Archive by Author | Liana M. Silva
February 13, 2012  

Listen to the Word: Deafness and Participation in Spiritual Community

Managing Editor’s note: This post is the first in a three-part Sounding Out! series on deafness, Sound Studies, and Deaf  Studies during February 2012.–LMS

"Church" by Flickr user silent short under Creative Commons license

Growing up I attended many religious services. As an adult I attend church services less often, but it still stands out to me that sound is an essential part of the traditional Christian religious service. Participation depends upon listening, responding, and singing. If the service (or mass, as I knew it growing up in the Catholic faith) reminds us we are a community of people with common religious beliefs, our participation in the rituals is a manifestation—a ratification if you will—of our belonging to that community. (Last month David B. Greenberg talked in our podcast series about how sound—specifically listening to religious services while on the road—allows Christian truck drivers to feel like they are a part of a community of faith.) In addition to singing and responding, there are several sound metaphors that imbue the experience of being a churchgoer: the references to the Word of God, discussions of how God will listen to our prayers, the insistence that we need to listen to what God was trying to tell us, even a parent’s admonishment that one sit still and be quiet while the preacher talks…in sum, to be a practicing Christian requires a lot of listening.

However, in Deaf culture (defined by music researcher Alice Ann Darrow in her article “The Role of Music in Deaf Culture: Implications for Music Educators” as “composed primarily of congenitally deaf adults who communicate through sign language rather than speech” but is not limited to them) this takes another shape. When I visited the Deaf International Community Church, located in Olathe, Kansas, I realized that deafness complicates what it means to listen, especially in terms of religious services.

The Deaf International  Community Church (DICC) has been holding services in Olathe since 2010, according to journalist Dawn Bormann from Olathe News. They emerged from a deaf ministry at a local Baptist church, but are nondenominational. At the moment the DICC holds services at the Center of Grace, a rented space. The services are open to the deaf, the hearing impaired, and those who hear; however, the services are geared toward the deaf community.

As I walked into the Center of Grace in late January,  I was surprised to be welcomed by sound. I heard and saw people talking and signing—sometimes at once. Music played loudly from within the temple, and parishioners milled about. I was not sure if I should walk in and not talk to anyone or if I should just act casual. I suddenly felt very subconscious about my sense of hearing. I found an empty pew toward the back—after all, I would be taking notes and didn’t want to interrupt—and sat there, observing my surroundings. Shortly after, Pastor Debbie Buchholz, one of the spiritual leaders of the DICC, walked over to me and introduced herself, putting me at ease.

When the service started, the same woman who had just spoken to me stood in front of the congregation, signing her words. In front of the crowd a voice interpreter spoke for  Pastor Debbie. The effect was unexpected: the hands gave life to words, to sounds, to language while the disembodied (from my angle) female voice translated into sound what Pastor Debbie signed to the crowd. It took me a while to get used to the new sound of the pastor. I had only spoken briefly to Pastor Debbie, yet it seemed surreal to hear another voice speaking for her.

I meditated upon the fact that language is conceived in terms of the arbitrary relationship between signs and sounds. A letter sounds a certain way. Put letters together and you put sounds together. Letters (and their sounds) make words (a compilation of sounds) that designate an object. In this sense, sound is closely connected to making sense of the world. Even though we can create sounds with objects, our bodies are constantly creating sounds as well. The sounds of words come from our lungs out through our mouths and to our ears as they designate people, places, things, and ideas.

At the DICC service, sound—something that we conceive of as naturally emanating from bodies—was disconnected from language. In the Deaf culture language is transformed into hand gestures. Swinging a finger, shaking a hand, pushing down a palm, these small gestures stand in for sound— or stand apart from sound. Even though for me, growing up Catholic, participation came in the guise of listening to the priest, singing along with the congregation, and repeating the prayers, here participation came through hands. They sang with their hands, they prayed through their hands. Being in the DICC service reminded me of how natural and normal we take sound to be. In that space, I was suddenly very conscious of the sound of my voice, and of sound’s relationship to language.

