"THE SINGAPORE RHAPSODY": DREAMS, STRUGGLES AND PRECARITY OF ASPIRING CLASSICAL MUSICIANS IN NEOLIBERAL SINGAPORE

Abstract

This thesis is a qualitative study examining how Singapore’s aspiring classical musicians make sense of their lives and labour as they navigate the neoliberal transformations of work in a freelance economy. The creative industries are heralded by bureaucrats and economic planners as major drivers for economic growth. Yet for all its euphemistic proclamations of growth, little is known about the actual, lived realities of local classical musicians working in Singapore. Situated under this backdrop, I explore the implications of their pursuits in a creative industry which has been increasingly co-opted and instrumentalized as drivers of growth and the various contradictions arising from the nature of their work. Although existing scholarship on precarity has been widely associated with the material implications of economic insecurity, instability, and unpredictability of one’s flexible employment, this thesis reconceptualizes work from a different angle — arguing that precarity surrounding musicians is more than just the dollars and cents accrued from one’s labour. Instead, precarity is analysed through the socio-cultural constructions of the self, affect, and embodiment. Through the personal narratives of my informants, I explore the heightened feelings of anxiety and insecurity as classical musicians possessing large amounts of social, cultural, and economic capital grapple, negotiate, and internalise the contradictory and often jarring realities of their work.