The Organized Musicians (Part II)

Abstract

Like many other unions, the AFM has long battled the threat of technological unemployment. Like their brother-unionists, the musicians have found that the man who has been displaced by a machine can take little comfort from the orthodox economist's" assurance that the long-run effect of all technological change must be the creation of a better life in which his remote descendants may share. Consequently, they have resisted this change as best they could. This problem can best be understood if one significant characteristic of the machine in the field of music be noted at the outset. In whatever form, the machine has never eliminated or even altered the musician's function. The machine does not make music-it merely provides a means of preserving and giving wider dissemination to the music made by the musician. That characteristic is significant in two respects. In the first place, by providing a means of reproducing musical performances and making wider dissemination of those performances possible, the machine has created a greater demand for music and probably inspired a greater number of people to become musicians without creating a correspondingly greater demand for the services of musicians. Secondly, the machine is still dependent on the musician for the original performance-a fact which has at once served to dramatize the musician's plight and to aid him in his struggle against mechanization.