The challenge of being a composer in a developing country

It’s no secret for anyone that music is generally not in the top ten of the most well paid jobs, unless you are Hans Zimmer and can afford to compose for Hollywood movies, or a pop singer like Shakira. But being a composer in a developing country like mine can be much more challenging than in a wealthy city.

I come from Madagascar, the big island on the East of Africa. While my country is among the richest natural resources countries, a big part of our population is living under 2$ a day.

While a lot of people from my country are interested in music and have natural talent for it, very few are choosing it as a career path, let alone as a composer. My family isn’t specifically poor, but when I first told my parents I wanted to study music and make a career out of it, they tried to change my mind. And despite the hard work of a lot of musicians that made classical music better considered than a few years ago, there is still a long way to go.  

What is so different in my country that makes it harder to become a full time composer? Everything is going against you.

Challenge #1: Your background

• A taste for classical music

Unfortunately, classical music is often underrated and considered outdated in our modern world, with the discovery of pop music. In my country, it has always been the case since the beginning of times.

My father is fond of classical music and influenced my taste for it a lot as a young girl. But while it might vary from country to country, in mine, most people are listening to tropical or pop music. Very few are interested in classical music, and fewer are willing to pay to listen for it. It is hard to fill concert rooms, even for free, and even if the performer is famous or a foreign performer on tour. Actually the audience is usually the same: mostly friends, family, co-workers, music teachers and other performers.

• Business opportunities

The other important background side when you are a composer in a developing country is business opportunities. In wealthy countries such as America, France or London, classical music industry is tightly linked to the movie industry. For instance, Hollywood is among the most powerful places were film composers are very welcome. Movies in my country do not use neither classical nor film music. They use pop songs that they either buy from local pop singers or use a public domain repertoire. I don’t think I could expect them ordering me film music at all, and I am not personally keen of making jingles.

Challenge #2: The studies

• Schools and conservatories

Here in Madagascar, there are no Conservatories you can go to. The government has more important fields to think about. Most musicians come from private music schools, and there are neither composition schools, nor composition teachers anywhere.

I was lucky when I came across the Anglican Music Institute (AMI) at the right time. The school is lead by missionaries and is regularly hiring teachers abroad. When I applied, the Director himself was a composer and became my first composition teacher.  He left the country before the end of my first year but the school could manage to find another composition teacher remotely. When I graduated from my second year, I couldn’t apply for the next term because they couldn’t hire composition teachers anymore. From there, I had to do self teaching online. And I was their only composition graduated student.

Usually, a composer in a developing country like mine doesn’t have the chance I had. Composers here don’t expect to make a career out of it and don’t invest in studies. They mostly rely on natural talent or will to compose. Those who are ordering their work don’t really bother about technical sides anyway, since they didn’t attend music schools too.  And for those who do want to study, they either have to self teach themselves or study abroad. But studying abroad is significantly expensive, knowing that our local money is only worth 30% a dollar. You will have to find scholarships for that, and many of us forget about it.

• Practice your work on real instruments

Local music schools only offer a limited range of instruments courses. You will easily find piano, guitar and violin courses while very few will offer flute, oboe, saxophone, cello, … ones. And if bowed string instruments are starting to have more interest, brass and woodwind instruments are still very rare. Not only are those instruments a bigger investment (they are far away from a regular synthesizer or a cheap ready-to-use guitar), but we also lack vendors, teachers, and … people don’t know about them! Obviously, we don’t have any orchestras in Madagascar.

While this only looks like a “variety” disadvantage for audience, this is a serious problem for us composers. We need our works to be performed on real instruments to develop an understanding of how an instrument really works and sounds “in live”, and what a performer’s struggles are. After all, what’s the point of writing for an orchestra if there is none to play my work? Or to write for a tuba? Wealthy countries have their own ensembles, and school and conservatories will usually have their composition students’ works performed by the other students. We can’t.

These restrictions will more than often influence the kind of instruments/ensemble you will want to write for if you plan to get performed. A composer in a developing country, due to the lack of performers, (and also due to his lack of sight reading), is mostly relying on his composition software to play the music for him, be it Sibelius or Finale. And when it comes to actually record the work, it’s another struggle.

