Economic Austerity, Covid-19, and the Music Precariat in Athens, Greece

This chapter focuses on the ways in which the post-2010 economic and political “Crisis” in Greece as well as the more recent pandemic crisis have affected the local music scenes and the lives of its participants. In particular, the analysis will show how the increased precariousness and unemployment caused by multiple crises reshapes the strategies of working musicians, but also their self-conceptions and sense of personhood into new “crisis subjectivities.” Since the “Greek Crisis,” musicians have found steady work scarce and payment often not forthcoming. This chapter elaborates not only on the ways that professional musicians in recessional Athens practically adjust their work to the new crisis-scape, but also the kinds of “ways out” that they have managed to construct as individual agents. In contrast to those circumstances, the text then traces the emergence of collective movements and solidarity among musicians and other performing artists in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.