ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role that professionalism plays in the development and operation of local music scenes. Drawing on first-hand testimonies and participant observation over the past ten years in Athens, Greece, the text sheds light on how musicians experience, engage with, and aestheticize their demanding work within the popular music industry. The first section analyses how relationships of labour define the music scene as a social terrain. The second reveals how these relationships play out on stage and discusses their impact on the production of performance events. Finally, the chapter turns to a scrutiny of “aesthetics” as a charged local discourse among professional musicians. Overall, the text reveals the under-examined issue of paid labour as a factor in shaping local musicality and the dual role of local professional instrumentalists as musical ambassadors and translators.
