The Deaf and Hard-Hearing and their Perception of Music

Abstract

Abstract The qualitative case study investigates how Deaf students participate in music in a number of ways and from a variety of backgrounds, including their own experience of education. The event involved a school that provided a music programme for Deaf children and a questionnaire, interviewings, reports and documents were used to examine them. The students have been particularly interested with music by participating in the fields of sign language, song, instrument playing and vocalisation as part of the school music programme. Perhaps because of shared encounters in their music classes students’ participation with music in the neighbourhood and in the community through spontaneous music events became able to criticise the stereopropes of their family members and the community. The musical interests of the students demonstrated a primarily visual and kinaesthetic awareness of music and an emphasis on repertoire learned through the curriculum of school music. The pleasure in music of the students was decided not always by their hearing ability, but more frequently by their hearing concept. The study’s findings show that music has a presence in the Deaf community.