Many musicians and educators can point to mentors who have helped in various ways across our lives and careers. Individual mentors’ roles are unique, but below I share some thoughts on what might be common traits. While this post is entirely reflective of my own experience, I hope something here resonates with anyone kind enough to read on.
What is Mentoring?
Mentoring relationships exist somewhere between teaching/learning and friendship. Often a mentor in part plays the role of elder or sage, and a successful mentoring relationship requires mutual respect. Mentors provide advice (solicited or otherwise) and guidance, but there’s no grading. There can be overlap between teaching and mentoring relationships. When I taught drummers full-time, I usually had between 30 and 50 students, and of those I mentored probably one or two. Mentoring relationships are special, because of their rarity and due to the interpersonal synergy required for them to work; as such, I find mentoring roles develop organically.
A former student I’ll call Dan (also a drummer) became a father the same year I did. Dan’s about 18 years younger than me and our lives have taken different paths, but we stay in touch. He’ll send me fun, inspiring, Instagram reels about drumming or parenting and at other times we’ll text; he often asks for advice or to know how I’m doing. Back when I performed professionally, Dan shadowed me in the pit of the theatre where I was working (he promptly fell asleep, as a sleep-deprived new dad, and discussing that was all part of the day’s conversation). I guess I’m a mentor to Dan, although it’s kind of unofficial and we’ve never labelled it. Nevertheless, I take the responsibility seriously.
Who Chooses Whom?
Mentoring embodies one of my favorite ideas about how people learn and from whom – what Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron called “pedagogic authority”. This describes how people decide whose advice, instruction and modelling we want to follow, and whose we don’t. (As a developing musician, for instance, I ascribed far greater pedagogic authority to a handful of 70s rock drummers than to my high school music teacher, despite her efforts to win me over.) This highlights another important part of how pedagogic authority and mentoring work – mentors don’t pick and choose whether their mentoring works; that’s up to the people looking to be mentored.
My Musical Mentor
I met my drum kit instructor Pete Fairclough in September 1996 and it was immediately apparent I was going to trust him. Pete had a calm, peaceful way about him that I would now identify as a spiritual presence. Pete’s an excellent mentor because of how much, and moreover, precisely how he cared (and cares) about nurturing in me the art, craft and love of playing drums.
In 1997 Pete released Permission. I loved the album and booked a seat to his band’s performance at the local jazz club in Cardiff, Wales where I lived. Towards the end of the first set and without prior warning, Pete invited me on stage to replace him at the drums and improvise with three of the most brilliant jazz musicians working in the UK at that time. I was terrified and elated: the other musicians engaged me in an intense musical conversation for several minutes; we all listened and responded, curating space and time for dynamics and direction to emerge. I felt trusted and elevated, by the musicians onstage and by Pete who’d asked me to jump out of a musical plane at 40,000 feet and just be. I hope I thanked him.
I finished lessons with Pete in the summer of 1999 and we kept in touch infrequently, initially by phone and letters and later by email. I invited Pete to speak at a conference of the UK’s National Association of Percussion Teachers that I organized in 2013, where he performed and presented superbly. My own presentation was stilted and poorly received, and Pete mentioned that he’d carefully pitched his work for the audience in the room. That gentle advice resounded loudly and clearly for me over the many presentations I have given since then.
In October 2022 I visited the UK to record an album with Stephen Wheel and lecture at various universities, including in Sheffield where Pete lived. I let him know I’d be in town – Pete came to the lecture, came to lunch, took me to his home for a cup of tea, and we went on a two-hour walk in woods nearby where we discussed basically everything about drumming, family, musicians and what it means to play drums as a central tenet of one’s life. That afternoon with Pete reassured me that playing drums and teaching music are each a labor of love; they are, most importantly, vehicles for building, developing and nurturing relationships. Drumming is the way I connect best with people, and Pete knows that; he gets it, he’s lived it and he’s a beautiful musician and teacher.
Pete knows he’s mentored me, although we’ve never called it that. He’ll always be more experienced than me, wiser than me, and a better drummer than me. I imagine Pete has been pleased, perplexed and perhaps pleasantly surprised at how his mentoring me has landed.
Be Prepared!
Unlike teaching, which I think of as operating on a shorter-term basis and characterized by clear goals, mentoring takes a longer view and embraces the understanding that all the advice one gives might take years or decades to be perceived as valuable or relevant. Mentoring is about being open to the possibility of being a mentor, and once you’ve opened that door you need to be ready to walk through it, to wherever you and a future mentee end up going. To quote a current DMA student (are she and I mentoring one another? I often think so), in music and education, “relationships matter”.
Gareth Dylan Smith is Assistant Professor of Music, Music Education at Boston University.
Gareth plays drums with Stephen Wheel, Dirty Blond, Black Light Bastards and Build a Fort. His
research interests include drumming, popular music education and punk pedagogies. His most
recent book is A Philosophy of Playing Drum Kit: Magical Nexus.