Talk:Blind musicians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Things to do on the article which I may or may not get to:

More extensive discussion of resources for blind musicians.

More exhaustive list of important blind musical traditions. I know that blind musicians are common in many African countries (Cape Verde, for example) but I haven't been able to find enough specifics about any of them to make a discussion worthwhile. I've also been told that some Native American nations had traditions of blind musicians, but I haven't been able to find any info on that. NoahB 14:00, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Ukraine section 2 1939 massacre 2.1 Another respected source 3 Editing Unicode 4 Kobzar vs. Bandurist 5 Kevin Tan Weilian section 6 Famous Blind Singer - Musician from Singapore 7 Phone phreak ref 8 Blind piano tuners in popular culture

[edit] Ukraine section

Most of the information in the Ukraine section is from Natalie Kononenko's book, mentioned in the article. I've given a link to the book itself on amazon, and a link to Ms. Kononenko's home page. Not sure what else to do; the book content itself is not online, obviously, but it seems readily available from libraries, at least.

[edit] 1939 massacre

I posted this on User Talk:Mzajac, but figured it should probably go here as well, in case anyone else happens to be paying attention:

Hi. Thanks for working on the blind musicians article. I just wanted to check to see where you got the 1933 date for the Stalin massacre. The book I have by Natalie Kononenko lists 1939 as the date in several places; and from the way it's integrated into her discussion, I don't think it's a typo. Since hers seems to be the authoritative text, I kind of doubt that she would have gotten such an important point wrong, though anything's possible, I guess.... Anyway, it would be easier to evaluate if we knew the source for your info. Thanks again! NoahB 17:50, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I double-checked my source, and it doesn't give a specific date. I've changed the date back to 1939 here and in kobzar. —Michael Z. 2005-06-22 19:43 Z

I don't want to cast my uneducated doubt on this event since I am sure Michael used a respectable source. I just want to look it up myself because this seems like a grand-scale crime too cynical even for that time, to order all blind musicians to come some place to have them shot. Could we add a reference to the article about this? Thanks. -Irpen 07:35, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

In Subtelny's Ukraine: A History, p. 419. Subtelny is writing about the Ukrainian communists' fall from Stalin's graces, and Postyshev's attack on Ukrainization starting in 1933; specifically the arrests, executions, and disappearances of cultural activists: "Several hundred kobzari (wandering bards) were invited to a congress, arrested, and reportedly shot." —Michael Z. 2005-06-24 09:03 Z

Yeah, it seems to be pretty clear that it actually happened. I was shocked too; even when you know that Stalin murdered millions of people, something like this is hard to credit. But it's in multiple sources. Natalie Kononenko (whose book I cite in the article), says this on page 4: "Stalinist intervention ended traditional minstrelsy. From what we know, Stalin liquidated the majority of Ukrainian minstrels by summoning them to a conference in Kharkiv in 1939 and having them shot."

Hmm, now that I read that I realize that it doesn't say "all" but "most" (I guess Stalin must have missed some.) I better check the article and correct it if need be..... NoahB 15:07, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And don't know that this matters, but...there's a link to Kononenko's book and to her home page in the article, if you want to check out her credentials. As I note above, the book seems to be readily available from University libraries; it won an award and is generally well-respected in the field, from what I can tell.NoahB 15:26, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Guys, with all respect to the authors of the books cited, it still seems bizarre as it currently stands in the article: "... Stalin summoned most of the Ukrainian minstrels to a conference in Kharkiv, and had them shot". I don't need to be convinced that there was nothing too evil for Stalin, but if this happened exactly as article puts it, it stands out not only as a terrific cruelty but as something to which there was nothing or almost nothing similar that I heard of. I mean, he had tens of millions killed, true enough. But there was still some kind of "procedure", however far from any resemblance to a true rule of law. Usually, there was still some kind of kangaroo court, called NKVD troika, which, without any real trial, without any lawyers and without even the presence of an accused, signed off the conviction and handed a sentence, usually 10 years in Gulag. Most people after these "trials" where not "shot" but sent to GULAG where most died. Some were sentenced to death and executed. But "summoned to a conference and shot" resembles rather the events of several hundreds years ago, when some prince (knyaz) invited his enemy knyaz and his troops (druzhina) for negotiation to the castle and had them all killed in the closed space by the bow men hidden above.

