Wait, where did all the disabled bands go?

Mel Kennedy

‘But that's what you feel around vultures and all the fatal schemes / They wanna label me a crippled, that's the way it seems / Take away my right to pursue a normal life and lead’ - Georgetragic, Rising Phoenix, (2020).

Music is a powerful tool; it gives a voice to people who would normally be invisible in a world full of noise, but the music industry has long been defined by the ideological view of sex - bodies that are considered ‘lesser’ aren’t what people want to see, and hundreds of disabled voices are lost.

But disabled people are claiming places in the music world through movements like the Krip-hop movement. Krip-hop, or disabled hip-hop, takes its name from the offensive term used for people with physical disabilities, ‘cripple’ and uses music as a source of empowerment to place disability issues at the forefront.

In the early 2000s, Black rap artist Leroy Moore created his show, Krip-Hop, for a California radio station as part of the ‘Pushing Limits Program’ which focused exclusively on the arts, news and culture within the disabled community. Encouraged by the success of the series, Moore, who has cerebral palsy, went on to found The Krip-Hop Nation, a collaboration of disabled hip-hop artists from around the world (Moore, n.d).

Since its creation in 2007, Krip-Hop Nation has grown to have over 300 artists across the globe. Most recently, a track written by Krip-Hop Nation and composer Daniel Pemberton, Rising Phoenix, recently became the title track of a Netflix documentary of the same name about the Paralympic Games and released globally (Batey, 2020). The movement celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2017 with a 24-track collection, The Best of Krip-Hop Nation, and a celebration festival in Oakland, California (Broverman, 2017).

After discovering this, I spent an entire evening looking into the genre, learning about its origin, even managing to find some tracks.

It made me wonder, why don’t we see more bands with disabled members?

If you ask me to name one famous disabled musician, I would say Andrea Bocelli, the world famous Italian tenor who was born with sight difficulties and eventually lost his sight completely at an early age. Bocelli is known for his distaste of discussing his condition and has walked out of several interviews when the conversation turns to it.

Ask me to name a disabled band? I can’t.

The music industry, as the saying goes, is heavily reliant on ‘sex and drums and rock n’roll’. Disabled people have always been excluded from this idea of sexuality, often labelled as asexual or having less sexual desire than a non-disabled person. The accepted societal ideal of sex revolves primarily around the people society deems ‘attractive’; youthful, able-bodied, energetic. Disability, something which is notably different, something other, is often portrayed as unattractive and taboo.

There are many disabled bands worthy of recognition; Rudely Interrupted, an Australian band with mostly disabled members had a documentary created which follows them from their native Australia and across the world to their UN debut, British punk band Zombie Crash who advertise themselves as ‘the world’s premier learning disabled metal band, Station 17, a German experimental rock group that connects musicians with disabilities with musicians without...the list is endless.

Disabled artists with so much talent are missed from mainstream music; Sean Forbes, a Deaf rapper, Georgetragic, another rapper, had a track from an album released on the Playstation 2 game Gods of War II in 2007 and a co-collaborating artist on the new Rising Phoenix song.

So many important voices lost.

I decided to ask UCLan sociologist Dr Stefano Barone about his views on the matter of disability visibility within the industry.

If I had to ask you to name a disabled artist right now, who would you say?

The first artist coming to my mind is the late Vic Chesnutt. Then Robert Wyatt, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and my fellow Italians Andrea Bocelli and (the late) Ezio Bosso.

If I asked you to name one band with predominantly disabled members, who would jump into your mind first?

I don’t know many bands with predominantly disabled members (although I’m catching up online now and, actually, there are lots in many different genres). The one that comes to my mind is Banda Rulli Frulli, an Italian project integrating many disabled boys and girls. It’s a marching band whose members constructed together their own percussion instruments.

Before today, had you ever heard of the disabled hip-hop/rap movement known as ‘Krip Hop’?

I didn’t know Krip Hop, and I’ll check it out. Thanks for the discovery!