• Recording your work

No instruments equals no performers. No performers equals no business for instrumental studios. No studios equals…. Wait. How are you supposed to record your work then? I don’t know.

Truth is, as far as I know, most composers here don’t compose for instruments. They compose for choirs as the town is full of church choirs and independent choirs looking for original works, while performers would rather stick to Bach, Mozart, Debussy, and other public domain repertoire.

When choirs need an accompaniment, they use electronic audio playback. I even know a man who won a church competition with an electronic recording, with no prior musical background. Very few choirs are actually having a real person as an accompanist, and it will usually be a pianist (the same pianists you will see everywhere else!).

Recording choirs is not easy in itself as no studios are equipped for that. Most choirs will record in a 3x2m studio, with bad-in-shape-micros and headphones, in a pop singer setting.

How am I going to record my instruments compositions? I don’t know. I am still looking for a way; feel free to let me know if you have ideas.

• Help between musicians

A lot of musicians will deny it, but while some are willing to freely share knowledge, others won’t and will secretly keep it for themselves, convinced to stay “the best” in their field. Sad is you will encounter more of the second ones than the first ones. Those people are willing to help you and teach you only if they can be sure the content is not important enough to make you as great as them, (or worse) better than them. And others won’t if they cannot get something from you as valuable as their knowledge. Ironic situation in a country with already so many obstacles. Everybody should be willing to help each other so the whole system can flourish.

So where do we, as a composer in a developing country with no appropriate schools, no conservatories and almost no help from others go? We self teach ourselves.  And the miserable thing: everything we learn and every knowledge we acquire from that frustration of having to fight alone, some of us will turn them into selfishness in their turn. And that’s how the circle is powered. But what applies for composers applies for everybody else in this country, whatever field you’ll be looking at.

Now when we encounter those who are freely willing to share their knowledge, be it as a masterclass, a lecture or any other teaching form, we have two reactions. The first one is positive for those who understand everybody needs everybody, and learning is a lifetime process. The second one is negative for those who think they reached the top and “who is he/she to teach me anything?” or “he/she is not that great, he/she doesn’t have anything to teach me”. Once again, sad is, you will face more of the second ones than the first. With so many rejections, less and less people are willing to share their knowledge again. Nobody won, nobody improved, and nothing changed.

My piano teacher used to say “A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. It will only spread more light around.”

Challenge #3: Copyrights and royalties

• Royalties

There is no such word as “royalties” for a composer in a developing country like Madagascar. People can use your music as much as they want without you getting a penny. Unless you are a pop singer that gets your music performed on the radio and on TV, that you can afford touring around the country and you are having a few concerts in town every year, you basically don’t get much from music.

• Copyrights

Everybody knows that one (and only) artist protection entity of the country, but I bet no one really knows how it works. I was astounded when I discovered how much their requirements were unrealistic for a composer like me. In order for them to “protect” my copyrights, I needed BOTH to:

• Have the work performed on TV at least once;
• Have the work performed on the radio at least twice;
• Have the “illegal” performance of my work sell tickets. They can’t protect you if the concert is not getting money.
• Have the “illegal” performance of my work held in places as big as a stadium in order to get my “royalties”. They can’t protect you from performances held in schools, cultural centers, or churches (basically everywhere people play classical music here…);

While those requirements are suitable for pop singers and songwriters, they are far from my composition world.

We also don’t have music publishers, and printing houses can only help you for a huge amount of printing sheets that they will sell in partner libraries. But we all know (almost) nobody goes to libraries here.

My only alternative was to get it copyrighted at the Department of Homeland Security. How are the other composers doing? They voluntarily put their work on public domain.

Challenge #4: Selling your work

• Who wants to buy your music?

Nobody buys music sheets here. Nobody buys anything. People are always trying to find a way to get things for free, be it a movie, a song, a CD, a book, and of course a music sheet. As a composer in a developing country like me, it is hard to get people to the idea of paying for your composition. Composers here are considered Good Samaritans that work for free.

Some people willing to pay for my work found my prices too high, when I was charging less than half the price an amateur composer is paid abroad. I decided to make a survey among a few musician friends on how much they would pay for an original music sheet. Most of them either didn’t know (or maybe didn’t want to give an opinion?), or wouldn’t pay more than 6$ (20,000Ar) per work. That makes an average of 0.4$ (1,500Ar) per day on a 2 weeks work project. I would make more money by selling tomatoes.