I can kind of see, that in Stalin's perverse logic he could decide that it is pointless to send blind people to Gulag, but it is still hard for me to imagine how this all was done. I am aware of one comparable crime by Stalinism (Katyn Massacre) but a mass murder of blind musicians would stand out even compared to Katyn Massacre and I would expect to be widely discussed in the post-Glasnost media. The last thing I want is to sound like a devil's advocate (or Stalin's for that matter). I simply think that if this place in the article looks strange to me now, it is likely to look strange to others too. Article is factually correct. It doesn't say "they were shot" but says, "...according to Kononenko...". But still, I think we should research for more info and add more details to this. I certainly won't delete this passage, I just want to call your attention to this, since I don't have either of these books to do the work myself. -Irpen 02:07, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Well, the Subtelny quote falls in the middle of a two-page litany of individual and mass disappearances, executions, arrests, and deportations in Ukraine, many of which would be shocking and bizarre by their nature or scope on their own, so it doesn't seem out-of-context.

The highlights: "according to some estimates" 200 of 240 authors disappeared, 62 of 85 linguists liquidated, "the commissariats of education, agriculture, justice, the Agricultural Academy, the editorial boards of newspapers, literary journals, encyclopedias, and film studios were denounced as 'nests of nationalist counterrevolutionaries' and purged." Postyshev is quoted "...we cleaned out 2000 men of the nationalist element, about 300 of them scholars and writers, from the People's Commissariat of Education alone." In 1933-34 the CPU lost about 100,000 members, including over 15,000 people holding responsible positions. Postyshev: "almost all the people removed were arrested and put before the firing squad or exiled." This is all concerning the purge of opponents of collectivization and Ukrainianizers, and the destruction of Ukrainian cultural institutions, of 1933-34 (apparently the 1937-38 Great Purge was wider and larger).

Both authors seem to be working from limited documentation ("from what we know", "reportedly shot"), but from the context the event seems possible to me. If you're worried about the specific details, we could write "Years of persecution culminated in 1939, most of the Ukrainian minstrels were summoned by Stalin to a conference in Kharkiv and disappeared, reportedly shot." But even if the Soviet state had burdened itself with their deportation, I suspect that it would have been as good as a death sentence to several hundred blind men. —Michael Z. 2005-06-25 13:37 Z

I'm certainly not an expert on Stalinist Russia. However, we've got two authoritative sources saying that this happened. I'm not inclined to look further myself; it seems like the burden for research is on those who want to disprove what appears to be the current state of historical knowledge. Still, if you want to do some checking, I can give you the reference Kononenko uses for the massacre. She cites: Vil'am Noll, "Paralel'na kul'tura v Ukraiini u period Stalinizmu" Rodovid, 1993, no. 6, pp. 37-38.

Incidentally, the massacre seems to be pretty well known in the Ukrainian community, if not in Russia. I've seen a few references on the Internet to killings of blind musicians. A quick google search finds [1] [2] [3] and at least a couple thousand more hits. Perhaps its one of those things that even post-Glasnost Russia prefers not to think about too much. Certainly there are many examples of selective historical memory in the U.S. (the Phillippines War, for example) and I'm sure in other countries as well. NoahB 13:50, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I found the Noll (Knoll?) reference at #37 on this page: http://www.rodovid.net/u_page_jor5.html.

Hmm. Though on closer inspection, I see that most of the sources above cite an anecdote by Shostakovich. It might be worth checking out the Vil'am Noll (it is Noll, incidentally) article to see if that's where he (or she) gets her (his) info as well. I suspect not (Shostakovich places the massacre in the mid-30s, not 1939) but it'd be worth looking. I can't do it myself, though; I'm an English monoglot..... NoahB 14:07, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I keep getting edit conflicts as I update my comments after you've replied. I found that William Noll holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington and has conducted research among village musicians in Poland, Ukraine and Moldova, and currently works for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the University of Kiev. —Michael Z. 2005-06-25 14:11 Z

[edit] Another respected source

As for "the burden for research is on those who want to disprove what appears to be the current state of historical knowledge", as I said earlier I don't want to disprove anything. There is enough evidence to have the fact mentioned in the article. I only called for modification of how this was presented because the evidence is fragmentary, contradictory, partly anecdotal and versions differ. Besides, "assembled and shot" stands out even knowing what other things were happening during Stalin's purges.

