Disability, Lifelong Musical Engagement, and Care

Abstract

Abstract This chapter reflects on care in the lifelong musical engagement of disabled people. It outlines disability causes, categories, benchmarks, and how commonplace terms frame disabled people’s care. The chapter subsequently describes three disability models. It explores how ideas and beliefs embedded within these models shape people’s thinking on caring by giving examples from the author’s research on blind and partially sighted musicians. The chapter also considers the viability of caring for disabled musicians and music learners as accessible and socially inclusive practice. Nel Noddings’s writings on “caring about” and reciprocity in the teaching relationship are then discussed. In conclusion, the author suggests that Virginia Hel’s “distributive justice” and, where feasible, exploring the “insider” perspective of disabled people might be a way to counter ableism, and policy and pedagogical practice that, otherwise, circumvent their potential agency.