2005 - Vol. 2, Issue 8

"I get a sudden flash and slow awakening of what it means to be disabled," says California writer, photographer, and disability activist Anthony Tusler. "In the song and its story I recognize my pride and my shame, sometimes in the same moment."

Anthony has been researching and collecting disability songs for nearly 20 years. During the years of his collecting, he has identified several ways in which songs, perhaps even more so than literature, drama, or film, elucidate the experience of disability. "Songs provide an unmediated, uncensored door to the disability experience," Tusler says. "You can say things in song that you can't say in another medium. You don't have to worry about being sentimental or off color or politically correct."

"Songs give me a whole new way of looking at myself and my role in the community [as a person with a disability,]" he says. "They provide insight into disability identity and meaning, but also hold up 'society's mirror,' or the public's view of disability, and illustrate what I call 'the imperative of disability,' or how someone's life would have been different had they not had a disability. Songs can be incredibly compelling once we get the back story."