I found another source which I would like to present here. It is an article[4] in a very respected Ukrainian Weekly "Zerkalo Nedeli" ("Mirror Weekly"). The article is in Russian. In this article Mikhail Khay (Михаил ХАЙ), a very respected Ukrainian ethnographer and musicologist, is being interviewed about this very subject, Kobzars and Lirnyky. I will roughly translate below a short piece to your attention. I did it hastily, but you can get the meaning. I will try to set aside some time to do more writing for this WP article based on this interview. In the meanwhile, please feel free to use now what I translated below (or an entire article if you can read Russian). The article has more useful material on the subject

"Q: No occupational power was ever nice to Kobzars...

A: The problem has always been there. Starting from XIII century the authorities have been always trying to tame, "organize", collectivize, or convert them into court clowns. Those who could not be tamed were to be destroyed. There are many examples. Empress Elizabeth and kobzar Lyubystok - Kirill Rozumovsky . The empress fell in love to him (from Irpen: probably Khay errs, Aleksey Grigorievich Razumovsky, the brother of Kirill Grigorievich Razumovsky, was the lover of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna). He ran away from court thrice but each time he was caught and returned. Finally he got tempted by these scraps and ended up becoming a great diplomat. The tsar gave a silver snuffbox to kobzar Veresay for which Veresay was excluded from Kobzar's community. Not for accepting the gift, but because he was boasting about it publicly.

Generally, there were strict rules that actually helped preserve the tradition. "Don't remove the word from the song and don't add anything on your own". On the other hand, there was a tradition of improvising but this was only allowed for those, who didn't allow themselves any extravagances.

Interestingly, there were no Kobzars in Halicia. Why? It's simple. Kobzar was associated with Cossacks' spy. There were lirnyks. Those were identified as "ours", beggars. But Kobzar is a political figure. Poland suppressed bandurysts fiercely (article says "burned" them, perhaps, a figure of speech. -Irpen). There were very few even in Chernigovshchyna and Kievshchyna. As for the Left-bank Ukraine, that's the place of Kobzarstvo's blooming. Although, the tsarism tried to suffocate it as it could.

Q. Is the tradition of Kobzarstvo's destruction a Bolshevik one?

A Bolsheviks brought it to the end. The last lirnyk, Vlasyuk, was walking Volhynia until mid-80s, lirnyks walked Bukovina in 60s and 70s. But kobzars were destroyed much earlier, in mid-30s. No one knows for sure either the year or the place of this ill-fated kobzar congress. Three versions exist: 1934, 1935, 1937. Some say it took place in Kharkov, others name the Moscow region (article says "Podmoskov'ye" -Irpen), and the others even speak about Vorkuta road. They were thrown to the ditch and poured over with water (another version to Kononenko's "shot" -Irpen) where they froze to death blind and helpless. There is a version that some got out but that's all on the level of speculations. However on the other hand, there are no documents about this action (mass execution -Irpen), and there is a version that it didn't happen at all. But how come that many hundreds of Kobzars disappeared within several years is still unknown.

We can now tell for sure, that the Kobzarstvo, as a phenomenon does not exist. It disappeared in end-thirties."...

The article goes further, explaining the current situation, the attempts of Khay to restore at least an artistic tradition, etc. I hope others find this info useful. -Irpen 21:38, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's very interesting. When was this article from, do you know? Particularly I'm interested in whether it was published before or after the 1993 Noll article I mentioned earlier. Again, it would be great if someone could check and see exactly what Noll said about this issue. Kononenko seems much more certain than your source, and lists a later date. There could be lots of reasons for that, but checking the reference would narrow them down somewhat.

And, Irpen, sorry if I sounded slightly hostile in the earlier post. I didn't intend to; I appreciate your interest in the article.

