We often think of music in terms of sounds intentionally organized into patterns, but music performed in signed languages poses considerable challenges to this sound-based definition. Performances of sign language music are defined culturally as music, but they do not necessarily make sound their only--or even primary--mode of transmission. How can we analyze and understand sign language music? And what can sign language music tell us about how humans engage with music more broadly?
In Seeing Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music, author Anabel Maler argues that music is best understood as culturally defined and intentionally organized movement, rather than organized sound. This re-definition of music means that sign language music, rather than being peripheral or marginal to histories and theories about music, is in fact central and crucial to our understanding of all musical expression and perception. Sign language music teaches us a great deal about how, when, and why movement becomes musical in a cultural context, and urges us to think about music as a multisensory experience that goes beyond the sense of hearing. Using a blend of tools from music theory, cognitive science, musicology, and ethnography, Maler presents the history of music in Deaf culture from the early nineteenth century and contextualizes contemporary Deaf music through ethnographic interviews with Deaf musicians. She also provides detailed analyses of a wide variety of genres of sign language music--showing how Deaf musicians create musical parameters like rhythm and melody through the movement of their bodies.
The book centers the musical experience and knowledge of Deaf persons, bringing the long and rich history of sign language music to the attention of music scholars and lovers, and challenges the notion that music is transmitted from the hearing to the Deaf. Finally, Maler proposes that members of the Deaf, DeafBlind, hard-of-hearing, and signing communities have a great deal to teach us about music. As she demonstrates, sign language music shows us that the fundamental elements of music such as vocal technique, entrainment, pulse, rhythm, meter, melody, meaning, and form can thrive in visual and tactile forms of music-making.
Industry Reviews
"Maler's groundbreaking analysis redefines music by challenging modality chauvinism and reframing music as movement through a study of deaf musicking. In presenting provocative questions about the essence of music, she demonstrates how deaf perspectives enrich our understanding of human expression. Seeing Voices is an essential contribution to music theory, history, applied linguistics, and Deaf Studies." --Octavian Robinson, author of Crip
Linguistics Manifesto
"Not long ago "language" meant "spoken language." That particular conceit ended with the recognition of complex signed languages. Now another truism has fallen, the notion that music is necessarily aural. With this insightful, beautifully written, and very important book, Maler puts the spotlight on ASL songs, deaf singers, and music without sound to challenge received truths and unexamined assumptions about the nature and possibilities of musical performance."
--Douglas Baynton, author of Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language
"In the ongoing educational battles over diversity and inclusion, disabled people are often overlooked in our music academies, perhaps none more so than deaf persons. In Seeing Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music, Maler unpacks the rich history of this music by centering the experiences of deaf persons and challenging readers to rethink how they analyze and interpret the most basic aspects of music and music making. A must read for all those
committed to musical justice and belonging." --Philip Ewell, author of On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone
"This book will make you think deeply about questions you thought you already knew the answer to. What is music? Against the traditional understanding of music as organized sound, Maler's magisterial study of sign language music shows that music is better understood as organized movement. That permits her to offer compelling analyses of music produced within the deaf community, using American Sign Language, to create undeniably musical melody, rhythm, meter,
form, and meaning. Along the way, she elucidates and validates deaf ways of knowing music and creating distinctive and engaging visual and tactile forms of music-making." --Joseph Straus, author of
Broken Beauty: Musical Modernism and The Representation of Disability
