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Speaking for Ourselves: Conversations on Life, Music, and Autism
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 studied. Articles on musical savants, extraordinary feats of musical memory, unusually high rates of absolute or "perfect" pitch, and the effectiveness of music-based therapies abound in the autism literature. Meanwhile, music scholars and historians have posited autism-centered explanatory models to account for the unique musical artistry of everyone from Bela Bartok and Glenn Gould to "Blind Tom" Wiggins.
Given the great deal of attention paid to music and autism, it is surprising to discover that autistic people have rarely been asked to account for how they themselves make and experience music or 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 many different autistic points of view. They invite readers to partake of a rich tapestry of words, ideas, images, and musical sounds that speak to both the diversity of autistic experience and the common humanity we all share.
Given the great deal of attention paid to music and autism, it is surprising to discover that autistic people have rarely been asked to account for how they themselves make and experience music or 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 many different autistic points of view. They invite readers to partake of a rich tapestry of words, ideas, images, and musical sounds that speak to both the diversity of autistic experience and the common humanity we all share.
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Published August 21, 2018
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October 21, 2023
Finishing this book took me much longer than I anticipated mostly due to how the book tracks the author's journey from "autism awareness" to "autism acceptance." As someone with an autism diagnosis who "passes" for the most part, I found it really hard to read the first few chapters. I felt like a curiosity and there were all of these generalizing statements about how people with my disability don't hear certain musical qualities the way neurotypicals do. The preface, Introduction and first interview gave me a bit of a crisis. Do I write this way about the communities I study? Do other well meaning ethnomusicologists? There I was in the middle of finishing my first book manuscript (full disclosure: my book is published on the same academic press), and I was uncomfortable with what I was reading by a scholar that many in the self-advocacy movement respect. Surely I was missing something.
Bakan came to this project as a relative of an autistic child and it shows. He doesn't really discuss this aspect of the project much in the book (which I suspect was out of respect for their privacy), but it's all over his published academic articles on the subject. Many other scholars who work on music and disability respect Bakan for his collaborative approach to this book project, and I have to admit that it's the reason why I pushed through that initial discomfort. It's clear to me that Bakan structured the book to mirror his own journey and to give as much of a "voice" to the people he met and interviewed as humanly possible while still making the book accessible to a general readership. Those two elements made the book worth it for me. But that warning to autistics stands: don't be put-off by those first few chapters. This isn't a standard "awareness raising" project where parents and educators don't consult us. In fact, the title of the book is one giant dig at Autism Speaks. In that way, while this book may be fascinating, its primary audience isn't the autism self-advocacy community. It's for everyone else, and that's a good thing.
Audience aside, there's plenty for autistic readers to value. Some of these interviews felt like "coming home." It was wonderful to discover that someone else experiences music and sound the way that I do. (I felt similarly about some of NeuroTribes.) Other interviews, like the ones with Ibby Grace and Amy Sequenzia, read as deeply necessary while others felt like peering into someone else's sound world. Bakan did an admirable job of interviewing a range of musicians and music lovers, from fresh off a diagnosis in mid-life to those needing assistance to go about their daily lives. I appreciated that so many of these voices were adults. I only wish that he had interviewed more non-verbal adults. I'm not even sure that it would have been possible. Bakan also worked to get an audio edition of this book produced which will help many autistics I know read it if they so choose.
In retrospect, it should not surprise me that I felt some discomfort reading this book and I don't think that's a bad thing. It is tremendously exposing to have something as deeply personal as my relationship to music amplified and published (even in audiobook format now), and I wasn't even someone that he interviewed.
For ethnomusicology, I see this book as a way forward. My own crises aside, this book is brimming with care and compassion of a kind I have never encountered in an ethnography. The only "overcoming" in this book is how Bakan works past his own discomfort with disability and his desire to encourage or push his collaborators. There's even a memorable passage when he recalls his first encounter with the self-advocacy movement and they "school" him. Such stunning honesty! As such, this book is in dialogue with the kind of argument proposed by William Cheng's Just Vibrations (although Cheng's book is more about historical musicology and criticism) and demonstrates the importance of musical studies by outsiders. I certainly could never have written a book that is this effective at showing the beauty of musical experiences and expression for a community often written off and maligned by the general public.
