Disabled and Racialized Musicians: Experiences and Epistemologies

Abstract

Drawing on DisCrit—disability studies and critical race theory (Annamma, Ferri, and Connor 2013) and Beaudry’s (2020) framework for accounts of disability, we (the authors) examine the lived experiences of Jason and Gift as disabled and racialized musicians. Echoing the DisCrit maxim that ableism and racism are intertwined, we assert that, like disability studies in general, disability research in music education is characterized by unmarked whiteness (Bell 2006, 2011). As a result, disability research in music education has a deep deficit of epistemologies of disabled and racialized people. To address this issue, we adhere to the fourth tenet of DisCrit by centering the perspectives of disabled and racialized people, presenting the experiences of Jason and Gift with music teaching and learning in the form of conversational interviews.