She stood off to the side of the stage, under a cloudless azure sky dressed in all black; boots, shorts, button-up shirt. One leg showed off pale white skin this Irish-American can relate to. The other leg displayed a colorful full-length tattoo this tattooed dude is jealous of. She gestured with her whole body, head, arms, shoulders, legs all moving to the music. Except it wasn’t just gesturing.
She was the ASL interpreter for the Louder than Life Festival.
My first thought was: “Damn that’s impressive and fantastic to see. The Deaf people in the audience can not just feel the music but also ‘hear’ the lyrics”
My second thought was: “That doesn’t help me.”
There’s no one way to be deaf. Which means accommodations aren’t one-size-fits-all. For me a rocking out ASL interpreter doesn’t work. I don’t know ASL. I was fine with that until Julie and I started planning our next set list of blog entries. This one, as you’ve probably figured out by now, is on live music. One of the notes Julie threw out made me stop and think.
Where are the open captions?
That’s a damn good question. The vast majority of people with hearing loss don’t know ASL. So, while undeniably entertaining, the aforementioned interpreter doesn’t help said majority. Part of the reason I see ASL interpreters but not open captions is the lack of nuance.
People are unaware of the nuances of hearing loss, are unaware that it’s a spectrum. The Deaf Community has gotten all of the attention and accommodations stop where they help the D part of the DHH community. And I don’t blame them, not really.
We hard of hearing folks are victims of our own success. We can fake belonging to the hearing world where Deaf folks can’t. But that doesn’t mean we hear everything. As Julie is wont to say: we don’t know what we miss. And when it comes to music, we’ve been making do for so long, we don’t raise a stink for accommodations at live concerts.
One of the ways I make do is listening to the artist’s catalog before I go. That means I can read the lyrics as I listen. I’ve been encouraged by how many streaming services have lyrics now. But artists are known to go off-script with lyrics or pull out a cover that I don’t know the lyrics to.
That would also make open captions harder.
While voice recognition and AI tools have become more than a little impressive, I don’t see them working at a live concert. Too much background noise, be it audience or instruments, means Communication Access Real-time Translation (CART) would be the way to go. Now that I think about it, though, would the changing lyrics or cover songs pose the same challenge to the CART captioner as they do to me? Maybe not. The chatter between songs most certainly would not.
I hate this chatter.
I saw BB King at the South Shore Music Circus when he was an octogenarian. The Circus is a small outdoor venue with seating both under the tent covering the stage and seating on the grass beyond. I was in the grass beyond. And BB didn’t have the stamina to actually complete an entire song. He would get to the first chorus and stop. Then he’d say…something. I could never make out much of what he was saying. It was heartbreaking. The only thing that saved the experience for me was that I can say that I saw that Blues legend live.
Some of the reason for not understanding the chatter is due to my bionic ears.
At live concerts they act as ear-plugs.
I still have enough hearing that I can pop open my battery doors and use my bionic ears as bionic ear plugs. I do this because concerts can be too loud. Yes, things can be too loud for the hard of hearing. I spend all day straining to hear so that when I’m presented with sound that’s louder than I’m used to, I’m a wee bit overwhelmed.
And I fear my bionic ears will be overwhelmed too.
I was always afraid that the power of the amps would blow the speakers. So I’d turn ‘em off. I’ve since learned that there’s safeguards built in to prevent such a thing but I’ve not been to a concert since learning this little nugget. I’ve never been a big concert goer.
I used to chalk that up to part money and part introversion; I have too little of the former and too much of the latter. But as I sat down to write this, I started to wonder if my hearing loss is also a part of things. And not just the disappointing BB King concert, either. I’m not so much concerned with not hearing the lyrics, there are some songs I’ve heard eleventy-billion times that I still don’t know the lyrics to, but I’m concerned with feeling isolated.
I always miss something when the singer chats between songs.
That means I’m either on the outside of a joke or missing some poignant reason behind the next song. Even with thousands of people around me, I feel alone at those times. I’m an introvert, I have no problem with being alone. Most of the time I prefer it. But that’s my choice. When I feel alone in a crowd that’s foisted upon me.
That said, I know I’ll go to concerts in the future. Music is helping me drown out my tinnitus as I write this. Music has helped me feel closer to people. Music has helped me through some tough times. Music is one of the things I fear losing if my hearing takes a nose dive. Thankfully technology like Tactus Music will be there to step in if I get to that point.
So I know music will always be in my life in some form or another. What about you, dear reader, what sort of self-accommodations do you make for concerts?
Music unites us,
be it for good or for bad.
Even the trees sing.
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