Week 6 - Deaf perspective on music

You want to PRINT OUT the lyrics - and print them out with spaces between the lines.  You'll want space to write notes about each line. 

You'll start to "unpack" the meaning.   DO NOT jump straight to how to sign it.   First determine the meaning and paraphrase that meaning in ENGLISH.   You could even write a paragraph about the feelings you get from that line, what visual it produces in your head. 

For example with the line from I Dreamed A Dream - They aren't really "tigers"

"But the tigers come at night / With their voices soft as thunder / As they tear your hope apart / As they turn your dream to shame" 

She's talking about drugs, living on the street, having to work as a prostitute, give up her daughter,  gettings sick, all these things in life that have eaten away at her life to take away this dream that she had of this perfect life.   And as we talked about it, she settled on signing "TEMPT POP-UP +++" for the Tigers come at night.  Because it all started with her giving in to temptations that pulled her into this darker world and stole her dreams.   She used unamed "things" off in space taking her deams and ripping them apart, and dream turning into shame is a lot of non-verbal work with her looking at her hands in shame.  

Your BODY is the BEAT

Your SIGNS and FACE are the LYRICS

For the "beat" part of the song -- start by not signing at all with the song -- just play it and dance to it.  How does your body move and react to this song?   Make note of it - and KEEP it.   Then add the signs and try not to lose the "beat" as you add the lyrics.  

It's complicated.   And just like anything else that involves people, the answer will vary from person to person based on their experiences. 

Some Deaf people LOVE music, and we'll see many of those people turn that love of music into beatifully translated pieces further below.  It's common for those Deaf people who love music to have some kind of residual hearing now or in the past.  It's not always true, but typically for a Deaf person to really understand why music is so loved by hearing people, they've experienced it themselves on some level.   There are Deaf people who will go to concerts and will know all the words of their favorite artists.  And with technology now, some hearing devices allow Deaf people to plug their music straight in.  

Other Deaf people either just don't understand the love of music, or actually hate music (maybe because we keep insisting on how great it is).  If you decide to post your song somewhere when you're done, you may run into some comments from people who have that opinion.   They don't understand why we have students do a song when Deaf people don't like music and it also runs up against the touchy subject of taking advantage of the language and gaining attention from it - or worse, profitting from it.  There have been some infamous cases of YouTubers who barely know sign languge getting millions of views on their signed songs (and getting paid from monetization), while Deaf artists with AMAZING translations aren't getting the same shares.  

Some Deaf people believe that we should not even teach students to do a song - that it's a sensationalized way to learn the language.  I will (and do) always defend the project by saying that 1) you guys learn SO much on the song project in a short amount of time.  You learn language, prosody, facial expression, translation skills, applying expansion techniques and Isham, not to mention just the performance aspect of getting up in front of people and doing it despite being scared...  I can not replace the growth that comes from this project with something else.   2) I always say to those Deaf people who are concerned about students signing music, that music WILL come up on jobs.  Would they like their interpreter to just not interpret the music at all, or would they like their interpreter's first attempt to decipher music to be live and on the fly while they're working for them?   And the answer is no, of course not.   

BUT what I hear are their concerns that we're not treating the language with the care and respect that they want us to.  They think that doing a song makes their language a game and something "fun" -- and it does in a way.  But I'm also a believer in playing with language.  I love to play with English and with ASL - and then I also know when to take it seriously.  

Here are a couple of videos that talk about these concersn -- and below that I've put in a few of those people who people feel are profiting off the language. 

This should go without saying -- but when you're interpreting your song, our target audience doesn't have access to the song and the music.  Sometimes we try to get away from the English of the song so much that we lose the song...  so we have to find that balance between being too literal and still finding a way to represent the actual song.  And overall the actual feeling of the song.   

This is an experiment to see if you can get these songs from what you're seeing (there is no audio) -- Our own version of Name that Tune!   Answer the survey questions with your responses!  You may want to write down your answers (there will be 7 total).

IF YOU CAN'T GUESS THE TITLE - WRITE DOWN THE LYRICS THAT YOU'RE GETTING and enter those in the survey form

***You can make the video full screen by placing your mouse over the bottom right hand corner and clicking on the [  ]***

These next songs are from a SPECIAL garage sale find!  It's called SIGNERCIZE!  You walk and dance and SIGN the pounds away!  Some of the people in this video are Deaf, and in fact the African-American man is Dr. Glenn Anderson, a prominent Deaf leader who was the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Gallaudet and a candidate for President of the University.   And still.  These songs are painful.   These are are oldies -- all are hits from the 50s, 60s or 70s -- so that might help some of you...  

And you can check your answers -- how did you do?? 

Even if you got the song right, can you see how they missed the mark in conveying the feeling of the song?  They got the meaning, they translated the words.  And when you watch the video WITH the music, as a hearing person you might not even notice that there are gaps.  

When you are working on your songs, it's very important to think about how your song looks to a Deaf audience.   

Record it and watch it without sound -- are you conveying the information you were intending to convey?  

If not, where are your gaps and what do you need to add? 

This is the row of Josh... but it won't be the last you see of him.   

My playlist of songs that I like where you can find even more songs .... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLURHALB7xGb-U1Fe0kT1CLDOGN6GHHMQ4 -- But I would recommend any song by any of the above artists... 

We were very fortunate to have the young Deaf cast from Spring Awakening come to SOS the year after they were on Broadway with the show Spring Awakening.  They did a workshop to teach us how to sign the song "Totally Fucked".   They also signed the Song of Purple Summer for us (as well as a few individual songs - Josh did Satisfied for us!).   

What is so amazing (layered upon amazing) with this show was how the entire cast signed everything in sync.  I don't know if you've ever tried to sign something at the same time as someone else...  but it's HARD.  And if it's not perfectly in sync, it looks SUPER BAD.   I always tell people when you do shows, if you're doing a duet and you want to sign together, pick MOMENTS to sign together.  But in most places you should alternate signing the parts of the songs.   They make it look very easy.  I just wanted to point out how incredibly difficult it is...  you'll appreciate it even more once you try it.  

But have fun with these!