These Abilities: Perspectives on Music & Disability (conference)
Casa da Cidadania Cabós Gonçalves
1 OUT
10h00 - 17h00
free admission languages: Portuguese and English
Since 2016, we have been developing music-making projects with groups of people with diverse disabilities, particularly in collaboration with Associação Nós, with the remarkable quasi-big band Os Heróis Indianos Romanos Africanos standing as the most visible expression of this work. Along the way, these experiences began to reveal questions that reached far beyond inclusion or accessibility. They were, above all, questions about music itself.
What happens when different abilities, forms of perception and modes of communication become part of the creative process? Which ideas of improvisation, composition, virtuosity, authorship or listening are left to be reimagined? And how can we move beyond condescension, or the temptation to value these practices solely for their social impact, forgetting that they are also sites of aesthetic experimentation, capable of transforming our very understanding of music's “what” and “how”?
As partners in the European project tekhnē, dedicated to exploring the emancipatory potential of technology in music, we have sought to extend this reflection beyond our own practice. Following the publication, at the end of 2025, of "These Abilities", an issue of the tekhnē online journal, this conference brings together artists, programmers and facilitators to share experiences, present case studies and bring different perspectives on music and disability into dialogue. Rather than seeking definitive answers, we want to create a space for listening, where disability is understood not as an exception to be accommodated, but as a condition capable of transforming the way we think about improvisation, collective creation and, ultimately, the very idea of music.
Programme: 10am - 1pm
Presentation of "Ligados Às Máquinas", by Paulo Jacob
Presentation of "Grupo Operário do Ruído", by Sonoscopia
Conversation with Bá Alvares, Manja Ristić, Paulo Jacob and Gustavo Costa