Meet Music Mark’s newest Champion: Kris Halpin

We are thrilled for Kris Halpin to join Faz Shah and Dr Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason as our newest Music Mark Champion! Kris tells us more about his journey as a Disabled musician and the importance of inclusion and accessibility in music education.

I’m Kris Halpin; a singer/songwriter and music maker. I also happen to be a Disabled person. Most people know of me through my work using MiMu Gloves – wearable technology that I repurposed to overcome my own barriers to traditional instruments. My music has taken me all over the world, performing on some of the world’s most prestigious stages, and collaborating with some truly incredible and humbling musicians. It’s a sweet gig. I’ve done very well, and I’m trying to cash the cheque and use that success to change the story for other Disabled musicians.

After many years of collaboration with Music Mark, I’m very excited to work with the team as a Music Mark Champion. I’m here because I know that Bridget and the team truly care about Disabled voices in music, and I’ll do what I can in this role to amplify many more of those voices than just my own.

Music education was complicated for me. I was very much labelled as a gifted child in music, but there were many ableist constructs to navigate. If you’ve seen my keynotes, you’ll know this story. I was excluded from keyboard lessons because of my hand impairment; very gently, but excluded nonetheless. The message was clear: if my hands meant I couldn’t play the repertoire as intended, the piano wasn’t for me. That was a jarring message from the peripatetic piano teacher, whilst my school music teacher also went the extra mile to support my ambitions as a composer.

The school itself posed many physical barriers; music was the only subject I cared about – and by coincidence – the only one taught on the ground floor, so the only one I could access during the critical GCSE period, as my mobility worsened. The odds were firmly stacked against me in many ways.

It’s a lot to reflect on; I’ve got an amazing career in music, but I’ll always have a sense that I was lucky; that I “squeezed through” the barriers to music education. I can’t be that unique; there will be many promising young Disabled musicians who don’t get the chance to navigate the barriers I did.

I don’t love the “overcoming adversity” inspirational narratives, because it oversimplifies the human experience. I do see how these barriers inform my work now in supporting a new generation of young disabled musicians; I have that strangely coveted lived experience that the sector is beginning to learn from. Dismantling neurotypical and non-disabled ideas of what music is is complex work that challenges centuries of pedagogy, but it’s necessary and exciting. Music can be as unique as the person making it, and supporting expression without having to meet ideas of what is “proper” is the basis of an inclusive future.

Sometimes I feel like a caveman, scrawling on a wall. The idea of inclusion in music is so new, so in its infancy; many people I meet have never even considered the idea of Disabled people in music.

A common thing I heard in my early days of touring was an excited “I’ve never seen a Disabled person on stage before!” – that narrative kept me busy, but systemically it was grimly problematic. I’ve been working at this high level for close to a decade now, and change is happening.

I’m not the standout case anymore; brilliant Disabled musicians are having their moments across the sector. In 2024 Able Orchestra (AO) – Inspire Youth Arts all-Disabled ensemble – performed at Music Mark to showering praise. Produced in partnership with Dyskinetic, the part-band, part-inclusion strategy I run with my wife Nicci, AO is fundamentally challenging not only what people with complex disabilities can do musically, but what that music is. AO challenges perceptions of even how Disabled-lead music sounds; cutesy, infantilising sounds are out – this is inclusion with teeth, and it’s long overdue.

I hope in generations to come, people will look back at what I do in inclusion and be bemused as it even needed to exist. Music is for everyone, and hopefully we’re close to a future where that is obvious to everyone.

To stay up to date, please find me/Dyskinetic on Instagram @dyskinetic