‘Body Ways’: The Extra-Ordinary Music Of The Deaf.

Sylvain Brétéché (1)

1 PRISM - Perception, Représentations, Image, Son, Musique

Music is considered according to its various human, expressive or narrative dimensions in contemporary Musicological Studies, but investigations of the musical experience remain focused on the aural modalities which determine it (in part) and abandon its fundamental sensitive qualities. However, if music is addressed to the ear, it also concerns the body and, more broadly, all senses. The audible is heard, the sound is felt and the musical listening is deeply embodied. Whilst the studies of the sensitive qualities of sounds depend commonly on the ‘ear domination’, deafness situations offer the possibility of overcoming this supremacy of aurality and open a singular way for the understanding of the musical embodiment. This is not an opening towards the observation of the inaudible but a real consideration of what, beyond the audible, constitutes the sound materiality. This article proposes to explore the deaf musical experience that allows us to consider precisely the somatosensory dimensions and the vibrotactile qualities of the musical perception and leads us to consider how the Deaf can, through their body, produce an extra-ordinary music without sounds: the sign-singing – songs in sign language.

Domaines: Musique, musicologie et arts de la scène

Sylvain Brétéché. ‘Body Ways’: The Extra-Ordinary Music Of The Deaf.. : Hoppe, C., Müller, S.A. (ed.). Music in the Body - The Body in Music, Olms-Verlag, 2021, 9783487160085. ⟨halshs-03130998⟩