A very Heavy Load

I heard from a friend of mine this week who I knew and worked with, back when I lived in Brighton. We had lost touch when I moved to Spain. Amongst other things his band, Heavy Load, have just released their first album called The Queen Mothers Dead Things are looking up for them; they have more and more gigs, had a film crew following them around for the last 18 months or so making a documentary and Mat Fraser, actor, musician and militant human rights campaigner liked them and thought they kicked ass.

I said yeah, I would love a copy. I wished him and the guys well for the future. You see my mate Simon and his band have had more than the usual hard slog for a rock and roll band trying to make it. Heavy Load have had another big barrier erected right in front of them.

Simon is disabled and so are his drummer and guitarist.

As you may be aware, under something called The Social Model of Disability (coined by disabled academic Paul Foot in the swinging sixties, refined and developed by the disabled ever since) the person with the disability is not the actual problem. The degree of discrimination and prejudice faced and experienced by a disabled person has been intense, harrowing and, since The Disability Discrimination Act (UK), is now illegal. Not that this will automatically change the prejudiced world, but it mirrors the fight against oppression characterised by other discriminated groups of people. Women, gay men, people from a non-white cultural background, gay women, to name a few, have all fought the battle for change and an end to discriminatory practices within society. Some things can and do change.
Heavy Load have carried around a lot of disabling experiences and are now acting them out on in their music and on stage, asserting that barriers must be broken down and basic human rights fought for.

Historically, there have been some different ways of analysing and characterising disabled people. The medicalisation of the disabled person, the theory that medical expertise can seek to `cure` the poor wretch of their illness, put heavy focus on defining the disabled by their medical condition. They became their disability and had to deal with the consequent shit that went with absolute zero tolerance institutionalisation and internalising that they were invalid. It seeped snake like into our language and culture.

Wars, the Industrial Revolution, new illnesses and old age mean we will all be disabled unless things change.

The rise of the `Charidee` business to meteoric proportions garnered wholesale commiseration, but it was bitter sweet clemency and a sense of pity for that poor disabled wretch, in the eyes of the average citizen, funded this social enterprise. It offered guilt-salve in the shape of collection can-shaking. Hearing those coins drop to the bottom of the can just put off that gnawing nagging sense of unease and fear until the Charidee came into your high street again. Charidee`s were usually run by white middle and upper class do-gooders who dispensed their aid in ways that they thought best. It was rare that the receiver was asked what they needed.

When the Government realised that they ought to provide some basic support for the disabled they did it in a way that retained power in the hands of the providers. Financial provision was propped up by the Charity machine and was complex to apply for. The language and rhetoric was discriminatory and you were tested and awarded benefits on the basis of your inabilities.

In fact the Disability Rights, movement which of course includes Disability Arts, has seeked to affirm the Social Model’s main thrust at every opportunity. The Social Model put the problem at the door of society. It was society who had erected social, financial, psychological and disempowering barriers that actually were doing the disabling. Piss poor media images didn’t help either.

To put it simply, society disables.
There is an awful lot of undoing culturally and psychologically to be done in the light of this simple, yet powerful statement.

So, when I heard that the `Load had an album out I was heartened and personally very happy for the guys. Not in a triumph over tragedy way, but in their act of fornicating defiance.

What was the point of this……………………? Oh, yeah, it’s like the Social Model says, simple yet powerful. Heavy Load are helping to break down those disabling barriers by their music and their art challenging discriminatory preconceptions and prejudice.

That’s a very Heavy Load.

 http://www.heavyload.org/