Oh, and I think you might be the best person to do the rewrite you suggested, since you have the source and can read it, whereas I'd just be working off of your translation. NoahB 00:36, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The article is for the week of Sept. 14-20, 2002. As for the conflicting accounts, perhaps that's all we got on this: conflicting accounts. All I can say, is that if the Mirror Weekly published such an extensive interview with this guy, he must be respected in the field, it is a very solid Ukrainian newspaper, one of the most reputable I would say. I will try to do the rewrite some time, but if anyone would do that sooner, that would be great. Thanks to all for bringing this worthy topic into the Wikipedia! -Irpen 01:58, Jun 27, 2005 (UTC)

I emailed Natalie Kononenko, and she agreed that the mass slaughter of kobzars was badly documented, and perhaps even semi-mythical. She said no one had really gone into the archives yet and done the research to prove or disprove it. I'm going to rewrite the article to reflect that. I'll also note some of the info from the Mikhail Khay translation, though I'm leery about using a lot of it, partly because I think a great deal of what he says is disputed. For instance, he draws a firm line between lirnyks and kobzars; Kononenko argues (pretty convincingly, I think) that by the mid-1800s both had similar repertoires and belonged to the same guilds -- then why would Stalin single out one group for elimination but not the other? (Unless he really disliked lutes but was fond of hurdy-gurdies....) Similarly, I'm not sure what the Veresay example is supposed to prove (it may be a translation problem), but it seems to be arguing that Veresay was excluded for one particular incident, whereas Kononenko explains that he was just difficult to get along with. So I'll try to avoid these issues in the rewrite. NoahB 29 June 2005 18:04 (UTC)

Somehow I missed that Mirror had that article duplicated in Ukranian. I am glad Michael caught this. Unfortunately, online English version of that week's Mirror doesn't have this article (usually the EL version only includes Politics sections). BTW, I think the paper calls itself "Mirror Weekly" in English. Currently, the article says "Zerkalo Nedeli", but that's not the most important thing for now.

This section of the article should perhaps be transformed into a separate article with a summary going here. We have enough sources to make a separate article now. What are your thoughts? Also, we will need to clean up the confusion between articles: Bandura, Kobza (are those the same?), Kobzar, Banduryst, Bandurist, Lirnyk and Lira (no musical instrument mentioned in Lira dab and the [[Lira]] links to Italian currency). Perhaps, the musical instruments articles should stay and be improved and musicians articles (Kobzar, Banduryst, Lirnyk) be merged into the new article suggested above. Any name suggestions? Also, info in the current versions of these articles about the suspected massacre should be modified since there is no consensus.

The changes I just did to this article are minor and I do realize that it is going to be a huge work ahead. Several times I failed on my promises to do smth later, so I won't give any now. But thanks to all. The topic is both tragic and fascinating. Regards, -Irpen June 30, 2005 01:20 (UTC)

I actually think what we have here is a good summary and doesn't need to be reduced; there's lots more info on this topic that could go into an actual article on the subject, I think -- Kononenko has a whole book on it, after all (though what we have here could start as a good basis). Bandura and Kobza are the same thing, as are bandurists and kobzar; I don't actually know which is preferred, if either, or why. Lirnyk are different; the Lira is a kind of hurdy-gurdy -- the link does have to be fixed, though I'm not sure how to do that. So, ideally there should be two instrument articles (one for kobzar/bandura, one for lira) and two musician articles (one for bandurists/kobzar, one for lirnyk.) I'm probably not going to do this, though; just don't have time and it's not necessarily a main area of interest for me anyway. But I would suggest if your interested that you might get Kononenko's book, which talks at length about the differences between lirnyk and kobzar, their history, their guilds, and so forth. NoahB 30 June 2005 10:59 (UTC)

My feeling (already expressed at a different talk page) is, that Banduryst and Kobzar are not one an the same while Bandura and Kobza may be the same. I would suggest that Banduryst and Bandurist articles should just say:

"A musician playing Bandura, a string instrument with..."

Kobzar, on the other hand, is also an epic/ethnographic character, a blind wondering musician, perhaps a former warrior (but maybe not), singing dumas, bylinas, etc. In other words a separate phenomenon, not just a musician. Khay in his interview mentions: "Georgiy Tkachenko...(a master of bandura playing) was not a Kobzar, because he was sighted". This is just Khay's opinion of terminology, but there must be some sense in this view. If I am right, we should make a Kobzar article as such. Shevchenko, who called his collection of poems this way, is also often referred to as "Great Kobzar", so the word is more general: Kobzar often means simply a bearer of Ukrainian spirit (this is a hyperbole of course), so the Kobzar article would have to describe this meaning.

