My name is Anthea Skinner and I am a musicologist and archivist from Melbourne, Australia. I am also a practicing musician and a person with a disability. I am working with the Medical Heritage Library to develop a collection on disability music technology. I play in an all-disabled band called the Bearbrass Asylum Orchestra and we, and our disabled colleagues around the world, are constantly developing new techniques and technologies to support us in our music-making. I hope that the collection that I am developing will allow current musicians to better understand and utilize technologies already developed by their disabled forebears.
As well as focusing on specific technologies, I also hope that this collection will begin to shine a light on the many talented disabled musicians who have graced the world’s stages throughout history, including 19th century armless violinist Carl Unthan who used a specially-designed violin stand that allowed him to play with his feet, and American singer Teddy Pendergrass who gave evidence in the 1980s to a government report on adaptive technology outlining how it allowed him to return to his professional singing career after becoming a quadriplegic.
As a person with a disability myself, I am also very aware of the importance of presenting this material in a culturally sensitive manner. Much of the material from the early 20th century and before contains both language and attitudes that are extremely offensive to the modern disability community. Even by the standards of the times they were writing in, many display an inherent misunderstanding of the nature of disability, such as a Willem van der Wall’s 1936 book ‘Music in Institutions’ which states that no intellectually disabled ‘person can be artistic in the technical sense of the term, because he lacks the intellectual discrimination essential for aesthetic understanding and artistic action’, despite the fact that performers such as Tom Bethune (who was blind and had an intellectual disability and/or autism), had been playing to packed houses since the late 19th century.
In my role as a Research Associate at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, I work with a team of music educators and music therapists to improve the accessibility of music education and participation for people with disabilities and create pathways to professional music careers. A key plank of that research is uncovering the stories of past and present musicians, and the technologies that they used to provide role models and inspire the next generation of disabled musicians.
More of my work can be found in the following articles, or contact me on anthea.skinner@unimelb.edu.au
- Anthea Skinner & Jess Kapuscinski-Evans (2021), ‘Facilitate This! Reflections from Disabled Women in Popular Music’, Journal of Popular Music Studies 33.2: 3-14.
- Anthea Skinner (2020), ‘Rolling Out the “Krip Hop Army”: Depictions of Disabled Solidarity and Resistance in Kounterclockwise’s Whip’, Disability & Society DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2020.1789849.
- Anthea Skinner (2018), ‘“I Love My Body”: Depictions of Sex and Romance in Disability Music Culture’, Sexualities 21.3: 350-363.