What the Tests Don’t Measure: Transforming Power-over Constructs of Musical Talent through Neurodivergent Musicality

Abstract

In this article, I deconstruct the concept of musical talent to demonstrate the ways in which it serves as a “power-over” structure fueled by exclusive and ableist criteria rooted in eugenic values. I begin by deconstructing musical talent into four distinct, yet interconnected entities—a cultural construct, ideology, lived reality, and form of cultural capital—that work together to enforce normative and ableist expectations for sounded and bodily performance. Building upon the work of scholars in disability studies, music education, musicology, and critical race studies, I analyze how this ableism was encoded into musical talent tests that came to dominate music education research throughout the twentieth century as a result of the eugenics movement. Though such assessments have declined in popularity in U.S. music education, I assert that the ideology of musical talent promoted through these tests still shapes understandings of who is musically valuable today. In contrast to this hierarchical model, I offer a new theoretical framework for conceptualizing musical value through neurodivergent musicality, which is guided by four main tenets. Neurodivergent musicality (1) centers neurodivergent experience in all its diversity; (2) challenges dominant ableist aesthetics; (3) resists fetishization of neurodivergence and historical images of the idiot savant; and (4) generates power-to-and-power-with through collaborative musical exchange. Finally, I offer practical suggestions for how music educators might support neurodivergent musicality through existing and newly created programming. Ultimately, I suggest that expanding definitions of musical value to embrace neurodivergent musicality can transform music education settings into liberatory spaces for disabled musicians.