February is the low vision awareness month.
We wrote about this in this article.
This year we want to celebrate this month dedicated to low vision awareness with music.
On our Instagram profile we will publish a photo of a visually impaired or blind musician every day and we will share a song by the musician on our Stories.
We started with Yellowman, an albino Jamaican reggae singer.
Albinism in Jamaica is considered one of the most discriminated diseases, but he has managed to become one of the country’s greatest artists and establish himself on the international music scene.
This is what we like, what belongs to us.
Music is often used to convey a message, but singing or playing is also a way to affirm one’s need for revenge and redemption.
Minorities and all those who feel discriminated find in music a vehicle to reach the people and share their message.
He would really be the ideal frontman for us.
He has a name that is in line with our #YellowTheWorld awareness campaign, he is albino and therefore visually impaired and makes great music.
Another great African albino singer we will tell about is Salif Keita.
He didn’t even have to be a singer because of his imperial ancestry and because of his albinism that’s a sign of bad luck in the Mandinka culture.
One of his best songs is Moussolou, a tribute to women.
The stories that follow will be those of women.
Diane Schuur, Maria Theresia von Paradis, Kim Wickes and Terri Gibbs
Diane is known for playing with B.B. King and twelve of her albums reached Billboard’s ” Top 10 Jazz Album ”,
Maria Theresia was an Austrian pianist, composer and musician who lost her sight at an early age and for whom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have written his Piano Concerto No. 18 in B flat major.
Kim from South Korea was blinded by a bomb
Terri has amassed five entries on the Top Country Album (including a top ten) and thirteen on the Hot Country Songs. As part of the Country Music Association Awards she was the first winner of the Horizon Award and she also received two Grammy Award nominations, one in 1981 and one in 1987.
Let’s go back to Mali with Amadou & Mariam, a duo known as the blind couple from Mali. They trained at the Institute for Blind Youth in Mali, where Bagayoko and Doumbia met and shared a passion for music. The couple’s musical style is based on contaminations between traditional Malian music and rock guitars, Syrian violins, Cuban trumpets and other traditional instruments from Egypt, Colombia, India and other countries. The genre is often referred to as African blues.
It is easy to imagine that our series of audio and textual story on Instagram as this blogpost should also include excellent names such as Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and the Italian Andrea Bocelli.
But we would like to give space to the lesser known singers. We’ll see how the different days of the month inspire us.
A month between winter and spring. It tends towards the light while remaining enveloped in greyness. That is why the photos will be in shades of gray.
Portraits of musicians on the Instagram profile of an association that deals with low vision and blindness. A visual choice in a social network that is thought to be made only for images and therefore for the sighted.
We want to somehow keep up with the communication of these times, making it usable even by those who see little, badly or not at all.
With music.
Because the music is not seen. Music comes to us through other senses.
Music, perhaps more generally sound, is the highest competitor of visual beauty.
And if the essential is invisible to the eye, then is music essential?
Or is music like love? Essential but invisible?
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