LISTENING
WITHOUT YOUR EARS
MEGHAN KHARSYNRAP
People don ' t really question if what they see or hear is just one version of the world. People forget that physical, social or economical differences can change our perspective of what the world is. The world today caters to the majority. It is evident in our transportation systems, in our books, our education systems and so on. Sometimes an attempt is made to bridge the gap to help someone with a disability function in the world— to help those with disabilities go independently to the doctor, to go to meetings, to collaborate with other professionals and even to work. They are very much capable they just don ' t have the means to do it.
This is probably why you may find it puzzling when I say that a deaf person can enjoy music.
Their form of listening is different and much more intimate- they use their sense of touch and their bodies to feel the buzz of the bass or percussion. Our bodies can differentiate between buzzing but one who has been accustomed to touch has a more intense experience of the same.
One must note however, that there are varying degrees of being deaf and hence listening to music could be an absolutely unique experience. Some people may heighten their listening with cochlear implants, some have to turn off their hearing aids off because the loud noise may ruin it and some have hearing problems in only one ear, some people hold balloons when the music is playing to intensify the experience.
In fact, February 1st, 1924, the New York Symphony Orchestra played Beethoven’ s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall. It was broadcast on radio. That evening one of the listeners who tuned in was Helen Keller. Helen discovered that she could place her hand on the speaker and feel the different sounds as the music played. She was enthralled and wrote to the orchestra describing what she experienced as“ A glorious hour”.
Some deaf people even make music with more recent cases than the classic case of Beethoven. Evelyn Glennie, a percussionist from Edinburgh( Scotland) rose to stardom in the 1980 ' s. Upon losing her hearing when she was 12 she enrolled herself to percussion classes. Glennie today plays many instruments and is delightful on the marimba. She was the reason music institutes changed their criteria for acceptance in the UK. When she applied for the Royal Academy of Music she was rejected initially for her disability. On her insistence and after deliberation they gave her a second audition which changed the way industries look at music as an industry. In her Ted Talk Glennie says " My aim really is to teach the world to listen." She wanted to explain that one should listen to their body and listen to sounds in a far broader sense then just by the ear. Glennie won the Polar music prize for her contributions to music.
There are also organisations like D-PAN and Deaf Zone that are trying to make music note accessible for the deaf. D-PAN( The Deaf Performing Art Network) is a not for profit that tries to make music and music culture accessible for the deaf. They recreate videos of famous songs with deaf or hard of hearing actors who use American sign language in the video. They also want to move outside of live performances and advocate subtitles for official DVDs and Broadcast for a deaf person ' s reference.
During some performances sign language interpreters like Amber Galloway Gallego are specially placed so they can sign the song lyrics live to a deaf audience. She manages to do this with style even with rap music.
However it takes several months to hire an interpreter for concerts. Even with all the development, Musicians don ' t acknowledge the people who quite literally want to listen with their heart.
The Score Magazine highonscore. com
29