It’s funny how so many parents use music to instill values of discipline, hard work and dedication. Enrolling their children in piano and violin but actively deterring them from becoming professional musicians—a pipe-dream.
Dissuading kids from the arts is so commonplace it has become a cultural cliché. It’s almost as if a parental instinct kicks in, driven by a fear for future potential and job stability.
It is an out-in-the-open secret that musicians put the “gig”’ in gig economy.
Pursuing music, or any other creative enterprise for that matter, has long been dismissed and ridiculed for anyone who doesn’t immediately excel. . Music and art are pigeonholed as frivolous employment. The irony being that musicians are the ones putting in the long hours. and miles and miles of obligatory travel in the name of steady employment.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Article 1, a human rights magazine published by students in MRU’s school of Journalism & Digital Media. You can read more issues and articles at their website.
It comes as no surprise that themes of economic precarity, social inequity and financial insecurity come through in their music. Personal stories of the underpaid and overworked.
Joe Jencks, a folk singer-songwriter based in Chicago who has, among other things, worked as a Cultural Ambassador for the U.S. State Department, explains how his workforce experiences influenced his music, and how his music influenced his relationship with working culture.
When he first entered the workforce, it was by riverboat. At age fifteen, Jencks had already taken to playing live music professionally. Every summer-Friday-night Jencks would board the riverboat in Rockford, Illinois and perform for the passengers aboard. . The trip took forty-five minutes each way with a water show intermission.
“In the grand scheme of things, I realized that there were many ways in which one could enter the job market, and doing it entirely on somebody else’s terms was not required,” says Jencks. “It empowered me to consider the possibility that we as workers get to be a part of defining the shape of the workplace.”
As time went on, Jencks still was hoping to follow his heart he says but, “When I went to conservatory and studied vocal music, I was shocked at how working class I was… I didn’t know that.”
Despite feeling incredibly privileged to attend higher education, Jencks felt out of place. Jencks was raised to believe that he was middle class growing up, but what he learned as he got older was that the word “middle class” had a broad meaning, “and if I was in it, I was working on a guest pass.”
Leaving the conservatory and finding work was a challenge in and of itself, and Jencks found himself, “somewhat dismayed to realize what a degree in singing was worth in the open job market.”
Jencks started working at a marine parts warehouse, as a stevedore “throwing freight” as he described it. He worked hard, so hard in fact that when he finally left the job his supervisor guaranteed him a position “no questions asked” if he ever wanted to return. Jencks was still doing his best to play music evenings and weekends, but it was the first time he came face to face with the reality of many working-class people — a perpetual exhaustion that drains your energy and enthusiasm to pursue anything outside of work.
It was during this time he started to exchange letters with his friend Phil Amadon—a master welder working for the railroads his whole life. Amadon shared his philosophy (echoing that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) on the nature of work. Jencks says, “Every worker should be proud of how they spend their time. And it isn’t the job that’s menial, it’s how you are treated in the job that makes it menial.”
Suddenly for Jencks the dots started to connect.
“I knew all the songs from Woody Guthrie and songs from Pete Seeger, and from Malvina Reynolds and Rosalie Sorrels. And, you know, Alice Girard and Hazel Dickens, and the old coal mining songs and all kinds of things. But I didn’t really get the context until I was working in a warehouse and throwing freight and watching people in the warehouse get hurt, because we were being asked to work faster than was safe. And all of a sudden, I had a different perspective.”
Working-class heroes
Historically, work songs shared themes of manual labour, enduring long hours of dangerous tasks, and exploitation by employers. Now, different challenges plague the workforce. The rise of gig work, increasing AI integration, and the erosion of labour protection all contribute to the new work songs of today. As wages stagnate and the cost of living crisis intensifies, musicians are using their songwriting once again to echo the deepening dissatisfaction of workers.
“When I moved to Northern Ohio, a place that just got bludgeoned in the crash of the U.S. and Canadian steel industry and the loss of traditional industrial work, I saw people who really were committed, really committed to a notion of solidarity,” says Jencks. “I met with some of the workers [and] drove home that night. I was sitting there in my living room, just playing the guitar and all of a sudden, their story downloaded through me into the song ‘Rise As One.’”
Many musicians don’t start out trying to write a working-class anthem. Logan Douglas, a 27-year-old audio technician and lead guitarist for multiple bands, says, “It just naturally bleeds into things.”
Douglas, who plays in several bands that include the Josh Dillon Band (outlaw country), Dread Naughty (alternative folk) and Johnny and the Stray Hearts (folk rock), says, “Work consumes people most of their life, and most of their day, for five days a week.”
There is boundarylessness to work, especially now that cellphones, email and the internet have made no one ‘unreachable, workers are no longer ever ‘off the clock’. Themes emerge throughout music genres of workers not owning their own time, even death can be put off on account of work.