Bakan came to this project as a relative of an autistic child and it shows. He doesn't really discuss this aspect of the project much in the book (which I suspect was out of respect for their privacy), but it's all over his published academic articles on the subject. Many other scholars who work on music and disability respect Bakan for his collaborative approach to this book project, and I have to admit that it's the reason why I pushed through that initial discomfort. It's clear to me that Bakan structured the book to mirror his own journey and to give as much of a "voice" to the people he met and interviewed as humanly possible while still making the book accessible to a general readership. Those two elements made the book worth it for me. But that warning to autistics stands: don't be put-off by those first few chapters. This isn't a standard "awareness raising" project where parents and educators don't consult us. In fact, the title of the book is one giant dig at Autism Speaks. In that way, while this book may be fascinating, its primary audience isn't the autism self-advocacy community. It's for everyone else, and that's a good thing.
Audience aside, there's plenty for autistic readers to value. Some of these interviews felt like "coming home." It was wonderful to discover that someone else experiences music and sound the way that I do. (I felt similarly about some of NeuroTribes.) Other interviews, like the ones with Ibby Grace and Amy Sequenzia, read as deeply necessary while others felt like peering into someone else's sound world. Bakan did an admirable job of interviewing a range of musicians and music lovers, from fresh off a diagnosis in mid-life to those needing assistance to go about their daily lives. I appreciated that so many of these voices were adults. I only wish that he had interviewed more non-verbal adults. I'm not even sure that it would have been possible. Bakan also worked to get an audio edition of this book produced which will help many autistics I know read it if they so choose.
In retrospect, it should not surprise me that I felt some discomfort reading this book and I don't think that's a bad thing. It is tremendously exposing to have something as deeply personal as my relationship to music amplified and published (even in audiobook format now), and I wasn't even someone that he interviewed.
For ethnomusicology, I see this book as a way forward. My own crises aside, this book is brimming with care and compassion of a kind I have never encountered in an ethnography. The only "overcoming" in this book is how Bakan works past his own discomfort with disability and his desire to encourage or push his collaborators. There's even a memorable passage when he recalls his first encounter with the self-advocacy movement and they "school" him. Such stunning honesty! As such, this book is in dialogue with the kind of argument proposed by William Cheng's Just Vibrations (although Cheng's book is more about historical musicology and criticism) and demonstrates the importance of musical studies by outsiders. I certainly could never have written a book that is this effective at showing the beauty of musical experiences and expression for a community often written off and maligned by the general public.
June 4, 2019
I appreciated the twist of learning about how individuals with autism perceive their own musical journeys - autism from the inside as it were. I had hoped to receive deeper insight to shape how I approach teaching autistic students, yet the subjects of the book were primarily experts - concert pianists, composers, and the like - and so while I gleaned some general principles, I found less inspiration than I had hoped to apply to elementary music students. I was moved by the fact that few of the autists interviewed would "get rid" of their autism if they could - the benefits that their system of thought brings to them outweigh the deficits in their opinion. The study is naturally biased towards those individuals requiring less support (ie high functioning), as those individuals requiring more support are less willing or able to go through the interview process.
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July 11, 2018My interview with Michael Bakan:
MUSIC AND MUSIC THERAPY have become widely used and important parts of treatment for people with diagnoses on the autism spectrum disorder, helping them engage, calm and communicate.
After witnessing such an experience with a young autistic relative, Michael Bakan, an ethnomusicology professor at Florida State University, began to explore the possibilities of making music with autistic people, first through the Music-Play Project and later the Artism Ensemble, which paired children on the spectrum and their parents with professional musicians to create and perform original and improvisational works.
In his new book, "Speaking for Ourselves: Conversations on Life, Music, and Autism," Bakan shares his conversations with 10 people who all have diagnoses on the autism spectrum and for whom music is an integral part of their lives.
