تأسست في 20 اكتوبر 2009
I was born in the middle of the 70s into a family and world swirling with music. One of my earliest memories is sitting cross-legged in awe of Pink Floyd’s
legged in awe of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 video on Top of the Pops, trying to decide whether I liked tomato ketchup more than brown sauce (I still haven’t decided). Fast-forward a few years, to the middle of the 80s, and everything was suddenly silenced. An attack of meningitis left me with permanent hearing loss. When I emerged from a coma, the first words to my mother were: “Tell me later mum, I can’t hear you.”
Coming to terms with my hearing loss was hard and frustrating. Learning to lipread enabled me to communicate with the so-called mainstream world and helped build my confidence and independence. I didn’t learn to sign, but I never gave up on music – religiously buying Smash Hits for the lyrics and watching Top of the Pops with the Teletext subtitles turned on.
I adapted to follow music by feeling the beats through vibration. I memorised lyrics and then settled with video recordings of the singer lip-synching until I could follow the whole track – using body language to denote changes in pitch. High notes are usually accompanied by a singer lifting their head, low notes by dropping it. I worked, and still work, from my memories of vocals and instrument sounds, and eight times out of 10 I would be able to get to something close to the original score.
At the end of the 90s I started to consider the pros and cons of having an artificial cochlear implant. In terms of music, I had longed to hear the voice of Skin from Skunk Anansie, one of my all-time favourite bands, and after being blown away by a Marilyn Manson concert I told myself that there was nothing to lose, and any hearing would be better than none at all. I went under the surgeon’s knife to have the CI fitted.
The operation was a complete success, although it was followed by a difficult month of silence whilst the scar healed and where I had to deal with the great ifs and buts: fathoming how life would change with hearing, what that level of hearing would be and even what the “hearing” would actually sound like.
All I can say is this: nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared me for it. A whole new sound-filled world opened up to me again, although not like an able-hearing person can hear. Not at first anyway.
Cochlear implants consist of a string of 16 electrodes as opposed to millions of nerve endings. Recipients don’t get the full clarity of sound and they won’t match human hearing, but with constant retuning I’ve managed to push the limits of what is possible with music – depending on the genre and production of the track, I can get the beats, rhythms and vocals, I can decipher instruments. When a singer lowers their voice it does become difficult, but a natural rhythm keeps it all in check. Some CI recipients expect miracles without putting the hard work in and then give up on it through frustration.
It was two months after my operation, as I sat working on the computer with music playing in the background, that all these elements clicked as the Foo Fighters’ All My Life video played on MTV. I broke down in tears. I didn’t get much sleep that night as I flicked through the music channels in excitement and bewilderment. It soon dawned on me how much of the music on television was inaccessible for the deaf and hard of hearing – to the point that I visited MTV armed with a synopsis for a new show that would open music for these fans. Needless to say it didn’t go down well.
That lack of accessibility to music for the hearing impaired hasn’t changed. Subtitling on TV has gone downhill and live broadcasts are often out of sync or incorrect. As a result, I actually subtitle my own recordings, and where the music proves too difficult to follow with my CI, then I am lucky to have someone else to call on, who is also a dab hand at subtitling. Wearing headphones from my personal music player with my CI, and by memorising the sounds and the phonetics of a singer’s voice, I can follow tracks without having to look at a screen.
It has taken a lot of hard work to get this far. However, there may be some good news on the horizon.
I came across a small charity calledStagetext, which, since 2000, has pushed hard to make theatre accessible through captioning. It has grown from covering a small handful of performances to become a formidable force for accessible theatre, expanding its service across the UK. Working with Attitude is Everything, Stagetext is now, for the first time ever, to provide captions and live subtitles for a music gig – at Club Attitude, which takes place at Islington Assembly Hall on Tuesday 24 March.
Exactly how exciting is this collaboration? For deaf music fans it’s simply immense.
As an avid concertgoer, I typically stick towards more mainstream acts that I know I can follow by matching their sound via my CI to lip-reading and the beats and melodies from my ownknowledge of their music. Gigs by lesser known bands, however, are incredibly difficult to follow – mainly because of that lack of in-sync subtitles. The collaboration between Attitude is Everything and Stagetext, if widened, could potentially change that.
Admittedly it will be a battle with some venue owners getting their heads around the initial “Deaf music fan – how does that work?” conundrum; but, as Stagetext has already proved with theatres, there are huge possibilities to extend captioning – from small intimate venues, up to arenas, stadiums and music festivals.
Am I excited about this? Hell yes, it’s amazing and needs to be supported. I’ll be adding a plethora of accessible gigs and concerts to my diary as and when they are announced … and maybe one day I’ll get to see an accessible Skunk Anansie gig.
Below is a premiere of Toy’s cover of their favourite Robert Wyatt track Free Will & Testament. Wyatt is the patron of Attitude Is Everything, a charity dedicated to improving venue accessibility for deaf and disabled music fans. Toy’s show at Club Attitude at Islington Assembly Hall on Tuesday 24 March is sold out, but it is being live streamed (with captions) at Living Indie from 8pm. Follow Lee Walker on Twitter at@ItsThatDeafGuy
