The inclusion of music/the music of inclusion

The intention of this paper is to situate music within inclusive education. Intersections of music - widely regarded as a 'talent' or hyperability - and disability provide unique perspectives on social organisation in general and human valuation in particular. Music is a ubiquitous and an essential component of learning beginning in infancy. Curricula and institutions grounded in the Western classical music canon and its pedagogical regime of 'talent', ranking, and competition (pervasive in both the West and much of East Asia) serve more to deprive students of music than provide it. While this is particularly true of students with disabilities, a multicultural set of case studies also demonstrate that students are also deprived and demeaned through a variety of conflations of disability with racialisation, class discrimination, and gendering within music education.