Of pain,passing and longing for music

Despite musicology’s historic veneration of ‘tragic’ (mostly physically or mentally impaired) artists, disability studies is still a new and controversial field in music scholarship. This essay addresses the recent emergence of disability studies in music scholarship from the perspective of a non‐visibly disabled musician and researcher. It examines the internal dissonance of passing as pain‐free and non‐disabled, the limitations of focusing on visible difference in musical performance and the complexities of performance where impairment, damage or pain is aurally evident, connecting the listener to the performer’s body. It calls for the study of musical bodies in all their manifestations, using pain and disability as analytic constructs.