Music, Disability, and Society

Alex Lubet is Morse Alumni/Graduate and Professional Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music, at the University of Minnesota, with additional appointments in Jewish Studies and American Studies. He is co-editor (with Matthew Bribitzer-Stull and Gottfried Wagner) of Richard Wagner for the New Millennium: Essays in Music and Culture.

"Music, Disability, and Society is a provocative, interesting, and significant book. Lubet's work is unique in its scope and trajectory. Moreover, the overtly personal nature of the text ensures a unique take on its subject matter. This is a book that brings new and fresh perspectives to scholarly considerations of music, culture, and disability studies, as well as to the myriad points at which they intersect in contemporary (and occasionally historical) societies. It will make a significant impact on disability studies, ethnomusicology, and related fields." -Michael B. Bakan, Florida State University "In Music, Disability, and Society Alex Lubet identifies the utility of bringing a disability studies perspective to the field of music studies. His book helps to demonstrate not only the significance of disabled peoples' presence in the history of music, but, even more importantly, the difference that disability makes in the production of the art form itself. The work will help to spur new work in this interdisciplinary arena for years to come." -David Mitchell, Temple University "This is an excellent resource on the nexus of music, disability, and society, an area scholars of disability studies rarely cover. Lubet examines prevailing sociocultural attitudes to performers with disabilities, comparing traditional genres such as classical music, with its rigid standards of playing canonical repertoire, with jazz, which encourages improvisation and thus adaptation to impairments... This fascinating overview of the reciprocal influences of a broad variety of elements--leavened by the author's personal experience as a musicologist with a disability--[is] well worth the effort. Summing Up: Highly recommended." -Choice

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Piano Men, or the Right Hand Doesn't ... No 2. Let's Face the Music and Dance: Jazz and Physical Disability 3. Play Like an Egyptian: Music and Blind Culture 4. Losing ... My Religion: Music, Disability, Gender, and Jewish and Islamic Law 5. Bringing It All Back Home, or Teach Your Children ... Well? References Index