This is not a new concept. You can see examples of this in traditional workers’ songs. For instance, in “Sixteen Tons,” recorded by Merle Travis in 1946 about a coal miner’s life, the lyrics embody a feeling of powerlessness:
“You load sixteen tons and what do you get?
You get another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company story”
These themes define traditional work and labour songs because those are the things that plagued workers at the time. And when we look at modern songs, like “Rich Men North of Richmond,” written and released by Christopher Anthony Lunsford in 2023, they don’t seem far removed.
“I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away”
More commonly, this music is used as a tool, to tell the story of an underdog champion. It makes a folk hero of the everyday worker, revealing a level of dignity and respectability.
As early as the 17th century, music historians have found written songs about labour and work. Even before that, the practice was an entirely oral tradition. This practice has such a long history because at its core it’s used to measure inequality and injustice in work practices.
Maria Dunn, a Canadian singer/songwriter and Juno Award winner, explores these themes in her work. Her multimedia-concert projects stand out as a combination of journalism and artistic expression, enhanced by the dedicated work of videographer Don Bouzek and historian Catherine C. Cole. One of her notable productions is the video ballad “GWG: Piece by Piece” which combines interview clips of immigrant women working in a GWG clothing factory with musical compositions that capture their struggle, triumph and resilience.
Throughout Dunn’s work You hear these themes, Her 2007 song, “Speed Up,” captures it both in tempo and lyrics:
“I’ll tell you how the work went
speedup, speedup, speedup
Not one second was misspent
speedup, speedup, speedup
My fingers nimble, face intent
speedup, speedup, speedup
I’d like to see you try it friend
speedup, speedup, speedup”
Done to a rhythm similar to that of a busy factory floor, percussive with an underlying steadily increasing beat that embodies a persistent mechanical assembly line.
Only work and never respite.
Accordingly, Dunn sees today’s work climate as relentless, “When I think about the gig work that people are having to do… [those] on the ground are constantly surveilled in terms of time, in terms of how they’re managing their time, the pressure to work faster and work constantly,” says Dunn.
Her insight rings true. . The nature of work has changed dramatically since the mid-20th century, and so have workers’ troubles. Nowadays, jobs that require no training or limited education qualifications don’t necessarily apply as many members of the new working class have post-secondary degrees.
The term for being over-qualified in a position is called “underemployed,”.Economists at the U.S. Federal Reserve state that 30 per-cent of college graduates end up at jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Those who have nothing to sell but their labour seem to define the working class.
Mounting global concerns
An access to information request initiated by Matt Malone, an assistant law professor and government secrecy researcher, was provided to CTVNews.ca and ended up releasing a partially redacted report from the RCMP used to, “identify shifts in domestic and international environments that could have a significant effect on Canadian government and the RCMP.”
The report entitled, ‘Whole of Government Five-Year Trends for Canada,’ has seen these bleak patterns arise. “The situation will probably deteriorate further in the next five years, as the early effects of climate change and a global recession add their weight to the ongoing crises.” States the report.
The report also says these factors are already in motion: “The coming period of recession will also accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations.”
Logan Douglas knows it all too well, “I am objectively making the most amount of money I’ve made in my entire life right now with a two-income household, and I am arguably the brokest I’ve ever been… I think it’s because in the last little while, especially post-pandemic, everything has gotten so much more expensive.”
Increases in the cost of groceries, housing, and utilities have been seen across the country.Not everyone can afford it. Inflation, ‘greedflation’ and shrinkflation, it’s a beast with many names, and it’s consequences are felt universally. However, there are certain demographics affected more than others.
A new report released from Community Food Centres Canada looks at the staggering levels of poverty and food insecurity experienced by working-age single adults.
“Poverty rates among this demographic are nearly three times higher than the national average. More than one in five people [22 per cent] in this demographic live below the poverty line and 24 per cent of them experience food insecurity. Yet they receive the lowest amount of government support.”
The United States is facing similar challenges with the New York Times reporting on how the poverty rate in America soared during 2022. No wonder musicians are writing about their crushed American Dreams. The falacy of the social contract no longer exists. Where working hard, , going to college, would result in one day one day becoming homeowners and raising a family, comfortably. In Canada, the RCMP report ‘Whole of Government Five-Year Trends for Canada’, acknowledges, “many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live.”
Julie Lavery, an American singer/songwriting based in Nashville, plays an acoustic guitar to form a simple melody in the song “Stars for the Silver Spoons” which embodies a heartbreaking account of our current culture:
“My sister can’t afford a house
And she thinks it’s her fault
She says if she worked harder
She’d have money in the vault
And my mother needs a surgery
Her hand’s always in pain
But she fell ill last April
And used up all her sick days”
Songs from now or half a century ago have similar despondence — a sense of loss and hopelessness towards the future. Problems of the past have been passed on and mutated over time into more extreme forms.Workers and songwriters alike are hopelessly frustrated with fighting a faceless enemy of too-big-to-fail systems.
