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Opportunities and Challenges of Visually Impaired Persons in the Music Sector in Ethiopia

Practice has shown that music arts offer talented blind persons opportunities for success and fulfillment. In illustration of this, blind music personalities of international stature may be cited from present as well as past generations. The same holds true of the Ethiopian society. Over the centuries, there have been many blind individuals who made immense contributions in different forms of traditional or religious music. Similarly, recent decades have also witnessed visually impaired youths who made effective use of music skills acquired in school, to rank themselves among admired and recognized local musicians.

Despite such background, there have been long-persisting challenges that made it difficult for blind people with the talents or interests to engage in music arts to the full extent of their desire and abilities. Lying at the root of the problems are understood to be the attitudes of people influencing decisions in music schools or at higher policy levels. As a result, blind citizens have long been denied access to music education and training in the oldest government institution, and other establishments which followed its example.

The policy and institutional barriers have persisted for the last 40 years regardless of protests by organizations of visually impaired persons and private pressure groups. In 2002/3, a group of blind people and philanthropic compatriots established a local NGO, which came to be known as Wusate Brhan (Inner Vision) Abera Music Training Center for the Visually Impaired. The aim of the Center is to fille the service gap and make music training opportunity accessible to interested blind boys and girls. With the accreditation of Addis Ababa Education Bureau and limited funding mainly from donor agencies, Wusate Brhan has trained and graduated scores of young blind people in music science, as well as in traditional and modern musical instruments at certificate and diploma levels over the last ten years. Most of the graduates have made success of the opportunity the Center provided, by securing employment as music trainers, or by creating livelihoods for themselves as private music performers or band and recording studio operators.

However, to the disappointment of the visually impaired community, particularly those with music interests and aspirations, Wusate Brhan was forced to suspend its operations for a few years because of resource constraints. Luckily, this state of affairs was soon reversed through the implementation of the ongoing Inner Vision project, facilitated and supported by Selam, with funding from Swedish Post Code Lottery. Having accepted a batch of 17 male and female blind trainees on the basis of standard entry procedures, the Center has been operating a 3-year diploma level music training program since 2013. On the other hand, the long-persisting challenge related to the exclusion of the visually impaired from mainstream music education and training programs needed to be addressed as well. But it was found necessary to adopt an innovative approach to promote the issue, based on the lessons learned from previous strategies followed by other actors.

Selam proposed a policy lobby component to the Inner Vision project, to be undertaken in partnership with Network of Organizations of/for the Visually Impaired and the Blind (NOVIB), which is an umbrella organ with which Wusate Brhan is affiliated as a founding and regular member. Through joihnt consultations, consensus was reached by Selam and NOVIB to undertake research on the situation of local visually impaired persons in respect to their opportunities and challenges in music education and career. Accordingly, the research endeavor was embarked on in line with the project document and terms of reference, which state its purpose and envisaged results.

The ultimate objective of the research is to contribute to the success of the overall effort aimed at achieving the inclusion of persons with visual impairment in mainstream music education, training and employment programs at policy and institutional levels. Towards the attainment of this goal, the research was also conducted with an aim to achieve the following specific and intermediate objectives:

  • Investigate the role and contributions of visually impaired Ethiopian musicians as singers, instrumentalists or in related talents;
  • Examine the challenges and opportunities the visually impaired in Ethiopia have had over the decades in connection with access to career development and the employment market in the music field;
  • Gain an in-depth understanding of the underlying factors that influenced the measures/decisions taken to prevent the visually impaired access to music education;
  • Shed light on the response of the organizations or individual activists/advocates of the visually impaired to the denial of training access;
  • Benchmark the situation before the research and lobby intervention for objective assessment of the achievements made by the project;
  • Advise and inform relevant actors concerning policy directions and reforms required to institutionalize inclusive music education programs.

Fundamentally, the baseline survey is qualitative research carried out by adopting a mix of primary data gathering methods, which included key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The study sample populations were selected using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Desk review was conducted to consult relevant international and domestic literature, and corroborate the primary data with information from secondary sources. In the interest of further enrichment, the draft survey report was presented to stakeholders at a validation workshop, where valuable comments and feedback based on professional opinion, practice and expertise were drawn and incorporated into the final output.

The discussion of findings presents a historical overview of when and how education and training in modern music was introduced to blind people in Ethiopia. This dates all the way back to the early 1950’s, when menonite missionaries opened and began to run a school for the blind with the financial and material support of Emperor Hailesilassie i. At the outset, the school was located in the Cazanchis area of the capital, and was later moved 20 kms south, where it continues to operate to this day known as Sebeta Merehaewran School. Music lessons continued to be given to blind children in this school as a regular subject. In fact, children identified as more gifted and better performing were given more intermediate training at Yared music school. Others received similar training at the then First Hailesilassie, now Ethiopian National Theater. When the school was still located in Cazanchis, a couple of blind students were awarded scholarship by the Emperor for music training in Italy.

With this background, blind people began to perform music as school clubs, church choirs, and later as music bands. In this process, some managed to become well-known singers and instrumentalists, not to speak of others who made significant contributions as arrangers or song writers. Nonetheless, with changes in political system, educational structure and school management came practices that brought challenges in place of the opportunities that had prevailed for the visually impaired in the area of music. Thus, the exclusion of the blind, which was to persist for the following 40 years, was introduced through systematic, if not an open policy or written regulation. Through the review of literature, the study found that there was no scientific ground to justify the denial of access to music education on the basis of visual impairment. The findings also reveal that the principles and practice of inclusive education have introduced pedagogic strategies and methodologies, applicable to teaching the science of music to the visually impaired likewise. In addition, music education and training for the blind can now be effectively administered with the use of assistive technologies developed for this purpose.

In recognition of this universal fact, various UN and other international conventions, many of which have been signed by the Ethiopian Government or even domesticated into the law of the land, prohibit the exclusion of persons with disabilities, including the visually impaired from arts and vocational education on the ground of their impairment. On the whole, the findings furnish overwhelming proof that preventing citizens access to music education and training under the pretext of visual impairment lacks sound basis from the perspectives of universal experience, advances in science and technology, modern pedagogic trends and global and national legal frameworks. These findings, which are open to be further reinforced and substantiated through continuing operational research, give the concerned actors a strong advantage to effectively promote and advocate unrestricted access to career development for people with visual impairment in the music profession. It is therefore to be highly recommended that Selam and NOVIB, among other stakeholders, lobby hard for the necessary policy and curricular amendments toward the realization of a sustainable visual impairment inclusive music and vocational education system.

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