Abstract
This chapter offers an ethnomusicological exploration of the relationship between music and autistic lived experience. The work as a whole builds toward—and is indeed largely defined by—a separate piece of writing contained within it: an autobiographical memoir by an American musician and musicologist who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in his mid-40s. The memoir emerged from a series of online dialogues with the chapter’s author, in which ethnomusicology was defined as the study of how people make and experience music, and of why it matters to them that they do. It addresses and problematizes the questions inherent in that definition in nuanced and multidimensional ways, offering an account that is deeply personal while speaking to larger issues of autistic musical perception, cognition, performativity, and ontology. In so doing, it becomes a generative mechanism for a listening-based, re-presentational (as opposed to representational) way of thinking about and researching autism. Understanding autism ought rightly to begin with listening to, communicating with, and learning from autistic people—through their words and utterances, their actions and performances; on their terms, according to their values. This chapter draws from and builds upon such premises.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bakan, Michael B. 1999. Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2014. “Ethnomusicological Perspectives on Autism, Neurodiversity, and Music Therapy.” Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy 14 (3). Online Publication. https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/799/660.
———. 2015. “‘Don’t Go Changing to Try and Please Me’: Combating Essentialism through Ethnography in the Ethnomusicology of Autism.” Ethnomusicology 59 (1): 116–144.
———. 2016a. “Toward an Ethnographic Model of Disability in the Ethnomusicology of Autism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, edited by Blake Howe, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Neil Lerner, and Joseph N. Straus, 15–36. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 2016b. “Music, Autism, and Disability Aesthetics.” Colloquy: On the Disability Aesthetics of Music (Blake Howe and Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, convenors). Journal of the American Musicological Society 69 (2): 548–553.
———. 2018. Speaking for Ourselves: Conversations on Life, Music, and Autism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bascom, Julia, ed. 2012. Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking. Washington, DC: The Autistic Press/The Autistic Self Advocacy Network.
Biklen, Douglas. 2005. Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone. New York: New York University Press.
Doidge, Norman. 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. New York: Penguin.
Fein, Elizabeth. 2012. “The Machine Within: An Ethnography of Asperger’s Syndrome, Biomedicine, and the Paradoxes of Identity and Technology in the Late Modern United States.” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago.
———. 2015. “What Do I Study When I Study Autism?” Paper Presented at Autism Spectrum Disorders in Global, Local and Personal Perspective: A Cross-Cultural Workshop, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 2015.
———. in press. “Autism as a Mode of Engagement.” In current volume.
Feld, Steven. 2012. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression. 3rd ed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Freeman, Derek. 1983. Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Grinker, Roy Richard. 2007. Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. New York: Basic Books.
L’Engle, Madeline. 1973. A Wind in the Door. New York: Square Fish/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Mead, Margaret. 2001. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation. New York: Perennial Classics/HarperCollins.
Merriam, Alan P. 1960. “Ethnomusicology: Discussion and Definition of the Field.” Ethnomusicology 4 (3): 107–114.
———. 1977. “Definitions of ‘Comparative Musicology’ and ‘Ethnomusicology’: An Historical-Theoretical Perspective.” Ethnomusicology 21 (2): 189–204.
O’Reilly, Michelle, Jessica Nina Lester, and Tom Muskett. 2016. “Discourse/Conversation Analysis and Autism Spectrum Disorder.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 46 (2): 355–359. Special Issue: Discourse and Conversation Analytic Approaches to the Study of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Prince-Hughes, Dawn. 2004. Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism. New York: Harmony.
Schieffelin, Bambi B. 1990. The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schieffelin, Edward L. 2005. The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sequenzia, Amy. 2012. “Non-speaking, ‘Low-Functioning.’” In Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking, edited by Julia Bascom, 159–161. Washington, DC: The Autistic Press/The Autistic Self Advocacy Network.
Sequenzia, Amy, and Elizabeth J. Grace, eds. 2015. Typed Words, Loud Voices. Fort Worth, TX: Autonomous Press.
Shore, Bradd. 1996. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.
Silberman, Steve. 2012. “Autism Awareness is Not Enough: Here’s How to Change the World.” In Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking, edited by Julia Bascom, 358–390. Washington, DC: The Autistic Press/The Autistic Self Advocacy Network.
Silberman, Steve. 2015. NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and The Future of Neurodiversity. New York: Avery.
Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Solomon, Olga, and Nancy Bagatell. 2010. “Introduction—Autism: Rethinking the Possibilities.” Ethos 38 (1): 1–7.
Sterponi, Laura. 2015. “A Commentary on ‘Music and Autism, Representation and Re-presentation: An Ethnomusicological Perspective’ by Michael B. Bakan.” Discussant Remarks Presented at Autism Spectrum Disorders in Global, Local and Personal Perspective: A Cross-Cultural Workshop, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 2015.
Straus, Joseph N. 2011. Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 2013. “Autism as Culture.” In The Disability Studies Reader, 4th ed., edited by Lennard J. Davis, 460–484. New York: Routledge.
Walker, Nick. 2012. “Throw Away the Master’s Tools: Liberating Ourselves from the Pathology Paradigm.” In Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking, edited by Julia Bascom, 225–237. Washington, DC: The Autistic Press/The Autistic Self Advocacy Network.
———. 2014 (March 1). “What Is Autism?” Posted on Neurocosmopolitanism: Nick Walker’s Notes on Neurodiversity, Autism, and Cognitive Liberty (blog). http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/what-is-autism/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bakan, M.B. (2018). Music and Autism, Representation and Re-presentation: An Ethnomusicological Perspective. In: Fein, E., Rios, C. (eds) Autism in Translation. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93293-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93293-4_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93292-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93293-4
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)