Through those conversations, and in a recent interview with U.S. News, Bakan challenges many of the ashumptions neurotypical people – people without autism spectrum conditions – make about how autistic people see and interact with the world. Excerpts:
Several of your interviewees, all of whom are on the autism spectrum and have language ability, talk about feeling more comfortable with music, with one even talking about how she sometimes thinks in music and that helps her access language. How does that work?
I don't think it's necessarily that these people are more fluid in music than they are in language. But I think music allows you to more purely engage with the act of communication than spoken dialogue does.
The kind of rules of etiquette and the kind of social demands are actually much looser in a music making environment, and especially if it's a music-making environment where there isn't a predetermined outcome. In conversation, you're having to constantly modulate to satisfy the expectations of the other person, second by second, minute by minute. So I don't think it's language so much that is the challenge, I think it is the social paradigm of language exchange that makes communication difficult for verbal autistic people and why there's a certain kind of fluency in music that exceeds that.
Because we live in a linguo-centric society, where language is so referential, certain words mean certain things, the connotations of the way you use a word, the gestures you make when you utter something, are so deeply coded and so open for being misinterpreted or manipulated if you don't do it right, that if you are set up differently neurocognitively, that can generate a lot of anxiety. Whereas the kinds of environments in which music is made are more sympathetic to a more neurodiverse theater of operation in which people can find meaningful ways in which to interact and communicate.
You refer to the work of Joseph Straus and his ideation of autism as its own cognitive style, and how that led you to consider studying autism through the lens of ethnomusicology, the study of music as culture. What are the common themes that popped up again in your conversations and in your work with musicians on the spectrum?
I've defined ethnomusicology as the study of how people make and experience music and why it matters to them that they do. And essentially the book starts from that question, of how do autistic people make and experience music and why does it matter to them that they do, not them as some large cultural anonymous group without individuals but as individuals who share a certain kind of neurocognitive profile and an interest in music.
I don't really think there is a music of autism. What I think you could say, though, it's consistent with the kind of work that Straus has done, is that there is a way of being in the world that is autistic, and this idea that autistic people take in more information – or at least the information is less variegated in terms of the kinds of hierarchies that maybe neurotypical people immediately, intuitively make. Neurotypical people decide to focus on this person is talking to us, as opposed to the people who are having a conversation elsewhere, whereas in the autistic experience, maybe all of those things are coming in and it's less clear, it's less obvious, which one is more important, which one should be the point of focus.
Ironically, it makes many autistic people more sensitive listeners, more attentive listeners, and actually more socially responsive to the kind of musical cues that happen in an improvisatory situation. And this would seem to totally cut against the grain of how the condition is usually described, because you would ashume the opposite. But there's this real attunedness to the larger surrounding environment, whereas a neurotypical musician would say, 'Well, I'm going to focus on my part, focus on this one other instrumentalist sharing the other thing that's closest to my line, and I'm going to shut out the other kinds of things because I don't want to get distracted.' I think there's a more holistic way of experiencing the soundscape of a musical environment that an autistic person has.
On the other side, because there is so much information – and because there are less filters that immediately kick into place in an intuitive way – there is a tendency to become overwhelmed by so many details. So I think what a lot of autistic musicians will do, whether performing or composing music or people experiencing music in some other ways, they focus in, they select very consciously on some detail, some segment, that they're going to really hone in on because, 'If I don't then I'm going to be lost because everything will come at me.' So there's this paradoxical relationship, where on the one hand, there's more information coming in and there's a more holistic way of processing that information, and on the other hand there's a narrower and more specific point of focus that becomes the place where attention goes.
When I listen to Thelonius Monk's music, for example, to me that speaks very much like an autistic way of communicating. And I'm not saying Monk was autistic and I'm not saying he wasn't. I don't know. I didn't know him and there was no diagnosis at that time for people like him. But if you listen to Monk's music, he'll take one particular motive, one particular figure, and he'll keep working it around, working it around, spinning it upside down, spinning it inside out, and eventually the larger piece takes place around that. So I think there is something in if we wanted to call it the autistic style of approaching music that gravitates toward that molecular level of musical design and then sort of builds inward and outward from that to create the larger whole. That has interesting implications, and there are actually – some of the same musicians have been retrospectively painted with the brush of, 'Maybe they were autistic.' When I listen to their performances or when I listen to their compositions, I can hear that.
