BUENOS AIRES — The crowd at a recent concert erupted in euphoric cheers when the bandleader took the stage and began pounding out the drums, launching his band on an impromptu journey through musical genres that culminated an hour later in a standing ovation.
During his 30-year career, Miguel Tomasín has released more than 100 albums, helped turn his Argentine band into one of the most influential underground groups in South America, and helped hundreds of people with disabilities to express their voices through music.
Tomasín has achieved this in part thanks to a distinctive artistic vision that stems, his family, fellow musicians and friends said, from being born with Down syndrome. His story, they say, shows how art can help someone overcome social barriers and what can happen with an effort to elevate a person’s talents, rather than focus on their limitations.
“We make music for people to enjoy,” Tomasín said at his home in Río Gallegos, Argentina. The music is “the best, magical,” he added. Although his work has not achieved commercial success, it has had a significant impact on how people with disabilities are perceived in Argentina and beyond.
He has also inspired members of his band, Reynols, to establish long-running music workshops for people with disabilities. And other musicians they have worked with have started bands whose members include people with developmental disabilities.
Tomasín is 58 years old, although, like many other artists, he takes years off, insisting that he is 54. He was born in Buenos Aires, the second of three children. His father was a Navy captain, his mother a fine arts graduate who stayed home to raise the children.
In the 1960s, most Argentine families sent their children with Down syndrome to special boarding schools, which in practice were little more than asylums, said his younger sister, Jorgelina Tomasín. But Tomasín’s parents decided to raise him at home.
He began showing an interest in sounds as a young child, banging on kitchen pots and playing on a family piano, leading his grandparents to buy him a toy drum kit.
In the early 1990s, as his siblings grew up and left home, Tomasín, then a young adult, felt isolated. His parents decided to send him to a music school, but they struggled to find one that would accept him. In 1993, they made an attempt with a school in their Buenos Aires neighborhood, the School of Integral Formation of Musicians.
“’Hello, I’m Miguel, a great famous drummer,’” recalls Roberto Conlazo, who ran the school with his brother Patricio, who Tomasín said when they were introduced, even though he had never played a professional drummer.
Roberto Conlazo and Alan Courtis, who taught at the school, were already playing in a group that would end up becoming Reynols. After giving Tomasín a few drum lessons, they brought him into the band.
Reynols splits show profits and music sales equally, making Tomasín one of the few professional musicians with Down syndrome in the world.
Tomasín’s big plan for the near future is to hold a concert in Río Gallegos, where he moved last year, bringing his bandmates from Buenos Aires, 2,500 kilometers away, and invite
“Let them come to my school, so we can all play together,” he said.
“We make music for people to enjoy.” The music is “the best, magical”.
By: ANATOLY KURMANAEV
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6516280, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-03 22:00:07
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