I once took part in a concert of Signmark, a Finnish deaf MC rapping in sign language. The show included a crew of deaf breakdancers. The audience was mostly composed of deaf people. It was really something new to me.

Do you think that the mainstream music industry openly includes disabled people?

I do not think so – the rarity of disabled artists coming to mind is probably evidence of this. Certainly this has changed through time, and current technologies might have helped some disabled musicians composing and circulating their music, even though I can also see some new limits brought by technological developments (for instance, the strongly visual aspect of current music production software might be problematic for the visually impaired).

There is a cliché that ‘sex sells’ in the music industry, and there is an historical bias towards disabled people based on their bodies being ‘less desirable’. Could this be one of the reasons why disabled people aren’t included in the music industry?

I definitely think so. However, one of the great things about music is its ability in redesigning beauty and aesthetic standards. It has, for instance, been observed how the punk movement actually included disabled artists and fans, on the base of its challenge against beauty and ability standards (although some punk artists used their disability as the basis for a “repulsive” aesthetic, which can be problematic).

How can people make music more accessible for disabled people?

Designing music instruments and music software around the needs of disabled people might be a useful step. Also, community, integrative activities as the Italian project I was mentioning above, could have a great potential (music is, after all, a collective practice). Also, music communities should struggle to make their spaces of listening and practice safe and accessible – I am, for instance, thinking of the metal and punk scenes, in which there are ongoing debates on how to make concerts safe and accessible for disabled people (for instance, limiting moshing, pogo dancing, and other forms of violence).

Do you think telling the lived experience of disability through music will help people to understand disability in a positive way or not?

I think it would help understanding disability and the experiences it carries with itself. This would carry a risk of making disability “a spectacle”, fetishising it, but I think the overall aim is worth the risk.

[End of interview]

So, what is the future for disabled musicians and the music industry? Can, as suggested in the interview, our voices be heard in debates around safety and accessiblity for disabled concert goers to enhance access to music? Will modern technological advancements help or hinder access to the music industry?

In the words of Andrea Bocelli, ‘Destiny has a lot to do with it, but so do you. You have to persevere, you have to insist.’

If we persevere, if we insist, our voices will be heard.

REFERENCES

Broverman, A. (2017). Krip-Hop Nation Celebrates 10th Anniversary of First Album. [online] New Mobility. Available at: https://newmobility.com/2017/08/krip-hop-nation-celebrates-10-years/ [Accessed 22 Oct. 2020].

Batey, A. (2020). “We sound like superheroes!” – the rappers inspired by the Paralympics. The Guardian. [online] 1 Sep. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/01/rising-phoenix-krip-hop-stars-soundtrack-paralympics-film [Accessed 22 Oct. 2020].

inspiringquotes.us (n.d.). Top 30 quotes of ANDREA BOCELLI famous quotes and sayings | inspringquotes.us. [online] Inspiring Quotes. Available at: https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/6162-andrea-bocelli#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDestiny%20has%20a%20lot%20to [Accessed 22 Oct. 2020]. Used for Andrea Bocelli quote.

‌Moore, L.F. (n.d.). Krip-Hop Nation is Moore Than Music (Leroy F. Moore, Jr.). [online] wordgathering.syr.edu. Available at: https://wordgathering.syr.edu/past_issues/issue22/essays/moore2.html [Accessed 22 Oct. 2020].

Netflix (2020). RISING PHOENIX | OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO | Netflix. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bnTmIpHlsI [Accessed 22 Oct. 2020]. Used for Rising Phoenix lyrics, as performed in verse 1 by Georgetragic.

Yemisi (2017). Krip-Hop Nation Disability Music Group Celebrates 10th Anniversary of First Album. [online] Rolling Without Limits. Available at: https://www.rollingwithoutlimits.com/view-post/Krip-Hop-Nation-Disability-Music-Group-Celebrates-10th-Anniversary-of-First-Album [Accessed 21 Oct. 2020].