• Your competitors

The worst part of having to sell your work as a composer in a developing country is when composers who haven’t studied in regular schools but self-taught themselves are giving away their works for free! They don’t realize they kill the business for those who want to make a living out of it and are trying both to get back their studies investments and make a living. If people can get an original music for free, why bother buying one?

• Competitions and prizes

The only way you could “regularly” get money from your compositions is to participate in local competitions, generally for churches. But even in those events, the prize is not much, and only specific works can apply. Most choirs here read solfa and not solfege, they don’t have an accompanist but are singing on a playback, and their reading skills are quite limited making it challenging to write complicated music, even for music school choirs. Did I mention that the deadline is usually only a week or two apart? (International competitions are a year or a few months apart)

Challenge #5: Getting performed

• Your network

One of the good things about being a composer in a developing country is the rather small music community. (Almost) Everybody knows everybody. Unless you are an extreme introvert who never walks out of your bedroom, chances are you know a lot of performers, and even have a few of them being your friends. The other good thing is that good performers get easily tracked by the whole community, making it easier to know to whom to talk to and have your pieces in the front light. Spreading your music sheet in town is actually not that hard. The hard part is concretely getting performed.

• Your performer’s everyday life

In the same way as a composer in a developing country, a performer is not a full time one. We don’t get monthly wages like musicians in wealthy countries. Some don’t even get written contracts for a project. This leads performers to get at least another job to support them financially, and music is only a passion they can afford as a hobby.

We cannot practice 8 hours a day, we practice after work, when we are not too exhausted to maintain a balanced life. This lack of practice time doesn’t give us much to work on and most (personal) practices are done during rehearsal time. It’s even harder when we have to play in an ensemble.

• Hiring more than one performer

The first time I had one of my works performed, it was Dilemma, a piano trio with a flute and a violin. Getting the three of them practice together was challenging. Because of their work, they couldn’t meet often, as their schedule was almost always unsynchronized.  If you add to that the lack of practice rooms that have a piano, it gets even harder. While in my plan I was expecting two or three rehearsals a week, I barely could manage to gather them once a week, late at night. And truth is, nobody practiced their parts, and we only did sight reading for a few sessions.

The more instruments you involve in a given piece, the less your music is likely to be performed. If it is already hard to gather three people on a regular basis, let alone a hundred of them!

• Paying your performers

The other challenging part as a composer in a developing country is paying your performers. Unless you can get friends, teachers or other performers playing for free, how can you expect to pay one performer $29 (Ar 100.000) for each work when people usually don’t bother paying your music sheet more than $9 (Ar 20.000) each? While I do value performers work, in a composer view, paying a performer is expensive when we don’t either get paid much ourselves.

• Concert halls and practice equipment

We don’t have standardized concert halls. Concerts are held in churches, cultural centers and schools or universities amphitheaters. Even finding a piano to rehearse on is challenging. Most music schools here barely have one or two in-bad-shape-pianos and students are usually taught on a synthesizer or an electric piano. For instance, when AMI was having concerts in town, we used to bring our own piano on stage (thanks to our muscular tenors!).

Because of the limited sites, renting a concert room is very expensive. Most concerts are either barely paying little benefits or only paying the room’s rent back.

Being a composer in a developing country: good or bad idea?

When you choose music as a career path, it is usually because of your passion. Not for money, for fame, or because of what others like. Always because you are personally convinced that nothing else can fulfill your dreams and your life, yet, we have to make a living too. Being a composer in a developing country like mine will face you with more challenges than in wealthy countries: no schools, few audiences, no royalties, selfish system, no instruments and no performers, and obviously, no money. While you cannot choose the country in which you are born, you still can choose the path you want to travel on. Most people from my country decide to find their path abroad, no matter the field they are in. They might not make it, but they hope it wouldn’t be worse than staying here.

For those who stay, us musicians (be it a composer or a performer), if we want to survive, we either have to find another job in a different field, or become music teachers. But being a music teacher in a developing country is another talk that I will develop in my next article.