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At M 33, an arts and cultural development centre centred around a recording studio, sound is produced with precision: one take, then another, a tiny adjustment that changes the result. This is where Omar works, with over ten years’ experience ‘both on stage and behind the console’. A single day encompasses composition, production, customer service, self-promotion and constant learning. And, above all, a reality that cuts across the sector: working hard does not always translate into social protection.
If you’re an employee, you’re on a payroll, but that doesn’t happen with artists.
A job that doesn’t fit on a payslip
Omar describes a working structure familiar to those who make a living from music: working hours are irregular and fragmented, and income is unstable. They do not work for a single employer, but on multiple projects, sometimes with ‘informal companies, with variable pay and periods without income — including times when they take on jobs to develop professionally rather than for the pay’.
In this context, many artists find other ways to access social protection: supplementing their career by teaching in educational institutions or becoming beneficiaries of their partner’s insurance when their partner is within the traditional system. But these solutions do not address the fundamental issue: the need for direct, stable and independent access.
‘Ideally, we should be able to access it directly ourselves and also offer protection to our dependants,’ he emphasises. For Omar, the question is not an abstract one: it also affects his children, his family and the continuity of a life built around creative work.
Intermittent work is not an exception in the cultural sector; it is the rule, and traditional systems are not always designed for that reality.
The hidden cost of sustaining a career
‘In the arts and entertainment, even those who don’t want to become entrepreneurs end up doing so,’ explains Omar. You have to ‘sell’ your work time and time again: finding projects, negotiating, devising strategies, maintaining networks, replying to messages, coordinating rehearsals, and finalising dates. The artist also becomes their own manager.
And he adds a key point for understanding the structural precariousness: ‘Very few projects can provide you with work for the whole month.’
This cycle has direct consequences for the creative process. Self-promotion and management take up time that should be available for composing, rehearsing or researching. In a sector where the future depends on staying relevant, day-to-day survival can erode what makes a work unique.
We’ve entered a cycle of self-promotion that directly affects our creativity. We’re caught in a cycle of survival.
Composing is work too, and it should have rights
Within that tension, Omar puts forward an idea that reshapes the debate: composing is work. And if it is work, it cannot depend solely on inspiration. Discipline becomes a way of sustaining the profession: organising sessions, setting goals, writing even when the spark does not appear at first.
‘I do not write because I feel inspired. I write because it is my job. Composing is my job,’ he says. And he concludes with a phrase that separates vocation from profession: ‘that challenge — creating under pressure, with uncertainty — does not arise in the same way in other professional sectors’.
The underlying argument is clear: if creation is recognised as work, then it should also come with rights.
read more: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/omar-quesada-musician-composing-my-job-and-any-job-it-should-come-rights?hub=701
