In this article, I suggest that a provisional paradigm shift from disability as pathology to disability as neurodiversity has the potential to productively resituate the epistemological orientations of music therapy, both as a field of inquiry and a domain of practice. I draw from my own work on the ethnomusicology of autism, as well as from research and writings in disability studies and autistic self-advocacy, in proposing that the relativistic foundations of ethnomusicology offer a potentially useful alternative and complement to the principally treatment-directed foundations of music therapy.

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This essay proposes an ethnographic model of disability in contradistinction to existing social and medical models. Building from an ethnomusicological study of the Artism Ensemble, a neurodiverse music performance collective comprising children on the autism spectrum, their coparticipating parents, and professional musicians of diverse musicultural lineage, it discusses issues of autistic self-advocacy, Disability Studies and rights, the anthropology of autism, and epistemological and pragmatic debates and consequences of competing autism discourses and philosophies. The essay argues that musical projects like Artism hold the capacity to contribute productively and meaningfully to the causes of autistic self-advocacy and quality of life, transforming public perceptions of autism from the customary tropes of deficit and disorder to alternate visions of wholeness, ability, and acceptance. Artism is also addressed from a critical vantage point that demonstrates its partial entrenchment in some of the very same negating constructs it ostensibly resists and defies.

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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 researched. Articles on musical savants, extraordinary feats of musical memory and pitch recognition, and music-based therapies and interventions abound in the autism literature. Meanwhile, music historians have posited autism-centered explanatory models to account for the unique musical artistry of everyone from Glenn Gould to “Blind Tom” Wiggins. Given all of this attention, it is surprising how infrequently autistic people have been asked to account for how they themselves make and experience music, or for 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. These conversations offer profound insights into the intricacies and intersections of music, autism, neurodiversity, and life in general, not from an autistic point of view but rather from several different autistic points of view. They invite readers to partake of a rich tapestry of words, ideas, images, and musical sounds (on the companion website) that speak to both the diversity of autistic experience and the common humanity we all share.