You know that feeling when you’re at a concert and you don’t care how sweaty you are because the song they’re playing is so good you can feel it in your bones? Amber Galloway Gallego aims to bring that catharsis to the deaf and hard of hearing.
She interprets music for the deaf, but it’s not your standard ASL. She channels the performances through the emotional, lyrical, and rhythmic nuances of the song.
“Music does something to my soul,” she told the Washington Times. “I feel like if we’re not able to show that, then what are we doing up there interpreting?”
This is really special because our hearing-centric world is kinda behind the times in welcoming the deaf into a lot of experiences, like music. It wasn’t until the 90s that music venues were even required to provide interpreters for the deaf, and even then they were mainly just verbatim lyrical translations.
Amber invites the deaf and hard of hearing into music’s emotional moments by tweaking ASL in a way that distinguishes – for instance – the resonance of thick bass sounds from sparkly guitar notes, or the cheeky, clever cadences of Eminem’s rap songs.
Watch the video to see the magic in action.