Read the rest of the interview here.
MUSIC AND MUSIC THERAPY have become widely used and important parts of treatment for people with diagnoses on the autism spectrum disorder, helping them engage, calm and communicate.
After witnessing such an experience with a young autistic relative, Michael Bakan, an ethnomusicology professor at Florida State University, began to explore the possibilities of making music with autistic people, first through the Music-Play Project and later the Artism Ensemble, which paired children on the spectrum and their parents with professional musicians to create and perform original and improvisational works.
In his new book, "Speaking for Ourselves: Conversations on Life, Music, and Autism," Bakan shares his conversations with 10 people who all have diagnoses on the autism spectrum and for whom music is an integral part of their lives.
Through those conversations, and in a recent interview with U.S. News, Bakan challenges many of the ashumptions neurotypical people – people without autism spectrum conditions – make about how autistic people see and interact with the world. Excerpts:
Several of your interviewees, all of whom are on the autism spectrum and have language ability, talk about feeling more comfortable with music, with one even talking about how she sometimes thinks in music and that helps her access language. How does that work?
I don't think it's necessarily that these people are more fluid in music than they are in language. But I think music allows you to more purely engage with the act of communication than spoken dialogue does.
The kind of rules of etiquette and the kind of social demands are actually much looser in a music making environment, and especially if it's a music-making environment where there isn't a predetermined outcome. In conversation, you're having to constantly modulate to satisfy the expectations of the other person, second by second, minute by minute. So I don't think it's language so much that is the challenge, I think it is the social paradigm of language exchange that makes communication difficult for verbal autistic people and why there's a certain kind of fluency in music that exceeds that.
Because we live in a linguo-centric society, where language is so referential, certain words mean certain things, the connotations of the way you use a word, the gestures you make when you utter something, are so deeply coded and so open for being misinterpreted or manipulated if you don't do it right, that if you are set up differently neurocognitively, that can generate a lot of anxiety. Whereas the kinds of environments in which music is made are more sympathetic to a more neurodiverse theater of operation in which people can find meaningful ways in which to interact and communicate.
You refer to the work of Joseph Straus and his ideation of autism as its own cognitive style, and how that led you to consider studying autism through the lens of ethnomusicology, the study of music as culture. What are the common themes that popped up again in your conversations and in your work with musicians on the spectrum?
I've defined ethnomusicology as the study of how people make and experience music and why it matters to them that they do. And essentially the book starts from that question, of how do autistic people make and experience music and why does it matter to them that they do, not them as some large cultural anonymous group without individuals but as individuals who share a certain kind of neurocognitive profile and an interest in music.
I don't really think there is a music of autism. What I think you could say, though, it's consistent with the kind of work that Straus has done, is that there is a way of being in the world that is autistic, and this idea that autistic people take in more information – or at least the information is less variegated in terms of the kinds of hierarchies that maybe neurotypical people immediately, intuitively make. Neurotypical people decide to focus on this person is talking to us, as opposed to the people who are having a conversation elsewhere, whereas in the autistic experience, maybe all of those things are coming in and it's less clear, it's less obvious, which one is more important, which one should be the point of focus.
Ironically, it makes many autistic people more sensitive listeners, more attentive listeners, and actually more socially responsive to the kind of musical cues that happen in an improvisatory situation. And this would seem to totally cut against the grain of how the condition is usually described, because you would ashume the opposite. But there's this real attunedness to the larger surrounding environment, whereas a neurotypical musician would say, 'Well, I'm going to focus on my part, focus on this one other instrumentalist sharing the other thing that's closest to my line, and I'm going to shut out the other kinds of things because I don't want to get distracted.' I think there's a more holistic way of experiencing the soundscape of a musical environment that an autistic person has.
