From objects to subjects – Changes of social roles in the context of blind persons’ music education

How can a human character segregated for thousands of years become an active member of a society? How can an object become a subject? Can socially prescribed roles be re-scribed? And what is the connection between these roles and social responsibility? This paper answers these questions in the context of a concise overview of the roles societies have given to the blind. Based on theories and practices, this paper reflects on the stereotype that blindness and musical talent are inseparable attributes. Becoming a subject from an object is a long way, a broad spectrum in space and time, from the ancient Egyptian and Greek blind musicians to the 21st-century Legato Choir of the Budapest Special School of the Blind in Hungary. As we walk along that way, we can surely form our own answers to Tom Shakespeare’s question, how one can become a character if the world has already decided they are a type.