A separate issue is creating an article Lira (instrument) or smth like this. Yet a separate issue is modifying the current Lirnyk and Kobzar articles, which now speak affirmatively of the massacre, while we found out here that no one really knows what happened. I will try to do this, unless someone else does this sooner. Regards, -Irpen June 30, 2005 19:43 (UTC)

It is worth considering the history of this information. The first written account of the murder of Ukrainian kobzars was published in Solomon Volkov's book Testimony: The memoirs of Shostakovich which was published in 1978 in New York. Another book which mentions the murder of the kobzars is Leonid Plyushch's book History's Carnival also published in 1978.

The Volkov book is thought to have been a forgery. Plushch is the one that gives 1937 as a date. The information was ceased by Father Kindzeriavyj-Pastukhiv the then artistic direcor of the New York School of Bandura and a number of articles were published with "additional information" such as the drowning of the kobzars in the Volga etc and Moscow. Other articles appeared in c. 1982-83 in Bandura magazine and a host of Ukrainian and Jewish magazines- many copying from one another and not giving their sources with additional material.

When questioning bandurists in Ukraine and those that had emigrated to the West from Ukraine during WWII none had known anything about this event. Even Leonid Haydamaka - a student of Hnat Khotkevych who studied bandura at the Kharkiv conservatory from 1926-28 and later taught there and had numerous publications on the bandura and bandura art stated to me orally and in letter and in taped interviews that he knew nothing of the event. He lived in New York after the war.

So what did happen? A conference was planned by the members of the Kyiv Bandurist Capella for 1928 but it did not happen. A ethnographic conference took place in Kyiv in 1939 with very few kobzar in attendance - but they did not execute the participants. In 1934 the administrative capital of Ukraine moved from Kharkiv to Kyiv. Mrs Haydamaka worked in M. Skrypnyk's cabinet as a secretary for legal papers. She was offered to move to Kyiv. Her husband was a successful director of the first orchestra of Ukrainian folk instruments. He declined to move. She stayed in Kharkiv but most of her friends moved. When she traveled to Kyiv to visit her friends the doors of their apartments were sealed and the windows of the apartments were newspapered up. These government workers had disappeared - presumed arrested and possibly ......

Both of the professional Kyiv and the Poltava bandurist Capellas received their last pay in January 1934. By October 1934 all of the groups had ceased to exist. Many of the members had been arrested. However in 1935, what was left was rounded up and combined into a new group. It is thought that if such an event took place and if it took place around Kharkiv - it would have taken place when Kharkiv was the capital and before the move to Kyiv. Documents would have disappeared in the move, or destroyed during the war. A guestimation is Winter of 1933-34.

We have documents that attest to the arrest of hundreds of arrests of bandurists and some kobzars of that period (1933-34). Kost Cheremsky has documented how various laws were introduced to constrict the manner in which kobzars were allowed to function ie passport system which restricted movement, licences for the manufacture of instrument makers and instruments, licences for hotels and places to spend the night for itinerant musicians, granting of pensions to blind musicians, restricting begging and street activities especially within the cities.

We do have documents attesting to the sentencing and shooting of bandurist Hnat Khotkevych (1938) and also the blind kobzar Ivan Kucherenko (1938). Previously the soviets had told the Khotkevych family that he was sent to Siberia and died there in 1943. In Kucherenko's case it was stated that the Germans had shot him during the German occupation of Kharkiv. The place were the bodies are were buried was on the outskirts of Kharkiv in an area known as Piatykhatok on the territory of the former NKVD holiday hotel.

Some kids had been digging in the corner of the park and had uncovered some Polish officers buttons. pretty soon every kid was digging for treasures and buttons. It was brought to the attention of the authorities and they found a mass grave of Polish officers who had been shot in the back of their heads with soviet bullets. There were also the bodies of all the victims arrested and shot in Kharkiv in a huge mass grave. currently the Poles have put up a huge monument to each of the officers and also funded the erection of a huge steel wall with the name of all those who were shot and whose bodies lie in the site. The steel rusts so it is constantly "bleeding". Bandurist 23:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Editing Unicode

Hi Noah. Your edit yesterday evening broke some raw Unicode Cyrillic characters, so I've changed them back to entities.

