Transcript
If you happen to be in Detroit, Michigan tomorrow, Saturday, November 2, and looking for something really cool to check out, head to Ford Field.
That’s the NFL stadium for the Detroit Lions.
The Michigan Competing Band Association state championships are taking place and the Ferndale high school marching band will be performing a show inspired by Deaf hip-hop star Sean Forbes.
Their show is entitled “The Sound of Silence.”
Songs include music by Deaf composer Ludwig van Beethoven, the song “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel and the song “Watch These Hands,” which was made famous by Forbes.
The band director says they wanted to challenge the hearing crowd by showing what a marching band “sounds” like to a Deaf person.
So he reached out to Forbes to teach the bandmembers how to sign his song “Watch These Hands” in American Sign Language.
If you want to check it out, the FHS marching band will perform at 8 PM Saturday night.
Tickets can be purchased at the stadium – cash only.
The cost is $20 for adults, $15 for students.
Admission is free for children under the age of five.
We had a chance to chat with Forbes today to see how he felt about the marching band performing his song.
We found out his musically talented family has marching band experience, so he was ready for the challenge.
Sean: When they asked me, the first person I told was my brother. And of course, I felt inspired.
Question: How did you teach the band the signs for the song?
Sean: When the band asked me and wanted to perform the song, I was like “Oh you want to sign the song?” So I told them I would come to teach them.
We had a little fun with the song because I was able to teach them about the word “watch.” You know “watch” doesn’t just have just one sign. There are so many different contexts for the word.
So it was fun because when I went there, there were about fifty or sixty students lined up. I told him watch, watch, watch and made them do it over and over again. It was such a fun experience to watch them perform it. There’s no feeling to describe it, to see all your hard work, to see something you’ve worked on, something you’re so passionate about and then see other people on the football field performing the song. There is no way to describe it that feeling.
Question: What do you hope the hearing crowd takes away from the performance?
Sean: Really I hope when the hearing audience sees it, they will see that music and sign language are closely associated. A lot of people think that Deaf people or sign language don’t belong in music. But when they see the performance, I hope it inspires high school students, parents and young children to really want to learn sign language.
The Closed Caption version of this video can be found here: https://sign1news.com/2019/11/01/sign1news-11-1-19/
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