“Re-narrating” Disability through Musical Performance

Abstract

The combination of disability and music performance engages two principal dimensions: the reality of living and functioning as a musician with an impairment (lived experience), and the outside perceptions of that reality which intrude upon an audience’s experience of, and response to a musical performance. In recognition of the fact that these two aspects of disability affect both performer and audience in numerous complex ways, this paper addresses both of these dimensions in turn, and then examines how they intersect in the context of a live musical performance. The central purpose of this paper, then, is to elucidate the dialectical relationship between the lived reality of being a visibly impaired musician, and external views of that reality. I shall argue that the presence of visible physical difference in the context of a Western art music performance disrupts conventional binary oppositions between ability and disability, and as such opens up a space for both performers and audiences within which they can re-think their relationships to, and interactions with, people whose lived experiences sometimes may be very different from their own. To support this project, I draw upon Henri Giroux’s conception of culture as “the primary sphere in which individuals, groups, and institutions engage in the art of translating the diverse and multiple relations that mediate between private life and public concerns.” Following Giroux’s assertion that “private issues” connect with “larger social conditions” (".fn_cite($giroux_2004).", 62), I explore the relationship between the private experience of physical impairment, and the impact of physical difference on society in general and musical performance in particular, by using my own experiences as a musician with physical impairments as a point of reference.

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