Learning to play a musical instrument is difficult enough for the best of people. Getting to grips with how to play it, how to actually make it sound good and practicing over and over again to improve are the standard phases that anyone who’s learnt to play an instrument will remember well. But if this wasn’t challenging enough, imagine doing all of these things whilst having a disability.
One in five people in the UK are classed as disabled, whether this is a physical disability or a mental one. For some, picking up an instrument and learning to play it isn’t quite as easy compared to an able-bodied person’s experience. For someone with a physical disability, it often means having to adapt the way an instrument is played.
Musician Ally Craig, from Oxford-based band Bug Prentice, was born with Muscular Dystrophy. “I have to keep using my muscles otherwise they will deteriorate,” he says. “Anything that requires a great deal of strength is something I can’t do.” As a wheelchair user, Craig had to adapt the way he played guitar when he first began to learn it. Instead of it hanging by his hips, he lies the guitar flat on his lap, strumming the same way but pressing down on the strings almost like keys on a piano. “Playing it this way doesn’t necessarily restrict me. There are certain types of chords that I cannot play because of the angle that my hand is compared to the fret board, but it also makes it easier to reach a wider interval of notes.”
Learning to adapt to play an instrument isn’t the only trouble that disabled musicians potentially face. Arguably, the most problematic area is the stigma attached to being a musician with a disability. Taking to a stage and performing to an audience is a daunting prospect in itself, but doing that whilst bearing a disability for all to see is perhaps an even bigger undertaking. For Craig though, his disability never stopped him from pursuing his dream. “From a young age I was interested in music and it was something that I was able to do. I was almost blissfully unaware of the social aspect of disability for a long time and I wasn’t taught to ever doubt myself.”
Another musician who shares this same ethos is Blaine Harrison, front man of indie rock band Mystery Jets. The 31-year-old suffers from Spina Bifida, a condition where the spine does not develop properly, resulting in him using crutches on a daily basis to move around. Having been performing live for well over a decade, Harrison knows only too well what it’s like to be a successful disabled musician and how audiences perceive his disability. “It’s a stigma only as much as people make it a stigma,” he says. “If you’re able to wear your disability with confidence and prove that you’re not going to be held back by the barriers, then what will probably happen is that your disability will become invisible. That’s when you feel really empowered; when people aren’t seeing your disability and they’re listening to what you’re saying and the words coming out of your mouth.”
In life, people rarely like to stand out from the crowd and be classed as different, particularly not for having a disability. In the music industry, it is no different. “From a young age I really resisted being labelled as someone who had a disability because I didn’t want any sympathy or feel like there were special conditions for me and different ones for everyone else,” says Harrison. “Disabled musicians don’t want to stand out. All anyone wants is to be included and inclusivity is what this whole movement is about.”
Trying not to allow a disability to stand out seems a difficult task, particularly in such a cut-throat industry with audiences that can often be judgmental. But when a person becomes disabled later on in life, it can be much harder to hide these new physical or mental changes. Keith Winter, founding member of 80s jazz-funk band Shakatak, had to deal with exactly that. At the age of 32, around eight years after the band first debuted, Winter was struck with a rare nerve disease, putting a halt to his successful career. “I lost the sense of touch and muscle control, which is the kind of stuff that keeps you upright, walking and holding things without thinking about them,” he says. “I had very little feeling in my hands and legs and without looking, I didn’t really know what my arms and legs were doing.”
Following 18 months of deterioration, Winter was left disabled and unable to walk, drive or play the instrument that he loved most, the guitar. “I felt in denial and hoped that it was something that was going to pass,” says Winter. “It ruined my career and stopped me doing something that I’d always wanted to do.” The nerve disease took over his body for nearly twenty years, cutting out a huge chunk of his life. He says: “I watch myself on the TV sometimes when they rerun Top of the Pops and it doesn’t register that it’s me. It feels like it’s something that happened to somebody else. Because I had this large disconnected block of time in the middle, it’s as if it has broken the thread with my past.”
After a miraculous, but slow, recovery, Winter regained the feeling in his arms and legs and began to take up the things he once loved. Whilst he can play the guitar once again, picking the beloved instrument up for the first time wasn’t quite the exciting experience he had hoped. “Because it took a while for my hands to behave themselves and to work properly, it was less excitement of being able to play the guitar again and more trepidation of how good was I going to be able to get,” he says. “It definitely wasn’t all euphoria being able to play again.”
Whilst disabilities are often assumed as something a person is born with, Winter’s story shows that they can come at any age, no matter how well you may be. Although he didn’t have to adapt the way he played his instrument, or deal with any stigma due to being out of action for almost two decades, his experience is just another way that some musicians have to deal with disabilities.
Although being a musician with a disability is potentially just as difficult physically as it ever was, it is hoped that what is becoming easier is acceptance by audiences and the industry. If the stigma attached to disabled musicians can continue to lessen, it is hoped that they will be made to feel accepted and able to thrive as much as anyone else.
“It’s down to all of us to grip together and create that safe environment where disabled people can have a voice in a creative and cultural capacity.” – Blaine Harrison, Mystery Jets.