Which web browser and platform are you using (e.g., "Internet Explorer 5 on Macintosh")? This technical issue is being discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Use of unicode within articles, and I'd like to help identify the potential problems before too many people type raw Unicode into Wikipedia articles. —Michael Z. 2005-06-30 18:25 Z

Yeah, I'm using Internet Explorer 5 on Macintosh. Thanks for fixing the mess. NoahB 30 June 2005 18:43 (UTC)

No trouble. I guess you're on Mac OS 9. Not many alternative browsers available. A friend of mine uses an old version of Mozilla (1.2.1, if memory serves), but I find that browser to be quite clunky compared to Mac MSIE. —Michael Z. 2005-06-30 18:55 Z

[edit] Kobzar vs. Bandurist

Thought the other heading was getting a bit unwieldy....

Irpen, I get what you're saying, but from what I've read I'm not convinced that this is the case. it seems likely to me that the difference is just one of timing -- kobzar seems like it is the older term. I don't know enough about this to state it definitely, however. NoahB 1 July 2005 17:31 (UTC)

Basically most kobzars were bandurists, but not all bandurists are kobzars. A kobzar is an individual with a specific training, repertoire and life stule. A Bandurist is anyone that plays the bandura. Bandurist 22:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kevin Tan Weilian section

I have removed the Kevin Tan Weilian section. I don't believe this article is a good place to include extensive biographical information about individual blind performers. There is a link to an individual article about him in the List of Blind Musicians section, and it seems to me that that is sufficient. If there is any information about a distinctive tradition of blind musicians in Singapore, that would be worth including in the article as well.

I have pasted the deleted section below (including the clean-up notice posted by another user.) I thought there might be info which could be added to Kevin Weilian's own article -- though that article looked pretty thorough on a quick scan through. NoahB 17:57, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Famous Blind Singer - Musician from Singapore

Kelvin Tan Weilian, a famous Singaporean blind busker turned musician-singer has swept the Mandarin pop scene with his soulful renditions of both pop and evergreen songs. His songs have touched the hearts of many Singaporeans as well as people across Asia, including Malaysia, Japan and India.

Touted as Asia's Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, this singing sensation has inspired many people with his perseverance and undaunting spirit demonstrated throughout the Project Superstar Contest. Despite his visual handicap, he won the hearts of 64% of the voting public and was crowned the First Project Superstar on 1 Sep 2005. Since then, his fans base is rapidly expanding. People from all walks of life and ages are drawn to him by his affable nature and beautiful voice.

He is talented in many ways. He plays both the piano and the guitar. He is also very versatile and can sing in a variety of languages and dialects. In his latest public performance at the Max Pavilion on 30 Sep 2005, he sang in Mandarin, English, Thai and Hokkien (Chinese dialect) and an unpublished song specially written for him by one of his talented fans, Frankie. His first CD is scheduled to be released in December 2005 by Play Music. In no time, the whole of Asia will be wowed over by this multi-talented singer.

He was one of only two totally-blind competitive bowlers in Singapore and had won a bowling competition organised by the visually handicapped associations in Singapore and in Perth, Australia between 1996 and 1999 before he took to busking to fulfil his childhood dream of becoming a singer. And now, as a recording artiste for Play Music (subsidiary of Music Street).

[[Below are some links that you may want to know and hear about him]]

-->Weilian's Yahoogroups forum (main forum) - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Weilian_Fans for all his fans!

-->MxHub Forum (secondary forum) - http://weilian.mxhub.com/forum

-->Website - http://www.weiliankelvin.com

-->Listen to his performance from PSS online - http://blog.nexgear.com/weilian/radio/

-->More details about him on Wikipedia: [5]

-->

[edit] Phone phreak ref

I removed the reference to the phone phreak with perfect pitch. It's interesting, but it doesn't seem like it belongs here to me. Lots of people, both sighted and blind, have perfect pitch. A scientific study that has determined its more likely among blind people is encyclopedic; a single reference to a single blind person with perfect pitch just doesn't seem to me to add anything to the article. If there's a tradition of blind phone phreaks (as there is of blind piano tuners) that might be worth a reference further down in the article....NoahB 00:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blind piano tuners in popular culture

I'm reminded of Morgan Freeman's character in Unleashed. I wonder if there are any other blind piano tuners in popular culture. -- Sasuke Sarutobi 13:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)