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."

Anthony presented his research, "Disability in Popular Song," at this year's Society for Disability Studies (SDS) conference in San Francisco. He has compiled a CD of the songs he has researched, entitled Disability: Songs, Singers, Songwriters.

Recently, Anthony and I sat down to talk about what draws him to music, and how the pride and the shame of the disability experience collide in the songs themselves, revealing the truth and the power of the disability rights movement. He started with his roots in music.

ANTHONY: I'm fifty–eight, and I remember hearing rock and roll on the radio when I was eight or nine years old. There's something about music, particularly music on the radio, that took me away, that was a conduit, a road to somewhere else.

When I got a car, my friends and I listened to the radio like mad. There was nothing on television that reflected our experience. Radio to a certain extent, did; they recognized teenagers as being a market.

In high school I fell in with this guy who was really into old–timey music. He had a National guitar, you know, those metal–bodied guitars; I had never seen one of those. He had an accordion that he'd played when he was a kid, and an autoharp. He exposed me to a lot of different kinds of music, and kept fueling my interest.

By the time I graduated high school (in 1966) I was already a pot–smoking hippy, so I was very open to the new music that was coming out. It was a regular part of my life. The last two years of high school and during community college, my friends and I used to go to the Ash Grove [a club in LA] and see the most amazing performers, like Big Mama Morton and Memphis Slim, Doc Watson, Clarence White, the Chambers Brothers. I saw the Chambers Brothers when they were all wearing suits with skinny lapels and through them I was getting psychedelicized. Friends of mine, they only listened to British Invasion bands, or only old blues, or only singer/songwriters, but I listened to them all, and more.

So there was this whole music scene that I was plugged into and it was a source of expression for me, even though I wasn't creating the music.

KARI: Have you ever been a musician?

ANTHONY: No, I can't sequence. I tried to learn to play the harmonica. I figured I could do that, because I could make the right noises, but there's a sense of rhythm and a sequence that you have to have in music, and I don't have it. But I listened to all kinds of music and just had real wide taste.

KARI: I can tell; I've been having fun listening to your CD. It's great!

So, what is the "sudden flash or slow awakening of what it means to be disabled?"

ANTHONY: One of the things that I've always valued, since I was a teen, is to be hip. It's just a really important thing for me to be connected with hip people. Growing up, I didn't know any [other] disabled people. When I was going to college there was a couple people who had disabilities who used electric wheelchairs, but we avoided each other like mad, because if we were seen together then [other people] would know that we were one [of "them."] It's easier to feel like you're passing if you're the only one. You can pretend a little bit better, anyway.

I met this guy who was the first person with a disability that I talked to, and he had a really black sense of humor, which I really liked. He was hipper than I was! For example, one of the records I liked quite a bit was Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. I liked it because [Weill] was a Communist; it's a very black musical, all about poverty, just had very cool things going for it. Well, my friend, Steve Diaz, he had it in German. Those are the serious guys. I'm more of an enthusiast. Over the years I've collected vinyl and I've collected CD's. It's not a ton of albums, maybe 400 to 500, pretty eclectic, but nothing like these guys who are really serious.

KARI: When did you start noticing songs about disability?

ANTHONY: I wrote a piece on my Web site about "There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere," (Elton Britt) and how I felt when [at age 12] I first heard the lyric, "Won't Uncle Sam take a crippled boy like me?" And then "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" (Kenny Rogers): “It’s hard to love a man whose legs are bent and paralyzed.” I also noticed the stuttering songs like, "Talking 'Bout My Generation" (The Who). I had this notebook where I'd started to write down the [disability] songs.

The SDS was going to have a dance and I thought they should have performers with disabilities. That was really the impetus for me to start putting together a list, putting together a mixed tape that was disability, and I was just having so much fun with it that it started snowballing, and now it's to the point where it is [22 songs on the CD].

KARI: My experience in studying disability in film and literature is that every time I turn around, there's something new.

ANTHONY: Oh, absolutely, it's everywhere I look now. And one of the things I found out is that I love reading about music. I just immerse myself in it. I have this niche that's popular music: the singers, the songwriters, and the songs. Alex Lubet (of SDS) is more into the music, and I'm more into the lyrics.

KARI: I noticed that, and I realized that the story of the song — how the song came to be, and who wrote the song — seems almost as important to you as the song itself. There seems to be this central line of inquiry for you about, "What's his disability story?" You seem to ask it about every artist that you come across.

