Drummers as an inferior class

Savoring the persecution

“Drummers are known to be a race on their own.”
- Joe Morello

“General Browning, I am a Pole, considered by some to be smart.”
- First line spoken by Gene Hackman playing the Polish general Sosabowski in A Bridge Too Far

Hey, let's talk about a favorite topic of drummers: why does everybody hate us so much. God, it's good, apparently; the rich liquor that is the feeling of persecution. Let us feast at that trough. Let's mix some metaphors, drummer-style, because we're so unsmart. 

Pretty obviously, playing the drums is kind of a low-prestige occupation in the eyes of much of society. Not a serious activity, or much of an art form— a joke instrument played by people of questionable intelligence. It's like telling somebody you're in motocross. 

I'm not immune to it; when asked what I do, usually I'll say “musician”, and then drummer if they ask what instrument. I'm not embarrassed about it, but it sounds more serious to say musician first. I used to be worse. When I got my scholarship to go to the U. of Southern California, I would talk to classical students there and feeling abashed that I was getting money for playing the drums, while they were taking out loans. For a time, working this site's titular river boat gig, I was embarrassed to be getting paid more to work fewer hours than most of the crew. Boy, was I dumb. 

Among musicians, the comments happen the most among students. People in their late teens/early 20s are more competitive, and have not accomplished anything yet, and tend to be overly status-oriented. They'll go at each other over the general status of their pursuits, and future prospects as they imagine them. Who goes to the best school, who has the best pedigree, who plays the biggest bulls**t instrument, and who plays a real instrument. I saw a lot of that in California, and from players from the Northeast.  

Later on the attitude comes from mediocre musicians— who don't value the drums, and/or who are mad that drums are a more attention-getting instrument than their own. They may feel bullied by the drums— their physicality, and dynamic power. A lot of players never learn to play with enough power to compete with the drums played at a normal, musical volume.  

Aside: Which is not to say that it is not still our job to accompany them and help them sound good. But they have a job too, to learn to get a sound and make themselves heard and play their instrument better. 

It is easy for drummers to feel clueless around other instrumentalists, with their mysterious “chords” and “pitches” and “fingerings” and whatnot— which they've been talking about routinely since they were children, and we mostly learned later, with less regularity, and greater effort. It can make it appear that they're doing something harder than what we do. They are not. All major instruments have a low bar for entry— people start them as little kids, without even any priors. They didn't make anyone pass an aptitude test and do four years of coursework to pick up a guitar. All instruments, and the music written for them, are designed to be playable by humans.  

In fact those other musicians are 100% as clueless about drummers as drummers are about them. That's a huge deficiency, considering how important our job is to a group sounding good. But it's normal, and fine, so long as they value us, and we can relate to each other on a purely musical level. 

Normal citizens make offhand comments because 1) they're lazy, and 2) they heard someone else say something about a drummer once. The ones that actually give you grief really want to be doing what you're doing— they hate their jobs and feel untalented, and they deal with it by trying to make you feel that way too. They were raised by bad adults who made them feel bad for wanting to do anything creative, and they are not good enough people themselves to overcome that and decide to not be that way to others. 

Occasionally you get comments from music fans and from bad, part time drummers, to the effect that you are not famous and are therefore a failure. The same type of people who also attack famous people for not being as famous as they once were, or for not being as famous as somebody else. The drummers may come at you for not being as famous as a drummer they like— thinking that liking the famous drummer gives them credit for that drummers's accomplishments, elevating them above you. 

I've seen repeatedly online part time drummers attempting to gatekeep who gets to be called professional, limiting it to people whose only source of income is actually performing on their instrument— an increasingly rare species of music professional. It's a way of dragging professionals down to their level, because virtually all professionals make some of their money doing things besides performing.   

Online trolls— sad losers who want to make other people feel bad to the level at which they hate themselves— are a very low grade of opponent. They dedicate their entire lives to that pursuit, and engaging with them is a mistake. Non-responsiveness and dismissal are the best tactics if you choose to do that. 

Troll: [makes stupid/insulting comment calculated to compel you to respond]

You: All right, good luck with that.   

You don't speak to the “substance” of their comment. To the extent that there's any substance to it, they don't care about it, it's just a hook to get you to respond as they try to string you along for as long as possible. It's a pure game, and if you're going to respond, learn to do it non-responsively, and detatch. 

More generally, being defensive about anyone's comments or attitudes is losing. You won't convince a determined loser that what you do isn't a joke. I don't defend the activity. If I feel like fighting with someone about it, I'll defend the job, and the business. Like, the IRS thinks I'm working a real job, I have several decades of Schedule Cs to prove it. In the objective sense of being an economic entity answerable to the government for your accounts, your work is as serious as anyone else's in the world. People even pay you in real currency, and everything. 

