Musician Roulette A Reflexive Analysis of Capital, Class, and Creative Survival
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Abstract
This autoethnographic study explores the intersecting pressures of class, labor, and identity across the career of a first-generation college student and working-class musician pursuing a professional trajectory in music and higher education. Grounded in Bourdieu’s capital theory and related frameworks (including socioemotional capital, self-determination theory, and future orientation), the study critically reflects on the author’s lifelong experiences navigating music training, academic mobility, and economic precarity. Drawing on personal narrative, thematic analysis, and epiphanic moments of reflection, the paper highlights how inequities in social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital shape artistic outcomes. Findings suggest that career advancement in the arts is not merely a function of productivity or talent, but of compounding capital access and strategic timing. This work contributes to ongoing conversations in cultural sociology, music education, and equity in the arts by modeling a reflexive, insider account of how cultural laborers adapt, survive, and resist in stratified systems.
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