ANTHONY: It's about identity. One of the things that I find endlessly fascinating is disability identity. The other niche that I've seen focuses on the disability protest singers who are singing about disability.

KARI: There is a relative dearth of those [songs] on your CD. I imagine that's intentional, because most of them are popular songs that, unless we listen to them, we wouldn't necessarily know that they are disability songs or have disability references. Along with "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" and "There's a Star–spangled Banner Waving Somewhere," there's "Castles Made of Sand" (Jimi Hendrix); "Daddy, Come and Get Me" (Dolly Parton); "Beautiful People" (Marilyn Manson.) I think this ties in with what you were saying about how you can say things in song that you can't necessarily say in print. Why do you think that is?

ANTHONY: Music does that because it has an emotional impact of its own, and the lyrics can either support that, or run counter to it. For example, we sing in patriotic songs things that we could never say; we sing in love songs things that we have a hard time saying to another: "There's our song." It's this sappy thing that neither one could say to the other [otherwise].

KARI: And there seems to be so many options of ways to say it. I think about the [Doc Pomus] song, "Save the Last Dance for Me." That's an incredibly veiled example of a love song saying what can't be said otherwise:

"You can dance every dance with the guy
Who gives you the eye, let him hold you tight
You can smile every smile for the man
Who held your hand 'neath the pale moon light
But don't forget who's takin' you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darlin' save the last dance for me."

ANTHONY: There is something about song that suspends some of our critical faculties. I was listening to KPFA, which is the sister station to KPFK (both Pacifica radio stations in CA). I try not to listen to anything except their music programs, because their news is really into "Ain't it awful," and I kind of know how awful it is, (LAUGHTER) but their music is really diverse, so I like that. A Latina DJ had some music on that was talking about the importance of peace, the importance of people understanding each other across cultures. And she said, "Here's a perspective that you don't often hear on the news part of KPFA." And she's right. They're not going to talk in a very idealistic way about peace and understanding. But music can. It can talk about all kinds of things that are taboo. Music can be optimistic for cynical people.

KARI: The song that comes to mind when you say that is "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town." I was listening to it, and I realized it's a really dark, depressing song, but you'd almost never know it. It sounds sweet, but there's darkness underneath that.

ANTHONY: It's about both the universal [experience] and the disability [experience] of love.

KARI: It's one of those examples of, "Oh, this is such a sweet song," but it's also an example of where the back–story is really powerful.

ANTHONY: Even a close listening is powerful, and I like the back–story even more. And actually there are a lot of those in the sixties, where the lyrics are childish in a way, but they're done with such enthusiasm.

KARI: Another example from your CD is Jane Field's, "Disabled People Do It": "We may not have agility
but we've got the ability
to find a way to do it, too."

ANTHONY: Actually, I find that song just horrible.

KARI: I don't like it, either, but in terms of the sort of funniness, I was listening to it going, "Eww  .  .  .  but I'm laughing, so there must be something to it."

ANTHONY: It just sounds so heartfelt. It's that kind of one–dimensional song that I really dislike because there's not much going on in it. Jane Field is off–key as well. (LAUGHTER) I find it painful. But I put it on [the CD] because it's representative.

KARI: Another one that I found like that [on the CD] is "My Voice Has Wings."

ANTHONY: I find that also very hard to listen to. It's not pretty.

KARI: But it wasn't even about the sound of it. I was thinking, "Okay, is this guy (Jeff Moyer) making a real statement about crip culture, or is he poking fun?" I mean, the song "has been written on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who have been denied speech by their physical disabilities."

ANTHONY: I think it's heartfelt also, because there is that literal perspective that doesn't like irony, that doesn't contain nuance, that isn't deeply informed. It's earnest. And earnest is one of those things that makes me cringe.

KARI: That was my reaction to the Joni Eareckson Tada song ("My Little Tune") you included.

ANTHONY: That's because of the religious perspective. I found it really grating. She's gone into representing religion and disability, and it's a kind of Christianity that I find cloying. It reminds me of the people who'd walk up to me in the supermarket when I was a kid and tell me that I'd walk in Heaven. Certainly Joni, certainly Jane Field — there's no humor in [their songs.]

KARI: I get the sense that it's supposed to be funny, but it misses the mark. With "Disabled People Do It," I thought, "Okay, what's going on here? Am I laughing because I really think it's funny, or am I laughing because I can't stand it?"

ANTHONY: Right.

