A Lost Culture of Touch and Sound: The Contribution of Visually Impaired Musicians to the Evolution of the Spanish Guitar

In the story of music-making, blind musicians have played an intrinsic role, helping to drive the development not only of musical styles but also of instruments, instruction, and aesthetics. Many musical practices were cultivated first within blind communities and adopted only later by sighted musicians, often with a gradual erasure of their original context. The history of the Spanish guitar offers a compelling case study of this progression, demonstrating how the contribution of blind musicians could be both wide-reaching and yet, over time, forgotten. The history of this contribution is challenging to recover, for in Spain as elsewhere, blind musicians left almost no direct historical evidence of their activities; and yet, once reconstructed, it offers a vital new perspective, one that challenges standard approaches to guitar historiography, with its traditional emphasis on repertoire and celebrated individuals.

Rather than belonging to the margins of guitar history, the work of blind Spanish guitarists has direct implications for its central narrative. It is essential for understanding the emergence of the Spanish classical guitar in the 19th century and for situating pivotal figures—such as Francisco Tárrega, Antonio de Torres, and even Andrés Segovia and Agustín Barrios—within a broader cultural context in which blind musicians played a vital role. Furthermore, this perspective may offer valuable insights into the study of Spanish musical pedagogy and aesthetics, particularly the concept of duende—as well as into the organological development of the guitar.

Response to the Article:

Every so often a historical essay revises an entire field because it identifies lost voices in its subject and restores them to their proper place. Into this rare but vitally important category falls Marco Ramelli’s tremendous study of the contribution of ‘blind’ guitarists to the evolution of the Spanish guitar tradition. No future scholar of the subject will fail to take into account just how essential the practice of visually impaired guitar players was (and is) to this tradition. Marco Ramelli’s detailed historical research is entirely persuasive of his central point: that we have until now overlooked the centuries-long association in Spain between blind guitarists and innovation in the art of playing the instrument.

Dr Conor Kostick, Department of History, Trinity College Dublin

Reading Marco Ramelli’s article “A lost culture of touch and sound” was a revelation. It combines several different research directions and sociological phenomena in an inspiring and novel way. It is beautifully written and a truly valuable contribution to the entire guitar community, as it presents a broader and more comprehensive view of the development of the guitar, its structure, repertoire, performance practices, and its entire journey from the streets of Spain to concert halls around the world.

Petri Kumela, Sibelius Academy in Helsinki