The enemy has changed, but what’s more, the seething undertones of resentment for the system border on a call to action.
“The anti-corporate message is as present as has ever been, I think more present in a lot of it than the last 20 years or so,” says Douglas.
Jencks observes, “We romanticize the middle class. And then we make the price tag, paying off student loans until you’re 70 in order to somehow be a part of that dream that mostly seems to be a cycle of acquiring debt and paying it off.”
The largest share of the working-age population falls into the category of millennials who account for one-third of our current workforce. Even if you just look at the songs regarding work culture that have come out in their lifetime you can see a real anger at the system. Since the 1990s, songs about the quality of life and worker protection have become angrier, more profane, and full of underlying fury. Songs referenced here, “Speed Up” by Maria Dunn, “Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony and “Stars for the Silver Spoons” by Julie Lavery, have all been written and released within that time along with many others.
Dunn says, “We have this long, vibrant, exciting history of people taking collective action to try and do something that makes their lives better. And I thought that was really important to be bringing that forth in the early 2000s.”
An ever-growing inequality
You hear this in songs of all genres, such as the Atlanta-based music collective Spillage Village whose song, “End of Daze,” includes the lyrics: “When the poor people run out of food, they can eat the rich.”
They wrote their album during the COVID-19 lockdown about all the societal unease going on in terms of wealth hoarding that also encompasses the killings of Black Americans, wildfires and the other pressing issues that felt out of their control.
Immortal Technique, a profound hip-hop artist, released “Rich Man’s World (1%)” in 2011. The song is written about the dubious legality surrounding the laws enforced on the rich compared to the laws imposed on the public. The song is written from the perspective of a CEO, a “rich man”:
"I’ll get your family murdered for a couple of G’s
‘Cause your working class money ain’t fuckin’ with me
You think rappers are rich ‘cause of songs you heard?
My labels make the money and haven’t rapped a fuckin’ word"
Wealth concentration amongst artists and other rappers most often ends up in the hands of the record labels. Record labels are notorious for taking 50 to 90 per cent of what the artists make. Musicians have been singing out these warnings more and more. Immortal Technique’s song ends with:
"Only little people pay all these taxes and fees
Since you were born, we’ve controlled what you watch and you read
And pretty soon we’re gonna own the fuckin’ air that you breathe
I take what I want, fucker, I don’t have to say please
I convince you that it’s good for you, take it and leave
You think presidents are a face of a nation?
I put ‘em all where they are, end of the conversation"
This radical anger comes from an ever-growing inequality that appears not only in music but in film as well. Movies like Triangle of Sadness, The Menu and even the Oscar-winner Parasite, express disgust for classist wealth-hoarding, devaluation of labour and political representatives out of touch with the populace.
These songs may be appearing in your life without you even knowing. On TikTok, “Bella Ciao,” the famous Italian anthem of freedom and resistance, suddenly accompanies videos about the political culture but also appears as innocuous background music to unrelated content. The song was originally written lamenting the poor conditions of workers in Northern Italy during the 1900s. Later, the lyrics were updated and focused on a romantic farewell as the singer goes to join the Italian resistance against fascism. It’s popularity has expanded transnationally.
Work used to be collective — a common effort for the benefit of society. But now, the shift in the employer/employee relationship has drifted farther away from the benefits for societal good and moved towards prioritizing profitability over protections. There seems to be a consensus among businesses, that the worst thing that can happen to a company is a union. More employment opportunities are offered through third-party contractors where it’s hard to form a union when only hired on for a couple of months.
In fact, explicit examples of corporations actively rooting against their employees and customers have been made public. The Intercept, a website dedicated to exposing corruption, injustice and protecting human rights, posted the contents of a memo that originated from the Bank of America entitled: “We Hope” Conditions for American Workers Will Get Worse.
In some cases, corporations are exploiting hiring services to attract top talent without transparency about the compensation or position and even rescinding their offer after candidates have left their current employment. The irony is this article was published in Forbes, despite their editor-in-chief’s own views expressed in his book How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets are the Best Answer in Today’s Economy.
Recognizing the disruption and unfair labour practices, Jencks argues, “I realized there was a concrete place for music in the movement, present time.”
The hypocrisy and insincerity of work culture is decimating worker morale, not to mention their faith in institutions. The reality for workers nowadays is a growing adversarial approach to employment. Malicious compliance, quiet quitting and movements to reject downloaded and side-loaded work without compensation are growing.
Musicians aren’t predicting a worker revolution, it has already started. They are just amplifying it.
"Once I built a railroad, made it run Made it race against time Once I built a railroad, now its done Brother, can you spare a dime? " - Jay Gorney, 1932