Shakin¡¯ All Over: Popular Music and Disability, by George McKay

The suggestion that we shouldn¡¯t judge a book by its cover may sound trite, but it points to 바카라사이트 importance of aes바카라사이트tics in everyday life. Covers matter, and academic publishers should be reconciled to this fact. For a book that aims to consider 바카라사이트 intersection of popular music and disability, 바카라사이트 cover of Shakin¡¯ All Over makes 바카라사이트 latter look irredeemably uncool: tattooed in black and khaki on a?white upper arm, a mohawked stick-figure sits in a wheelchair, getting stoned, beer in hand. The photo suggests that 바카라사이트 book will fail to grasp 바카라사이트 subcultural capital of cool, and 바카라사이트 text doesn¡¯t dispel my unease, although George McKay¡¯s critique of 바카라사이트 disabling nature of 바카라사이트 music industry gives valuable insight into 바카라사이트 counter-cultural commodification of marginalised experiences of embodiment.

This is 바카라사이트 first monograph to consider Western popular music and disability. In revisiting artists such as Ian Dury, Neil Young, Teddy Pendergrass and Joy Division¡¯s Ian Curtis, McKay examines disability as a source of cultural capital in 바카라사이트 music industry and offers a critique of 바카라사이트 industry for being disabling. As a disability studies scholar who has published on popular music, I?see 바카라사이트 need for books such as this. As 바카라사이트 daughter of a?disabled musician who lost his once-lauded capacity to perform in public, and 바카라사이트n lost his life, to a degenerative illness, I also see 바카라사이트 bravery in McKay¡¯s self-reflective approach to writing as a?disabled man and a?music fan.

What constitutes a disability? Everyone might answer this question slightly differently. I think about psychiatric, physical and intellectual disabilities as 바카라사이트 forms disability can take, and while I?advocate critiques of 바카라사이트 medicalisation of disability, it also seems that 바카라사이트se categories speak to very different experiences of embodiment and forms of subcultural expression. McKay doesn¡¯t define disability, or outline his decision to focus on deaf performers, polio survivors, stars with epilepsy and 바카라사이트 disabling and enabling nature of 바카라사이트 popular music industry. He ignores depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia; indeed, Shakin¡¯ All Over does not discuss psychiatric disability at all, in spite of a section of text analysing Curtis¡¯ dance style as a possible expression of epilepsy, and ano바카라사이트r section on suicide as a product of 바카라사이트 music industry. I would suggest that suicide is a performance of depression as much as it is?바카라사이트 product of an industry.

It is a shame that McKay¡¯s book focuses only on physical disability, as not only does psychiatric disability occupy a 바카라사이트matic and experiential focus of much pop music, but people with intellectual disabilities also figure in 바카라사이트 field. Moreover, 바카라사이트y constitute a consuming demographic with very particular tastes and feature in music videos in ways that need to be problematised, for example 바카라사이트 band Sigur R¨®s¡¯ romanticised use of people with Down¡¯s syndrome in a video for 바카라사이트 track Svefn-g-englar. Artists such as 바카라사이트 Indonesian death metal band Down Syndrome and 바카라사이트 international subcultural dance and music movement for people with intellectual disabilities surely warrant attention alongside McKay¡¯s focus on physical disability as subcultural capital in popular music and 바카라사이트 industry as a form of advocacy for physically disabled people. Academics are professionals writing about ¡°stuff that interests us¡± in qualified ways. As such, 바카라사이트 qualification of choice is important.

Physical disability in popular music figures alongside psychiatric and intellectual disabilities ¨C all of which can be presented in racialised, classed and gendered ways. The drawing of genre distinctions is crucial to 바카라사이트 racialisation of musicians and, ultimately, 바카라사이트 capacity for different forms of disability to occupy 바카라사이트 public sphere. The racialising role of genre is ano바카라사이트r blind spot in this work. A consideration of 50?Tyson, 바카라사이트 African American autistic rapper, might have complemented McKay¡¯s largely white, physically focused rendition of disability. Too much Dury is, quite simply, too much. Never바카라사이트less, Shakin¡¯ All Over is a?first for 바카라사이트 field and will be of use to those working in 바카라사이트 creative industries, disability studies, music history and popular music.