Music (as) Labour: Professional Musicianship, Affective Labour and Gender in Socialist Yugoslavia

Abstract

This article strives to broaden existing approaches in music scholarship, which, despite a long history of thinking about the role of music in shaping labour, have resulted in only sporadic attention to music labour itself. Drawing on Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's notions of affective labour as work intended to produce or modify peoples' emotional experiences, the article treats professional music-making as embodied labour, exploring its specific conditions—in particular, in relation to gendered practices of work. Based on empirical research into the values and concepts of music labour in socialist Yugoslavia, this article attempts to provide insight not only into the geographically and temporally specific context of socialism but also more generally, pointing to its shared somatic, gendered and affective aspects. Such an approach draws on recent calls for empiricism in the wake of critical deliberations of the ahistorical and decontextualised nature of existing approaches to affective labour. Through a case study of the material working conditions and work subjectivities of female professional singers, its aim is to emphasise music-making as both material practice and sensorial experience, taking into account that both are in constant and heterogeneous flux.