"Creative activity" turns me into a pushmi-pullyu

Discussion with colleagues and related readings in my DigPINS course recently focused on issues of scholarship in our respective fields. This got me reflecting about scholarship and creative activity in the field of music and music education. Since I wear a few different hats in my job -- I teach music education courses and work with student teachers, I teach/conduct musical ensembles and prepare them for public performance, and I perform on French horn in ensembles and as a soloist -- my productivity comes about in distinctly different ways. I work to stay active as a performer, a conductor, a clinician, and an adjudicator. At the same time, I stay connected to the music education profession through access to several professional journals (all peer-reviewed) and involvement with music education conferences. This is what makes me feel like the aforementioned pushmi-pullyu, the 2-headed cross between a gazelle and a unicorn in The Story of Dr. Doolittle.

(Ok, the original movie used llamas instead of a gazelle and a unicorn, but that doesn't really matter...)

My identity as a conductor and horn player is quite visible, hard to miss. By comparison, my "academic" identity is a blip on the publication radar at this point. Because of the duality of my job (conductor/performer and music education academic), I am fortunate that my current institution does not weigh equally my activities as a conductor/performer and my publication presence in journals and at conferences.

I feel the itch to get something in print, to be more of a scholarly presence in that regard, but I find so much of my time consumed with studying scores, practicing, and prepping for classes that I teach. Finding the time to conduct what I feel to be relevant research, write drafts, submit for peer-review, and then wait either for acceptance or rejection (accompanied by cold commentary from "Reviewer #2") is pretty impossible at the moment.

The development of open access journals has not yet hit the field of music education, so I don't see myself going down that road anytime soon. We are surrounded by a plethora of peer-reviewed music education journals, and this is such a dichotomy because of the nature of working in the field of music. Music is supposed to reflect life, who we are as individuals and as a society; it is constantly evolving, especially in the areas of "popular" music. Yet I have heard on more than one occasion that musicians (and music teachers) are slow to change. [I fear that I have to agree with that sentiment to a certain degree.] Right now, this would appear to apply also to our journals - not necessarily in terms of content, but how they simply exist and how people can have their voices heard in them. Maybe we as a profession feel complacent content that relevant issues in our field are being adequately presented through the peer-review process and that working music educators dutifully subscribe to whatever journals they need or have adequate access to a library that subscribes on their behalf.

Don't get me wrong - my field is filled with great thinkers and writers, and I actually get a boost when I see a friend or an acquaintance get published in one of our major journals. I think, "Yeah, I've got something like that to contribute; I'll be on that page someday soon." [And then I return to preparing my musical scores.]

But it might be more encouraging for those of us leading double lives in the music field if we were to see the growth of quality open access publications in our area.

In the meantime, I keep exploring the digitalness digitality digital nature of what I do...