Why popular music still struggles to acknowledge the role of education, mentorship and community.
There’s an interesting contradiction at the heart of popular music culture.
Compared to many other creative industries, musicians and artists rarely seem comfortable publicly acknowledging the role that education, mentorship, or wider professional support systems have played in their success. Footballers have no issue acknowledging academies, fashion designers proudly cite the institutions where they trained, and directors routinely discuss the creative environments that shaped them. Within popular music, though, there still seems to be pressure to present artistic development as entirely self-generated.
