Faith, prayer: armless guitar player plays on
Published: May 29, 2005
The first time people see songwriter and singer Tony Melendez they usually wonder how he can possibly play guitar. Melendez, a thalidomide baby born without arms, seems an unlikely musician.
But for Melendez, who began to write songs and play the guitar with his feet as a child, music was a necessity. It sustained him and gave him a way to express his faith.
”Music was a form of release,” Melendez says. “There is a strange power that you receive from the music itself, that you’re singing and praying, that have given me the strength to keep going. It’s a powerful form of prayer.”
The power of Melendez’ form of prayer was apparent in a surprise performance at the Billboard Latin Music Awards at the Miami Arena last month. After a glitzy parade of production numbers with Latin stars like Juanes, Marco Antonio Solis, and Juan Luis Guerra, Melendez, dwarfed by the enormous stage, performed a quiet ballad in tribute to deceased Pope John Paul II. Afterwards the audience stood and gave him the most enthusiastic applause of the night. From the celebrity-packed front rows to the back of the cavernous hall to the stagehands behind the scenes, people were weeping.
Melendez, 43, has never questioned whether he could do things, only how. His parents moved from their native Nicaragua to Los Angeles to get treatment for their youngest son. They always pushed him to do things for himself. When he was 10, Melendez abandoned his artificial arms, preferring to use his feet.
”I didn’t struggle like people think,” he says from his home in Branson, Mo. “ I knew I was different. I think it’s how strong you are as a person [that determines] if it’s gonna bother you that much.”
His disability is a result of his mother being given thalidomide while she was pregnant. The drug was used to treat morning sickness until it was discovered that it caused severe birth defects.
His older brother José, 46, who is his manager and agent, says Tony was always independent.
Even a series of seven operations to break and reform a club foot didn’t daunt Tony.
”That saved his life,” José says. “If he hadn’t had that he wouldn’t be able to play the guitar today.”
Their parents, especially their father, insisted that Tony be treated the same as his brother and two younger sisters. When José got into scuffles defending his brother, Tony would tell him “it doesn’t hurt me. Don’t fight because of me.”
A REJECTION
It wasn’t until high school that Tony’s lack of arms held him back. Devoutly faithful, he wanted to be a priest, and wrote to the Vatican two years in a row. Each time he was told no, that to be a priest you need a finger and thumb to administer the Eucharist.
”There was some pain and hurt there,” Melendez admits. “This is where the music began to grow.”
He’d inherited an ability to play by ear from his father and grandfather, and had already begun playing guitar with his feet and composing songs. He practiced for hours, using a special tuning method that allowed him to strum rather than pick the guitar strings.
He began to perform at Masses, funerals, weddings and church groups. “Wherever there was something spiritual, I was there side by side with the priest.”
His faith in music eventually found him a new spiritual role. In 1987 he was chosen by a church group to perform for Pope John Paul II during a visit to the United States, in front of an international television audience of millions. When the 25-year-old musician had finished, the pope left his platform, walked over to Melendez and embraced him. Then he told him “Tony, you are a courageous young man. You are giving hope to all of us. My wish to you is to continue giving this hope to all people.”
For Melendez, it was the mission he had been denied a decade before. ”That just opened the door to go on,” he says. “When the pope kissed me, he passed on responsibility. This world needs a lot of help, not just in Third World countries but right here in the U.S. I can’t sit around just because I don’t have arms, there’s too much to do.”
That attitude inspires almost everyone who hears him. ”Tony preaches through his music,” says Edwin De Jesus, a deacon at Blessed Trinity Catholic Church in Orlando and a close friend of Melendez. When the two met at a concert for the Archdiocese of Chicago 15 years ago, ‘I didn’t feel sorry for him, I felt sorry for me. Because I had both arms, and I used to complain a lot, `I can’t do this, I can’t do that.’ When I saw Tony my life changed.”
José remembers his brother transforming his attitude at 13, after he came home from a day at school where other kids were teasing him about his armless brother, and announced to his mother that he wanted ”a normal brother who could throw a Frisbee.” He turned around to see Tony listening.
The boys went outside, and José tossed a Frisbee to Tony, who picked it up between his toes and hurled it straight back at him. ”I stopped looking at him as a disabled person after that,” José says. “He had some challenges, but he just had to deal with them differently.”
Since his appearance before the pope, Melendez has dedicated himself to both his musical and spiritual mission. The pontiff’s notice led to a blitz of media attention and a recording career. He has made five albums in English and two in Spanish, and performs regularly for churches, schools, concert halls, and benefits for religious causes. He performed six more times for Pope John Paul, and received commendations from President Reagan, Very Special Arts, and the state of California.
Besides his musical career, he also leads missions to Central America. The morning of this interview, he is groggy after a week in Nicaragua, where he led a group of college students in rebuilding a church. He and his wife Lynn, who have two adopted children, Andres, 7, and Marisa, 10, live in Branson.
Just as he doesn’t entirely understand the strength that music gives him, Melendez doesn’t altogether understand why he has such a powerful effect on people. Instead, he attributes it to the music itself. ”It just becomes alive,” he says. ”I can walk into a public high school, and the kids at first are rolling their eyes “boring.” But by the second song they’re singing or swaying along, leaning forward in their seats going ”wow.” Music can do a lot.”
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