Music to Their Eyes: Song-to-Sign Interpreting at the Hudson Clearwater Festival

Interpreting popular music into Sign for deaf audience members has become increasingly common. Interpretation of the songs permits the deaf community to participate in a congenial forum where significant social and political views are aired. Fifteen interpreters were interviewed at a Hudson Clearwater Festival and their ideas recorded on popular music interpreting and its differences from speech interpreting and transliterating. Nineteen members of their deaf audience were interveiwed for their reactions and opinions. The central concerns of the deaf audience differ somewhat from those of the interpreters. The future of concert interpreting will be determined not by educators or by the benevolence of the hearing world but by economic factors such as the appeal of sign language “music” to paying audiences, both deaf and hearing.