It helps if you work on having a professional bearing, and a sense of professional correctness, appropriate to the situation. That puts whatever anyone says right off the table as anything deserving an emotional response. Or any serious response. You have the choice to not participate. You have to be detached from whatever reality someone is basing their comments in. It's harder if you've put yourself in an amateur situation, so try not to do that. 

And you can't secretly believe they're right. It can take a long time in life to have basic confidence in what you're doing even without somone challenging it. If you were lucky enough to not be raised and educated surrounded by offensive people, it takes some adjustment to handle them effectively and non-defensively. 

Be clear on it: all of this stuff comes from bad-to-mediocre people, and bad-to-mediocre musicians. It's completely beyond the pale for normal fulfilled people, or for good musicians. Normal people think the drums are a fun instrument, and that anyone who can earn their living with it is lucky. Good musicians value good drummers. For someone to say something negative about it directly to you should be surprising, a sign of exceptional smallness of character. 

Very occasional quote of the day: What “a gig” was

“You didn't get a gig for a weekend, like two days at The Gate. It wasn't like that. We'd stay at a place a week to three weeks, sometimes seven nights a week and five sets a night! At least four or five.

Sometimes if the music was so good we were playing after 4:00 am and the people would still be there! Another thing was that musicians really didn't work steady. When I was with Bird, he would go to Chicago, Detroit or somewhere else for a week. That next week, we didn't necessarily go. The band would come back home until Bird got another gig. So, I started working with other people in between Bird's gigs.”

“The longest period I ever stayed at the Five Spot was with Monk— we'd do like 18 weeks at a time.”

— Roy Haynes, from his 1980 Modern Drummer interview by Scott K. Fish

What it is: being a professional

Obligatory Venn diagram 

One area where I see a lot of misconceptions is around the idea of being a professional musician. Usually, people seem to think it means that you make all your money from performing music; and that you're prospering at it. And that you're a really, really good at it. None of those things are necessarily the case, or there would be very few professional musicians out there. So here are some of the things that make you a professional musician:


Music is your main thing.
You don't have a full-time career outside of music. There is some wiggle room here: a lot of people— maybe even most, now, times being what they are— have to supplement. Some great musicians I can name took up other jobs at some point in their career; they didn't stop being professionals just because they gave up performing for a job as an accountant after 35 years in the business.


You have been paid for it, and are oriented around getting paid for it.
Traditionally in music the bar for admission is very low: you're a professional after you've had your first paying gig. The other things here have to be true, as well, though. Your long-term orientation is that your job is musician, even if you're not very successful at it right now.


You have professional training and expertise.
You studied music in college, or are otherwise educated in music, you have field experience, you read the professional literature.


You are able to do professional jobs in your local scene.

You may or may not be able to give Thomas Lang a run for is money, but you are able to do most jobs in your city, usually with little or no preparation or rehearsal. 

You understand and follow professional practices. 
You know how the business works at your own level, at least. You get yourself to the gig, on time, properly attired, with everything you need for the job, and you perform the job capably, with a professional demeanor. You know how and how much you are supposed to get paid, you know how to do your taxes.


You are a member of trade organizations
This one is sort of optional, as a lot of people are not members of any organizations whatever. But: you have been a member of the local Musician's Union for some period of time— with the nature of the business today, most club musicians I know are not active members their entire careers, however. You are a member of other trade organizations like PAS, MTNA, NARAS, etc. You attend trade events like PASIC, NAMM, IAJE conferences, etc.


You maintain a professional studio. 
You have a workspace for doing all your non-performance musical work: practicing, rehearsing, teaching, writing, and office work. You have a collection of instruments adequate for the work you do. You have a computer with whatever software and peripherals you need for your music business. You have a library of recorded music, drumming books, and general music books. You have archives: recordings, published works, recorded masters, other written works. You have a certain amount of AV equipment: stereo, audio and possibly video recording capacity.


Professional does not mean successful
Vincent Van Gogh was a painter who happened to be extremely unsuccessful during his lifetime— his business was a total failure, to the point that it killed him and his agent, his brother Theo. But Vincent was a professional: he did nothing but paint, he had professional training, he was recognized as a peer by other professionals, and was represented by an agent for the purpose of selling his paintings. He was a professional, but he never sold a painting. And the fact that his pictures now are valued in the hundreds of millions is irrelevant, actually— he's just a convenient example.