It's hard work a lot of the time. It's exhausting!

By the time the artist(e)s show the public their art, they have invested so many hours into the piece that the idea of never getting paid for it, years of free labour, probably around other jobs, staying up late at night, or waking up early in the morning, is panic inducing.

"Perform for 'exposure'," they insist. It will be a better option to expose yourself to the sun rays, I think, but in reality, an artist (e) still needs to showcase his talents. Wisdom and experience are required in this regard to ascertain when this 'exposure' will be more valuable than cash at that point in time.

Most artist(e)s are poor, working class people, because they've dedicated their lives to a craft, to work that they find meaningful, for which unfortunately, our culture doesn't feel is worth paying for.

They take up minimum wage jobs so they have time to create. Our art would only go downhill if none of our artist(e)s were formally educated in their craft. Even those not formally educated still spend money on studio sessions and other forms of informal training.

Imagine being an artist(e) in our society not having enough money, not having enough time, the constant rejections, the criticisms, and on top of that, some of the people who genuinely DO enjoy your work don't feel you should be paid for it.

It is not good enough if people stop paying for art. In a study titled, "Explaining Premature Mortality across Fields of Creative Endeavor,” shows that creative writers die up to nine years shorter on average than their peers in different disciplines. 

In another study, titled "Creativity In Offspring Of Schizophrenic And Control Parents: An Adoption Study,” researchers Kinney, Richards, Lowing, LeBlanc, Zimbalist, and Harlan write that creative people might have predisposition to certain mental illness (such as depression or bi-polar disorder) in their genes. The researchers write, “Given a favorable environment, these genes may also be associated with personally and socially beneficial phenotypes, such as enhanced creative functioning. Enhanced creativity may represent one type of compensatory advantage”.

Not  giving adequate recognition to the work of an artist(e) physically and financially can cause that artist(e) to withdraw from society (like I have done severally). This could eventually lead to mental illness or suicide (like I have tried to do, once).

We need to show that we value the time and effort they put into their education and their work that makes our world more beautiful or gives us greater meaning. Imagine a world without music, arts and writing. 

Whatever you are today be it a lawyer, doctor, accountant, a writer helped in shaping your points of view and mentality.

“Why should I pay for a musician to practice his instrument?” How long it takes you to master something is irrelevant to the final product. Is the value of a song increased based on the effort that the artist put it? No, you can't hear effort in a recording. 

The value of art is what people are willing to pay for it. Most pop music is computer generated and takes minimum effort, but it is worth the same as someone who "poured their heart" into their music because pop music is catchy. Kudos to musicians like me who perform live music.

The extent of suffering of an artist has nothing to do from the product that he supplies. Everyone has to pay rent and taxes, and the fact that someone chose music as a career doesn't entitle them to economic maltreatment.

The church too comes with its own emotional blackmail."God has given you this talent. Use it for God," (Perform for free). How the musician got to church that Sunday or midweek service, whether with borrowed money or on legedece benz, is not the pastor's business. 

It is okay to pay the church staff but you and I know a church service is not complete without the instrumentalists and the choir. 

Then another argument ensues, "If instrumentalists are paid, then it means the choir should be paid too". 

As a professional singer, songwriter and an instrumentalist, I can confidently tell you that it requires more skill to be an instrumentalist. Songwriting too requires more skill than singing. What now if a guest artiste is invited?Won't the church pay the artiste?

My suggestion to the matter of pay or not to pay rigmarole especially in the church setting, is that instrumentalists that want to work for free are free to do so but the church should encourage them once in a while with at least transport fare. These kinds of artistes most definitely have side jobs else, they will die in penury. Same goes for the choir members. 

Instrumentalists that choose to get paid for their services deserve to be paid in full and on time. Emotional blackmail should not be used on them. They deserve their wages and should in no way be compared or downgraded in the bid to exercise their fundamental rights. They have a family to feed and clothe for Christ's sake!

I really hope you will value art more and begin to allocate budget for it from your business, stop cutting down on budgets set aside by the management for the arts, set up art foundations to enable artist(e)s assess grants, visit art galleries and buy art works and quit looking for free music downloads when you can obviously afford to buy them.

Enough said.