by Peter D. Kramer
lohud.com
“Hello, my name is Lachi. Like Versace,” says the woman in the fabulous dress and the beaming smile. Then the New York-based singer-songwriter takes more time than most people, to describe herself.
She offers a visual self-description for blind people in her audience, saying she is a Black woman whose hair is in cornrows. She describes her outfit, her jewelry, her nails, her shoes. She tells them she identifies as blind. (Her book, “I Identify As Blind,” is due in 2025.)
She tells them she’s a community builder, co-founder and president of RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities.
Lachi is a living, breathing reality check, making a name for herself by making music and by pushing the recording industry to open doors to the disabled.
Consider it a “Dis Education,” the title of a bouncy anthem about how she wants to be treated, with its refrain “I think it’s high time for some dis education” and the lyric: “I don’t need your hand-me-downs for my leg up. I don’t need to raise my hand to be disruptive. While I’m raking in the bacon, hold my lunch, yeah.”
She has a vision for the future, but the artist — who goes by a single name, adapted from the language of her parents’ Nigerian homeland — will never see better than she does today. A condition called coloboma is progressively sapping her sight.
“At the moment, a good way to describe how I can see is that I can tell he’s good looking right before we make out, but I can’t tell if he’s good looking from across the room,” she says with an ever-present laugh.
No Lachi description is complete, though, until she talks about the must-have accessory she refused to use for years, the one that sets her apart from sighted members of her audience and whose bling sets it apart from ones used by other blind folks. She describes her “glam cane” — and it typically gets an ovation.
Lachi has a blue and silver rhinestone cane, a glow-in-the-dark cane, a purple cane. At the White House, she had a red-white-and-blue bedazzled cane. The glam cane has become her calling card, arriving just ahead of her and dovetailing with the way she lives her life: taking something that some might see as a negative and making it her own.
She took some time recently to talk about her life, her advocacy and one euphemism that makes her howl.
You have talked about how people describe the disabled as brave or courageous, or how inspiring they are.
“It’s ‘inspiration porn.” Most of the time they’re doing it with good intentions. They think they’re doing the right thing when actually they’re doing something very harmful to the community. And honestly, the community itself has to also recognize what is harmful to itself to be able to honestly combat it.”
You’re no fan of the expression “differently abled.”
(She shrieks.) “That term is the hill I will die on. Using ‘differently abled’ to single out folks with disabilities is very much that: a single out. You think that you’re helping by changing the word a little bit to take the ‘dis’ away. Secondly, it’s just patronizing. It is an offshoot of inspiration porn, a way to say, ‘I am afraid to speak about disability head on, so I want to kind of mask the issue by putting icing over the cake so that we don’t actually have to talk about the hard discussion.’ To me, it’s not a hard discussion. So when you walk up to me and say, ‘You’re not disabled, you’re differently abled.’ I’m like ‘But, Boo, I am disabled. So let’s be adults. I’m an adult. You’re an adult.’”
Who paved the way for you?
“First and foremost, my mother. She was and is such a light. She showed me what feminine strength really is, how to be able to come to America and raise seven children with poise, grace and humility while also being a badass. People talk about generational traumas. She gave me so many generational gifts.”
“One of my closest disabled role models would be the late, great Judy Heumann. She was an international icon of disability rights. She took me under her wing. She instilled in me this notion of connection. She was a big inspiration for my song “Life Me Up”’ that ended up all over the world and becoming sort of this disability pride anthem.”
“The last person that I want to lift up is Stacey P. Milbern. She was one of the creators of the disability justice movement. I consider her one of my ancestors because she paved so many ways and contributed so much to this next generation of disability justice warriors and advocates, but also disability culture activists.”
Who are you paving the way for?
“One of the reasons that I glam out my canes and really am loud and proud about it is because I should have been using a cane since I was a kid, and I didn’t want to because I didn’t want the stigma. I didn’t have any role models. (Only between 2 and 8 percent of those who are legally blind use a cane. Only 2 percent of the legally blind use guide dogs.)
“I decided, if I want to be that role model, I want to be the full package. I want to use my cane. I want to use it proudly. But, you know, not all canes match all glorious dresses on red carpets. I’ve gotta have a cane that’s part of my personality. And I believe that fashion is an expression of self and if I’m going to express myself through my fashion and what I wear, I want my cane to reflect who I am, as well. And so that’s why we’re doing the cane thing. We’re now selling them. They’re selling like hotcakes. Or as I like to call them, hot canes.”
“Most folks, because of stigma, are out there just putting their hands out and just trying to figure it out. They’re developing personality disorders because of all the social stigma and stress that they’re dealing with. Meanwhile, all they have to do is pick up a cane and be empowered, for their own health reasons, for their own accessibility, their own accommodation, but also for their own social and mental health.”
What is one of your proudest moments?
“The first time I was very public about my blindness was on a Grammys virtual panel in 2021. I just said, ‘Hello, everyone. I have a disability’ to the entire music world. That got a lot of people in my DMs going, ‘Wow, you are a disabled music professional. Where are the others? Will you start the movement? Will it be you that brings about this change and these discussions about that?’ My manager had just passed away. I was just trying to figure out what to do with my life. But I had to say yes because the calling had come and it was my calling. And that was where RAMPD was formed. And the rest is history.”
Do you hope that RAMPD might one day make itself obsolete?
“I’m going to respectfully push back on that. The music industry is already so isolating. It’s already so wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve. It’s already so ego-driven. To be able to find a community that you can come back home to and share your wins and woes with, I don’t want that to go away. Just as I view blackness as an identity, and I want to be able to share that with other Black folks. And my womanhood. I view my disability as an identity. I want to be able to share my wins and woes with other folks who do as well.”
Page 7 