Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how music creates a community. A music event gives people a reason to come together. Tastes for particular musical styles and artists create communities. Individual communities share specific music as part of their collective experience.

The musicians themselves are a community, but I feel like they often limit themselves with that title. Within the music community, everyone is a musician- it’s not unique. I’ve started to notice that my musical skills are often more appreciated within other communities.

This feels almost counterintuitive, because people outside of music are less trained, less critical. Often they are actually less interested in music.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is give and take in a music career. There aren’t simple transactions in the music world- it’s a path where you must take the long view. It’s not just “I scratch your back, you scratch mine”- though that certainly happens. It’s more like “I share your cause and artistic vision, let’s see how we can achieve this together.” It could be referrals for work or opportunities, making an introduction, or something even less defined than that.

Here are some scenarios we’ve encountered and thought about recently:

1. Always trying to squeeze out a few more dollars for a particular gig might not be worth it. They may be paying you as much as they can.
2. Doing a gig that offers good money but is going to be a major pain may not be worth it.
3. Doing a gig for free (or very little) for a meaningful cause can be very rewarding and fun.
4. Motivating musicians with money can backfire if they’re not on the same page about artistic direction.

I started to think: if I want more support from the community, perhaps I need to be more involved in the community first. With that in mind, I began to look for ways to directly serve specific communities that I was already connected to in some way.

Now, I’m starting to feel the good karma coming back to me. The Pan-Tones received their first grant last month from the Greater Denton Arts Council to support the continuation of dance night. We became a part of Texas Winds Musical Outreach, and now have the opportunity to provide music for local rehab and memory care facilities.

It has taken a lot of time, patience, and humility to receive the fruits of our musical labor. We’ve had to trust that the sincere efforts we’ve put into our music and artistic growth would pay off. We sometimes feel bad that we’re not “more successful,” whatever that means. But then again, as cheesy as it might sound, we get to bring joy and connect people through music. We get to determine our own artistic direction, and create performances and experiences that we can really stand behind.