August (Delia): The Art of Self-Invention: A Musician's Identity Crisis

Rhythm is everywhere. Percussion is both ancient and modern, primal and yet at the pinnacle of technological frontiers. It can be found in almost every global tradition and genre. As a percussionist you are presented with many pathways, but boy can all those delicious choices cause its own cacophony of identity crises. Where should your focus be? How do you keep all those plates and skills spinning? Are you trying to get booked because you are the "specialist", or because your multifarious set of niche skills collide neatly for certain projects?

I have definitely found myself stuck on this in the past. But I now approach these conundrums completely differently thanks to these three inspirational artists:

Yo Yo Ma

I once listened to cellist Yo-Yo Ma in an interview on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs where he talked about he had deliberately reordered his different personas:

1. “Yo-Yo Ma” – myself: my opinions, personality, values, emotions, ideas, member of society

2. “Musician” – I express the above using the art of music

3. “Cellist” – I happen to play the cello which is my vehicle for making music 

The classical music industry often flips this hierarchy. A huge amount of our identity as a musician in this genre is tied to what instrument we play and our  expectations around its tradition.

Indeed if you study music at a conservatoire, you will have entered a course literally titled whatever your “number 3” is and be labelled by that instrument throughout. You may even choose to behave with the typical characteristics that instrumentalists would embody, only listen to and play repertoire associated with that instrument.

You may choose not to participate in something  because it does not fit with the image of being that particular instrumentalist. For example, orchestral musicians – (apart from the percussionists!) – would expect a doubling fee for playing another instrument, singing whilst playing, playing in a significantly different style or even improvising, even though all of these skills are integral parts of a “musician”.  

Victor Wooten

There is a beautiful quote in The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music by the epic bass guitarist Victor Wooten:

“A true writer can write using a typewriter, a pen, a pencil, or anything else that he chooses. You  wouldn’t call him a pencil writer, would you? Your understanding that the writing utensil is just a tool allows you to see past it and into the truth of what he is - a writer. The story is in the writer,  is it not? Or is it in the pencil? Your problem is this: You have been trying to tell our story with a bass guitar instead of through it.” 

Genre is not the problem here - for example, improvisation is not just about knowing jazz harmony or “licks” or needing any prior knowledge, so much as using your sense of musicality as guide to choose your ideas. Being a classically trained musician is more than enough preparation; or even better - being a “musician” in its fullest sense: improviser, composer, listener, singer, instrumentalist, percussionist, sound artist, director, analyst, theorist, communicator, mover.. 

Dame Evelyn Glennie

The world's most famous percussionist - Dame Evelyn Glennie - doesn't even call herself a percussionist first. She considers herself to be a "sound creator". She has even brought out an eponymous academic book exploring the - "interdisciplinary appraisal of the larger social role of the artist...the evolution of an eclectic, experimental and fascinating instrumental discipline which wilfully eludes standardization." Try saying that one in a hurry!

Once I stopped thinking like a percussionist and started thinking as Delia, it gave me permission to make all kind of mad projects. I created a percussion chamber music "concert in conversation" questioning the privacy of my Facebook account, a community project using water as an instrument to challenge the levels of pollution in my local river, and presented a BBC Radio 3 series called Music and Machines exploring music inspired by, made alongside and made with machines.

Will similarly has made an album (MOJO Top 10 Albums 2020) and touring show called A Day Will Come, looking at the impact of Brexit where he learnt a folk tune from all 27 of the EU member states in combination with a poet and a 4-piece band.

Together Will and I have made projects like The Silent Planet - an orchestral concerto written alongside Robert Macfarlane - taking inspiration from Holst's astrological outlook to question the future of our own planet. Our next project Rewild - a choir piece written alongside Kerry Andrew asking: can we 'rewild' the classical voice? inspired by British folk song and current rewilding projects like the Knepp Estate.

"A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to."

Banksy, Wall and Peace