The Songs of Blind Folk: African American Musicians and the Culture of Blindness (review)

In 1976, Stevie Wonder changed the music landscape with his release of the phenomenal magnum opus Songs in the Key of Life. On that album, Wonder wrote a tribute song, "Sir Duke," to musicians who influenced his work. Singing about Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong, Wonder rhythmically theorized about a groove that could be felt all over. While those musicians clearly impacted the dynamic style of Wonder's work, the ever-present humanistic quality embedded within his musical genius seems to have been affected by the social limitations placed on his body by racist and abelist discourse: "Music is a world within itself / with a language we all understand / with an equal opportunity for all to sing, dance, and clap their hands." In order to comprehend how music might, as Wonder suggests, provide a space where nonhierarchal readings of difference can occur, access to critical tools that can contextualize and explain the complex intersectionalities between black music, popular culture, and disability are necessary. Yet there is little scholarship that could help ascertain the role disability plays in cultural production so that we can further understand the legacies of blind artists and their works. Fortunately, The Songs of Blind Folk goes a long way in filling the void. Terry Rowden's work will become a foundational text for future work on the intersection of black popular culture and disability studies.

In 2005, the MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession suggested the necessity for more work examining African American artists and their works in the context of disability studies. Notably, Kari J. Winter's introduction to the edited slave narrative The Blind African Slave, or, Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace is one of the few works in African American literary studies to even broach the subject. Furthermore, because the intellectual mission of African American Studies has been fraught with the impetus to uplift a race of people as well as gain respectability, the field has historically been slow to develop research and scholarship about African Americans with disabilities and their intellectual and cultural work. Rowden does an excellent and eloquent job of outlining these reasons in The Songs of Blind Folk.

Rowden seizes the opportunity to highlight the contributions of black disabled persons by creating essential scholarship that broadens and challenges traditional notions of how we view and value black cultural producers who may be disabled. Rowden displays enormous talent for engaging a wide range of areas and disciplines. He provides sophisticated theoretical readings of music, folklore, and spirituality, as well as methodologically sound research. He relies on folklore, ethnomusicology, and disability studies to explore concerns about class, gender, and sexuality in his analysis of ethnographic documents, oral histories, and archival materials.

In his introduction, Rowden delves into disability scholarship and blindness and engages the politics that make black music the dominant cultural site of evolving black communities. Chapter One sets the rigorous tone of the text with its attention to the cultural politics of visibility that impact history's first notable black blind musician, a slave and piano prodigy Tom Bethune, known as Blind Tom. Uncovering the ways freak show theatrics and politics shaped Blind Tom's performances and legacy, Rowden demonstrates how Bethune's successor, William Boone (Blind Boone), differentiates himself from Bethune by focusing on "merit not sympathy" and excelling in ragtime. The cultural politics of visibility are evident not only in how disability becomes part of the stage performance of blind musicians, but also in the naming of the performer: Blind literally replaces the first name or surname of the performer so that blindness supercedes individuality. Still, Rowden explores how Boone's biracial appearance or racial ambiguity permits Boone a more noble visibility and career. Boone, unlike Bethune, was able to situate himself at the crux of musical modernity. Rowden's productive attention to both race and disability...