ABSTRACT
This chapter relies on Hochschild’s theory of emotional labour and Zelizer’s concept of relational work to present an analysis of personal and professional-creative relationships from a feminist perspective through the work of musicians and other music industry workers. My inquiry is based on 36 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2018 and 2020 in Hungary. I explore the ways in which professional and personal relationships intersect in the work of musicians and music industry workers, how these workers negotiate the boundaries between professional and personal in their work – that is, the production of music – and how this negotiation is divided and gendered. Specifically, I examine the negotiation of the boundaries and fusions between professional and personal in relation to creative collaboration between musicians, as well as the working relationships between musicians and manager, in the framework of relational labour. I look at the emotional labour involved in networking from a gender perspective, drawing attention to how the demands for ‘being friends with everyone’ places an additional burden on women in the industry, which functions to reinforce patriarchal power relations. Lastly, I present the particular case of amateur helpers from the point of view of relational labour. This inquiry sheds light on how the boundaries between (paid) work and (unpaid) assistance are constructed in work around early-career musicians, and how this is embedded in a broader social and economic context.
