Being a Disabled Musician Is Still a Lot Harder Than It Should Be

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"I'm Spasticus / I'm Spasticus / I'm Spasticus Autisticus!"

That was Ian Dury's glorious, post-punk fuck you to the UN for declaring 1981 to be the Year of the Disabled. Crippled by polio from the age of eight, Dury saw the entire "year of the disabled" concept as patronizing, and his Spartacus reference raised the message from the simply pissed-off to the revolutionary: Disabled people don't want pity; they want freedom from all that bullshit. Or, as Dury himself put it, "I wasn't moaning, I was doing the opposite of moaning: I was yelling."

That yelling immediately got the song banned by the BBC and effectively ended Dury's chart career.

But we now live in more enlightened times, right? They even played "Spasticus Autisticus" at the 2012 London Paralympics opening ceremony, with Stephen Hawking onstage. But beyond the feel-good Olympic spectacle, three-and-a-half decades after Ian Dury's protest, disabled musicians and fans are still having to yell to get their voices heard.

Jason Weaver is an 18-year-old singer-songwriter honing his craft in lo-fi rootsy folk, but he's had to completely relearn how to sing from a wheelchair because he suffers from the incurable degenerative illness Duchenne muscular dystrophy. For your average guitar player, it's hard enough to get people to break gaze with the barman long enough to actually watch an entire song, but for Jason the challenge starts with simply finding a venue he can get into.

"Up until a year ago I was walking, but now I'm permanently using my wheelchair," he tells me. "In my area there is nowhere—really, nowhere—to play. Access is a major issue for me… I've had to look way beyond my immediate area. The last gig I did was in Brighton. The promoter told me the venue was totally accessible, so I asked my dad to drive me six hours from Worcester, where I'm at uni. Then, when I arrived, there were three massive steps to get up to the door, and another three down into the pub. They had to get two people to carry me up—as you can imagine, that's quite dehumanizing. I'd traveled all the way across the country, and by the time I played I didn't even care how the gig went. I didn't want to be there. It made me feel different and I hate that—music's usually the one area where I don't need to. But that felt really futile and disheartening."

Jason isn't alone in this. I spoke to Kray-Z Legz, an MC who uses a wheelchair because he was born with spina bifida. He has also faced inevitable issues with access to venues, though he deals with them in a different way.

"I have a group of lads who will just pick up my chair and carry me up staircases to get into venues," he says. "Nine times out of ten there is no access for wheelchairs to get on the stage and I have to be lifted again. But this has never stopped me—where there's a wheel, there's a way, I say."

Obviously this gets easier as artists advance in their field. Kray-Z's more sanguine approach may well stem from having released his album in collaboration with US-based producer Anno Domini, who's cut tracks with Method Man and D12, while Jason is still hustling for gigs and recording opportunities.

Bigger venues can afford to make adjustments for accessibility that would put smaller clubs out of business. Blaine Harrison from Mystery Jets, who also uses crutches because of spina bifida, recalls making the transition in his own career: "Everything suddenly got a whole lot easier," he tells me. "Walking round backstage at our first few Academy shows, it struck me that whoever fitted these places out had actually considered the mobility of not only the audience but performers, too. Money is obviously a huge factor, and lack of funding is something the smaller venues up and down the country have to wrestle with—but it's only through those small clubs that new generations of musicians will find their way."

But even the tiniest venues can make changes in policy that can vastly improve the access and experience of disabled musicians and fans. Blaine is a patron of the charity Attitude Is Everything (AIE), who work with venues and festivals across the UK to improve access and break down stereotypes.

Speaking to Graham Griffiths of AIE, he is emphatic: "Yes, there are the obvious issues of physical access—viewing areas, level access, and proper toilet facilities, etc. But so much can be improved with shifts in policy that are virtually free," he says. "Do you have really good information on your website? Do you let people know how many steps there are? Is there a toilet upstairs, or will someone always have to go down? Do you provide free tickets for personal assistants? Can you make arrangements for early entry? Just knowing these things can make the difference between someone deciding to go to a gig or not… and that's aside from just basic issues of staff training and awareness."

"Who I Am" - Kray-Z Legz

The issue of awareness and attitude comes up again and again. No one wants to feel they are making unreasonable demands or putting other people out.

Blaine recalls: "The first time this life really slapped me around the face was when I sustained a serious leg injury and had to tour in a wheelchair. It took less than a day before I started feeling like a shitty burden to everyone who had to set up my equipment, get me drinks, and carry me up flights of stairs. It sucked. I vividly remember the feeling of dread each night, limping out to a room of confused expressions and thinking, 'This is not what fun feels like.'"

Likewise, Jason's primary concern is also to do with people's reactions. "The worst thing is when you ask for even something small, like a portable ramp, and people look at you like you're an imposition, like you're in the way," he says.

Graham Griffiths insists that things are improving. "When we started working with Glastonbury there were 150 people using the accessible campsite. Last year, there were 1,500," he tells me. "We've just had our 100th venue sign up to our Charter of Best Practice, which provides free, ongoing, bespoke support to venues and festivals. Progress is somewhat London-centric and there is a huge amount still to do, but it is a growing movement. Obviously, when someone says 'disabled' there is a huge variation in what they mean—only 8 percent of registered disabled people use wheelchairs. But, across the board, access is slowly improving. Seeing disabled people at gigs isn't the total rarity that it was even ten years ago."

Along with access, the other recurring theme with the artists I spoke to was the gulf between being labelled as a "disabled musician" and simply being allowed to be an artist who happens to have a disability. This was well put by Tom Mayne, of the excellent Fall-esque anti-folk band David Cronenberg's Wife, who also advertises himself as "London's best seven-fingered guitarist."

"'Disabled artist' sounds as if you're saying 'disabled, but look, they can still create!'" he says. "If I went to see a blind comedian I'd expect a few jokes about him or her not being able to see. But if that's all they have, I think it would get boring quite quickly. If people are intrigued and come to a show, then great. But if the songs aren't good then they're not going to come back just to see me play my three chords with a deformed hand. In today's age, even the word 'deformity' sounds too negative, doesn't it? Though, when you call your band David Cronenberg's Wife, I guess deformity is something to be embraced."

Talking about this issue with Jason Weaver is the one time I glimpse the anger behind his generally cheerful joking. "Being disabled is part of who I am. I'm proud of still being alive and kicking—and proud to be identified with this community," he starts. "But after a while it's like, 'Yeah, I've got a disability; OK, now just listen to my song.' Or people think your music has to be sad and upsetting because you're disabled. I want to be known as Jason the songwriter. I don't talk about my disability, I talk about my life, and maybe being disabled is part of that. I want to be real—I listen to the chart stuff and just think, 'Who's buying this rubbish?' There's no reality to it."

This last point also is echoed by Graham from Attitude Is Everything, who notes that progress seems to be faster in the more underground edges of indie and hip-hop than in the more commercial pop and R&B worlds. While the major labels still feel they need to explicitly promote Viktoria Modesta as "the world's first amputee pop star," artists like Jason Weaver, Tom Mayne, Blaine Harrison, and Kray-Z Legz are out there echoing Ian Dury's call to just be who they are, without the need for categories or pious tokenism.

And it's great that they are. Popular music owes far more to disabled artists than is generally acknowledged. Without Blind Lemon Jefferson, Reverend Gary Davis and all those other era-defining blind bluesmen, rock 'n' roll would never have been born. There's a world of disabled talent out there; it would be a stupid and unnecessary loss for everyone if it never got to be heard.