The Oxford handbook of music and disability studies

Abstract

The essays in this volume share a theoretical and methodological connection to Disability Studies, especially its central idea that disability is a social and cultural construction. Disability is shown to be a core feature of the musical identity of music makers (especially composers and performers), something that affects their lives and works and their public reception. Music represents disability in various ways and affirms the notion that disability is a performance, something you do rather than something you are. These essays make the case that disability is not something at the periphery of culture and music, but something central to our art and to our humanity. They also address an important lacuna within a Disability Studies that has mostly overlooked music as a medium through which disability can be constructed. Indeed, as much as a cultural understanding of disability can teach us about music, music also has much to teach us about the culture of disability.