This chapter considers the virtuosic appeal of Tony Melendez: a musician born without arms who plays the guitar with his feet. I begin by focusing on the similarities and tensions between virtuosity and disability, drawing on work in music and disability studies that demonstrates how agency and bodily limits are constructed in discursive and material ways. I then turn to Melendez’s performances as an example of the complex intersection of virtuosity and disability, with particular attention to his landmark performance for Pope John Paul II in 1987 and to my own ethnographic analysis of three of his performances in 2014 and 2019. I conclude by discussing issues of merit, identity, and power, posing in earnest a question more often used as a dismissive rejoinder: who cares? Melendez’s example shows how bodily difference and the complex subject positions of both performers and audiences contribute to what counts as skill, creative labor, and agency within a particular context.

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“Just an Armless Guitarist”

  • David VanderHamm

摘要

This chapter considers the virtuosic appeal of Tony Melendez: a musician born without arms who plays the guitar with his feet. I begin by focusing on the similarities and tensions between virtuosity and disability, drawing on work in music and disability studies that demonstrates how agency and bodily limits are constructed in discursive and material ways. I then turn to Melendez’s performances as an example of the complex intersection of virtuosity and disability, with particular attention to his landmark performance for Pope John Paul II in 1987 and to my own ethnographic analysis of three of his performances in 2014 and 2019. I conclude by discussing issues of merit, identity, and power, posing in earnest a question more often used as a dismissive rejoinder: who cares? Melendez’s example shows how bodily difference and the complex subject positions of both performers and audiences contribute to what counts as skill, creative labor, and agency within a particular context.