On the other side, because there is so much information – and because there are less filters that immediately kick into place in an intuitive way – there is a tendency to become overwhelmed by so many details. So I think what a lot of autistic musicians will do, whether performing or composing music or people experiencing music in some other ways, they focus in, they select very consciously on some detail, some segment, that they're going to really hone in on because, 'If I don't then I'm going to be lost because everything will come at me.' So there's this paradoxical relationship, where on the one hand, there's more information coming in and there's a more holistic way of processing that information, and on the other hand there's a narrower and more specific point of focus that becomes the place where attention goes.
When I listen to Thelonius Monk's music, for example, to me that speaks very much like an autistic way of communicating. And I'm not saying Monk was autistic and I'm not saying he wasn't. I don't know. I didn't know him and there was no diagnosis at that time for people like him. But if you listen to Monk's music, he'll take one particular motive, one particular figure, and he'll keep working it around, working it around, spinning it upside down, spinning it inside out, and eventually the larger piece takes place around that. So I think there is something in if we wanted to call it the autistic style of approaching music that gravitates toward that molecular level of musical design and then sort of builds inward and outward from that to create the larger whole. That has interesting implications, and there are actually – some of the same musicians have been retrospectively painted with the brush of, 'Maybe they were autistic.' When I listen to their performances or when I listen to their compositions, I can hear that.
Read the rest of the interview here.
August 17, 2023
The subject may seem esoteric - conversations of an ethnomusicology professor with people on the autism spectrum, but it’s anything but dry, ivory tower stuff. These dialogues are fascinating learning experiences and above all very human. The collaborators speak for themselves in their own terms and in their own method of communication. (One interviewee is non verbal.) The conversations also mirrored Dr. Bakan’s growth in empathy and advocacy for the autistic community.
I have a print copy coming in the mail, but I loved the audio version because it made these interactions very real to me, the listener. If you want to learn more and grow in empathy and support for folks on the spectrum, this is a great book because it’s their stories. Their strengths and struggles. Their lives. In their own words.
I have a print copy coming in the mail, but I loved the audio version because it made these interactions very real to me, the listener. If you want to learn more and grow in empathy and support for folks on the spectrum, this is a great book because it’s their stories. Their strengths and struggles. Their lives. In their own words.
January 22, 2020
This book is fascinating to me on many levels and, in the week it took me to read it, has already impacted my life in many ways. My son is 13, diagnosed with HFA, and lives his life through music. The conversations in the book - with adults who are able to reflect upon the ways in which music has shaped their lives and thoughts - have helped me to better understand my son and to perhaps dissect what's going on in his little head. I'm astounded by the level of detail (and sheer eloquence) offered by the interviewees, and I find myself having more empowering conversations with my son. I'm very thankful I found this book, and I am even more grateful to the author for writing it.
December 2, 2023
Some good info like when they explain why functioning labels are irrelevant but it was very very dated since the whole book they talk about Asperger’s etc. since this was published in 2018 and the Asperger’s diagnosis was erased in 2013 I expected a bit more up to date info.
I did like all the different views from actually autistic people but this was right at the beginning of the neurodiversity movement so it’s definitely showing in the autistics view of themselves and a lot of internalized ableism.
I did like all the different views from actually autistic people but this was right at the beginning of the neurodiversity movement so it’s definitely showing in the autistics view of themselves and a lot of internalized ableism.
Read
October 11, 2025so much good perspective into neurodivergence & music, from the experiences of hearing music & what that does on so many levels to actually playing music… personally loved as some dots connected for me as my first pathway in life was piano performance / compositions, & an instrument I had to neglect to pursue other ventures more fully, but hope to return to very soon… this pushes that drive even more.
March 12, 2022
So many of the autism stereotypes center on numbers and trains. I love that this collection is about the impact of music and the autistic mind. And each person has their individual stories on what music means to them.
As a creative autistic person, I loved this insight. Also, everyone has their own stories and journeys with their self discovery and acceptance.
As a creative autistic person, I loved this insight. Also, everyone has their own stories and journeys with their self discovery and acceptance.
August 16, 2024
As someone who responds to music very intensely, this is probably my favorite book on autism and on music. Maybe even on humans. The author did a great job, primarily by simply being a respectful, genuinely curious and kind person.
December 13, 2024
Ok-ok timepass
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