Overview

Since the advent of autism as a diagnosed condition in the 1940s, the importance of music in the lives of autistic people has been widely observed and studied. Articles on musical savants, extraordinary feats of musical memory, unusually high rates of absolute or perfect pitch, and the effectiveness of music-based therapies abound in the autism literature. Meanwhile, music scholars and historians have posited autism-centered explanatory models to account for the unique musical artistry of everyone from Bela Bartok and Glenn Gould to Blind Tom Wiggins. Given the great deal of attention paid to music and autism, it is surprising to discover that autistic people have rarely been asked to account for how they themselves make and experience music or why it matters to them that they do. In Speaking for Ourselves, renowned ethnomusicologist Michael Bakan does just that, engaging in deep conversations-some spanning the course of years-with ten fascinating and very different individuals who share two basic things in common: an autism spectrum diagnosis and a life in which music plays a central part.

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9781515931324

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Michael B. Bakan is Professor of Ethnomusicology at Florida State University. His more than fifty publications include the books World Music: Traditions and Transformations and Music of Death and New Creation, as well as articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics. Kaleo Griffith, who has been called powerful, with the presence of a young Timothy Dalton by the Hollywood Reporter, has won multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. He holds an MFA in acting from Rutgers University, and his film and television credits include Oliver Stone's Talk Radio, Law & Order, and All My Children.

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