Music at the Margins of Sense
Forthcoming November 11, 2026 - University of Michigan Press - Music & Social Justice series
In Music at the Margins of Sense, Jessica A. Holmes contests prevailing misconceptions associated with deafness and hearing in Western music by turning to the musical experiences of deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing disabled musicians in order to impart a multisensory, multimodal conception of music and musicianship. Through a range of examples drawn from music history, popular music, recent film, and popular science, Holmes reveals that “deafness” is mistakenly understood as a state of total silence and heightened tactile sensation, a stigmatizing trope she calls the “figure of deafness.”
Holmes explores music-making spanning auditory, visual-spatial, vibrotactile, and non-sonorous modalities, including the creative practice of Christine Sun Kim, all-deaf electronic dance music raves, the musical experiences of hearing aid users, and music and musical instruments devised to mitigate tinnitus and hyperacusis. By examining the cultural production of “natural” hearing in the design, branding, and musical programming of digital hearing aids, Holmes offers a reappraisal of hearing that defies naturalized perceptual processes and auditory thresholds, the idealization of sonic fidelity, and biologically driven conceptions of musicality. Music at the Margins of Sense ultimately champions an understanding of musicianship that embraces the lived experience of disability as a vital locus of musical creativity and expertise.
Reviews
“Music at the Margins of Sense deftly puts disability studies, deaf studies, sensory studies, and music studies in conversation to argue for musical ontological and otological pluralism. Rejecting ideal types and tropes around deafness, disability, and silence and simplistic ideas of sensation, Holmes introduces stunning concepts such as "expert listening" and "multisensory interdependence" to explore both how deafness is represented in music and how deaf and hard of hearing musicians make music. Holmes challenges us to expand how we think of musicianship and to consider questions of authority, expertise, and the role of sensory hierarchies. Ultimately, Holmes pushes us to expand our musicological (and beyond) sense of what deafness is, of what hearing is, and of what music is and can be. This book will be essential reading for disability studies, sensory studies, and music studies. I cannot think of another book that puts music, sensation, and disability in conversation in such a rich and rigorous way.”
- Michele Friedner, University of Chicago
“Jessica Holmes’ beautifully written book, Music at the Margins of Sense, centers experiences of music that are typically ignored and relegated to the margins. Holmes’ crucial and timely addition to the musicological literature celebrates a variety of sensory experiences and perspectives, bringing together literature from a variety of fields to showcase the underrepresented viewpoints of disabled knowers.”
- Anabel Maler, University of British Columbia
“Elegantly written and original in its thinking, Music at the Margins of Sense extends musical discourse on deafness in a number of exciting directions that will ultimately instigate new research and further the conversation. Holmes’ compelling framework of ‘expert listening’ subverts conventional institutional understandings of expertise to highlight disabled and deaf epistemologies. Music at the Margins of Sense will become crucial reading for students and scholars of sound, musicology, and ethnomusicology.”
- Katherine Meizel, Bowling Green State University
This exceptional work examines the concepts of musicianship and hearing as they relate to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, experience auditory issues (e.g., tinnitus and hyperacusis), or use hearing aids. Holmes challenges beliefs about musicality among people with impaired hearing and about deafness—and silence itself—as signifying the total absence of sound. She shares examples of auralities (rhythmic, tactile, visual, motion-driven, vibrational, multisensory) that exist outside traditionally defined sound and considers how each is used to express musicality. She skillfully cites composers, researchers, and case studies while delving into the innovative, multidisciplinary compositions of Christine Sun Kim and the experiences of deaf performers such as Lotte Romer and Evelyn Glennie—all of which reveal the vast array of music-making and music-listening pathways available. Holmes further analyzes the nature of specialized instruments and auditory devices, offers observations on the politics of sound, hearing, and music within cultural and social frameworks, and confronts stereotypical assumptions about deafness and hearing challenges. VERDICT: Scholarly in tone, this is a well-researched and perceptive book with incisive and thoughtful commentary. Holmes highlights a subject that is in need of further consideration and study.
- Carol Binkowski, Library Journal
Where to Buy
The Musical Vernacular of Depression
In progress and under contract with the University of Michigan Press, my second book, The Musical Vernacular of Depression, examines the aestheticization of mental health in contemporary Anglo-American pop music relative to the prevalence of clinical depression in young people and its associated social inequalities, and the widespread cultural destigmatization of mental health, particularly among Gen Z. I approach the semantic practices, music and visual conventions, and participatory cultures that form around mental health in pop music as a dynamic aesthetic category that I call, the musical vernacular of depression. I argue that the musical vernacular of depression blurs a clinical definition of depression as a common and serious mood disorder (DSM-5; ICD-11) with a generational sensibility that is unbounded by diagnosis and pathology, bridging work in disability studies, mad studies, affect theory, the psy-disciplines, and critical public health studies in the process.
Serving as a springboard for this book project is my 2023 article in the Journal of American Musicological Society, “Billie Eilish and the Feminist Aesthetics of Depression.”
The research for this book was supported through a 4EU+ Visiting Professorship at Sorbonne University’s Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health (iPLesp) in the Spring of 2025, which culminated in an international conference on “Depression in Popular Music” in June 2025, and a forthcoming special issue for the Journal of Popular Music Studies Vol. 49, no. 3, co-edited with Dan Di Piero.
Status: First two chapters completed.
