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''' '' DEAF STUDENTS
DEAR '' ''' : HONOURS
THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY - for every subject in the world - is the very exclusive ownership of every Deaf Student in the world. ''OnePiece - Share - Peace'' and every Honour.
Raising Songs' Visibility : A project yields visibility in sign language of 10 key works by Black artists.
''MUSIC is many different things to different people,'' Alexandra Wailies, a deaf actress and dancer, told me in a video interview, using an interpreter. Wailies performed ''The Star Spangled Banner'' at the 2018 Super Bowl, and last drew thousands of views on YouTube with her sign language contribution to ''Sing Gently,'' a choral work by Erica Whitacre.
''I realize,'' she added, ''that when you do hear, not hearing may seem to separate us. But what is your relationship to music, to dance, to beauty? What do you see that I may learn from? There are conversations people need to get accustomed to having.
On a recent afternoon in a brightly lit studio in Brooklyn, Mervin Primeaux O'' Bryant and Brandon Kazen-Maddox were filming a music video. They were recording a cover version ''Midnight Train to Georgia,'' but the voices that filled the room were those of -
Those of Gadys Knight and the Pips, who made the song a hit in the 1970s Yet the two men were also singing with their hands.
Primeaux-O'Bryant is a deaf actor and dancer; Kazzen Maddox is a hearing dancer and choreographer who is, thanks to seven deaf family members, a native speaker of American Sign Language.
Their version of ''Midnight Train to Georgia'' is part of a 10-song series of American Sign Language covers of seminal works by Black Female artists that Kazzen-Maddox is producing for Broadstream, an arts streaming platform.
Around the world, music knits together communities as it tells foundational stories, teaches emotional intelligence and cements a sense of belonging.
Many Americans know about signed singing from moments like the Super Bowl, when a sign language interpreter can be seen - if barely - perform the national anthem alongside a pop star.
But as sign language music videos proliferate on YouTube, where they spark comments from deaf and hearing viewers, the richness of American Sign Language, or A.S.L., has gotten a broader stage.
A good A.S.L. performance prioritizes dynamics, phrasing and flow. The parameters of sign language - hand shape, movement, location, palm orientation and facial expression - can be combined with elements of visual vernacular, a body of codified gestures, allowing a skilled A.S.L. speaker to engage in the kind of sound painting that composers use to enrich text.
At the recent video shoot, Glady's Knight's voice boomed out of a large speaker while a much smaller one was tucked inside Primeaux O'Bruant's clothes, so that he could ''tangibly feel the music,'' he said in an interview, with Kazen-Maddox interpreting.
Out of sight of the camera, an interpreter stood ready to translate any instructions from the crew, all hearing, while a laptop displayed the song lyrics.
In the song, the backup singers - here personified by Kazen-Maddox - encourages Knight as she rallies herself to join her lover, who has returned home to Georgia. In the original recording, the pips repeat the phrase ''all aboard.'' But as Kazen-Maddox signed it, those words grew into signs evoking the movement of the train and its gears.
A playful tug at an invisible whistle corresponded to the woo-woo of the band's horns. Primeaux-O'Bryant signed the lead vocals with movements that gently extended the words, just as in the song : on the drawn-out ''oh''of ''not so long ago-oh-oh,'' his hands fluttered into his lap. The two men also incorporated signs from Black A.S.L.
''The hands have their own emotions,'' Primeaux-O''Bryant said. ''They have their own mind.''
Primeaux-O'Bryant was a student at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington in the early 1990s when a teacher asked him to sign a Michael Jackson song during Black History Month. His first reaction was to refuse.
But the teacher ''pulled it out'' of him, he said, and he was thrust into the limelight in front of a large audience. Then Primeau O'Bryant said, ''the lights came on and my cue happened and I just exploded and signed the work and it felt good.'' Afterward the audience erupted in applause : ''I fell in love with performance on stage.''
Signing choirs have long been common around the world. But the pandemic has fostered new visibility for signing and music , aid in part by the video-focused technology that all musicians may have relied on to make art together.
As part of the ''Global Ode to Joy'' celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth last year, the artist Dalia Ihab Younis wrote a new text for the final chorus of the Ninth Symphony that, performed by an Egyptian a capella choir, taught elementary signs in Egyptian Arabic Sign Language.
Last spring, the pandemic forced an abrupt stop in live singing as choirs were particularly thought to be potential spreaders of the coronavirus.
In response, the Netherlands Radio Choir and Radio Philharmonic Orchestra reached out to the Dutch Signing Choir to collaborate on a signed leehy. ''My heart signs on,'' in which the keening voice of a musical saw blended with the lyrical gestures of Ewa Harnsen, who is deaf. She was joined by the members of the Radio Choir, who had learned some signs for the occasion.
''It has more meaning when I sing with my hands,'' Harmsen said in a video interview, speaking and signing in Dutch with an interpreter present. ''I also love to sing with my voice, but it's not that pretty. My children say to me, ''Don't sing, Mother! Not with your voice.
The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Deaf Students, and the very special of Mankind more, continues. The World Students Society thanks author, Corinna Da Fonseca-Wollheim.
With most respectful and loving dedication to Deaf Humans, and then Leaders, Grandparents, Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :
''' Songs - Signs '''
Good Night and God Bless
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