KARI: You've said that songs gave you a whole new way of looking at yourself and your role in the community. How in the songs do you hear your identity? What role in the community have you chosen for yourself based on some of your experiences with songs? What do you mean when you say [the songs] gave you a whole new way to look at yourself?

ANTHONY: At the most crass, [the songs] allow me to be hip and to bring my humor out into the world. People seem to really appreciate [them] and [they provide] a way for me to take my world view on disability along with disparate pieces of music and put it all together. The fact that [the music] has meaning for others is gratifying.

Also, going back to the Doc Pomus song, "Save the Last Dance for Me" — that recognition of pride is so profound because, obviously, [Pomus] was a very successful and, at least in the song, a very confident guy, which, as disabled people, we aren't always, and rarely are we that successful. To be able to see myself, or at least something I aspire to be, in that song, is affirming. What is also so profound [in that song] is the shame: a recognition and an acknowledgment of the role that society wants [people with disabilities] to have. That is most pointed, at least for me, in relationships, romantic relationships in particular. It's very complex; I am kind of embarrassed that I'm married to an able–bodied, good–looking woman! Beyond my love for her, beyond my affection for her, there's something of being really glad that [her presence in my life] proves some kind of male status.

KARI: I can say that disabled women are aware of the embarrassment, and the issue of status. I think the theme of "Save the Last Dance for Me" is what you called the insecurity of men — period — in the 1950s.

ANTHONY: It's interesting because [the song] is written in a sexist time from a male perspective, but in the lyrics he doesn't treat her like an object or a possession. At least, from what I see, the two people seem like equals. He's not controlling her; she's not controlling him.

KARI: Even something as simple as the language: He doesn't say, "Remember who's taking you home." He says, "Don't forget." He's acknowledging that it's very possible that she might.

ANTHONY: That's the acknowledgment of the vulnerability that we all feel, but that crips in particular feel.

KARI: My impression, being a disabled woman, of disabled men, and men in general, is that the issue of status is always right there, whether a man has a disability or not. There are certain societal pressures on men, like we send men off to war and then we wonder when they come home why they drink and they abuse their wives and children. I have yet to figure out in my interactions with and observations of men who have disabilities, whether that pressure is alleviated, or compounded in some way.

ANTHONY: It's both. I think that there is, for disabled people in general, a lack of expectation. And I think that's one of the ways that we're handicapped more severely than any other. For example, [the culture] doesn't have the same expectations of disabled men [as it has for men without disabilities], but we want the same status, so we put those expectations on ourselves.

KARI: Is there a particular song that sums up the experience of disability for you?

ANTHONY: One song — that's tough. Right now, the song that I find the richest and most compelling is "Save the Last Dance for Me," for all the reasons we've talked about. The fact that it's so popular in the general culture adds to what makes it interesting. It's [a song] by a disabled person, but also, I just really dig it!

KARI: So, if you could share your disability story in a song, what would it be about, and how would it go?

ANTHONY: I think the songs that are most accessible are the snapshots that encompass a whole bunch; what would be the snapshot? There are parts of "Spasticus Autisticus" that I absolutely love. I love Ian Dury's attitude, and he makes great music. He used the image of Spartacus, the uprising of the slave, for disability. That is so cool: The protest of that, and the pride in the lowest of society. The pride that Ian Dury puts in that song, along with the sweetness and understanding and confidence of "Save the Last Dance for Me": If I had to weave something together, then that would be the whole thing.

KARI: Again, that's the overarching wonder of where and how the pride and the shame come together.

ANTHONY: Yes. And I think that Doc Pomus recognized both. I think he was absolutely connected with the shame. Maybe consciously he wasn't, but unconsciously he has to have been very much in touch with the shame of having a disability, because he was someone who wanted to be a singer but couldn't because of his disability, so he had to be a songwriter and a producer. That's the pride and the shame right there. Hearing the back story, and suddenly knowing — boom! — what the song is about, does give me a better sense of my role in the world: my role as a complete person, my role as a man. I have the rights and responsibilities of a man. And a husband and a worker and a colleague and all of those things. But what binds me to my brothers and sisters is knowing that shame, and acknowledging it, not pretending that it doesn't exist. But also not spending all my time complaining about it. It's something to build on.

KARI: Knowing that you're a slave, but also knowing that the uprising is possible.

ANTHONY: Exactly. And you have to do something about the uprising, beyond just knowing that it's possible. You have to participate in the uprising. You don't just get to sit around and sing about it! Unless that singing inspires others to the uprising.

You can learn more about Anthony Tusler and his research on songs at his website: http://www.aboutdisability.com.