This brings me to PhD student and Sound Studies scholar Steph Ceraso’s HASTAC blog post on listening with your whole body. In her post she uses an interview with percussionist Evelyn Glennie as a way to reflect upon listening practices and the ability to listen with more than one’s ears. Evelyn Glennie, according to Ceraso, engages in a restrictive sound diet where she sometimes, voluntarily, eliminates sound from her environment in order to become more aware to sound. Ceraso’s words on multimodal listening resonate with me, and put my visit to the DICC in perspective. The DICC service showed how deafness can make sound studies scholars reflect upon the role of sound in our society—and more importantly, how we listen and communicate.

Also, Ceraso’s ideas about multimodal listening make me think about what other ways the deaf congregation at the church listens. If listening is a form of spiritual/religious participation, multimodal listening accounts for how the parishioners participate in the service. The body, including the eyes, become a gateway into absorbing the message (the Word of God) and in that way demonstrate alternate ways of listening.

For this spiritual community, the need to worship in their own language brings them together, but so does the Deaf culture. During the service they prayed together for an end to discrimination against deaf people and hoped that God would help those newly born in deafness. As I prayed with them, I realized that the congregation comes to DICC not just for religious guidance but also for affirmation of their humanity and their culture. The space of the church is a place to recharge spiritually but also become socially empowered.

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Liana M. Silva is co-founder and Managing Editor of Sounding Out! She is also a PhD candidate at Binghamton University.

December 12, 2011  

Sounding the Motor City: Chrysler and Detroit’s Legacy

Screen shot from "Selected of God Choir" Chrysler commercial. Selected of God are better known for their appearance in Eminem's Chrysler commercial that aired during the Super Bowl.

Last February, Chrysler premiered during the Super Bowl its “Imported From Detroit” campaign with a stunning 2-minute ad that showcased Detroit to the soundtrack of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” Helen Freund and David K. Li at The New York Post called Eminem the star of Super Bowl XLV’s ads. MyFOXDetroit.com mentioned how the people of Detroit showed their love for the ad on social media. Jeff Karoub and Mike Householder from The Associated Press said the ad “sent shivers of pride through the battered city.” Although the ads are, ultimately, about cars, they also sell us stories of the Motor City.

The commercial starts with scenes from a grey day in Detroit. We see streets, factories, and street signs. The voice-over helps weave a story of a working-class city: “What does this city know about luxury? What does a town that’s been to Hell and back know about the finer things in life?” From the vantage point of a Chrysler, we see shots of Detroit as it drives through the city and the suburbs. At the end, Eminem, a Detroit native, parks the Chrysler 200 in front of the Fox Theater and walks in to finda choir singing along to “Lose Yourself.” Ultimately, the video is a declaration of pride in American craftsmanship but also a statement of the strong will of an American city with working-class roots; this is emphasized when Eminem looks straight at the camera and states, “This is the motor city. And this is what we do.”

Although I tend to be critical of the messages advertising sends viewers, this commercial drives chills up my spine every time because it shows pride in an American city. However, what moved me to write this post was one of the most recent ads from the “Imported from Detroit” series. The commercial for the Chrysler 300 (2012 model) uses a sample of Bobby Blue Bland‘s “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” (Dreamer, 1974) from Jay-Z’s 2001 hit “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love)” (found on his album The Blueprint). The commercial starts with a panoramic view of Detroit, followed by the Chrysler 300 emerging from an underpass. The camera moves on to shots of different areas of Detroit as well as people on the street and street signs (for example, one of the signs we see is the sign for 8 Mile). Also, whereas most car commercials show cars without license plates, this ad proudly display the cars’ Michigan tags.

The music in both of these ads acts as a way of reminding us about Detroit (the first a song by a Detroit native, the second a song that makes us think about cities), but the music also calls into question the luxurious excess of the automobile. The ads try to draw attention away from the automobiles and toward the working-class community that keeps Chrysler running; they emphasize their ties to the Motor City. However, as Angie Schmitt points out in her blog post “The Hypocrisy of Chrysler’s ‘Imported from Detroit’ Campaign,” the ads betray the viewer:

Chrysler is selective about the Detroit it celebrates. Absent is the ruin that now accounts for a large share of the city. Invisible is the crushing poverty, constantly present in the urban landscape. The driver in the most recent installment, traveling out from the center of Detroit to its suburbs, is in control of his fate (thanks to his snappy ride) in a way few in the region really are.

Despite the defiant sentimentality of its ads, Chrysler, as well, is selective about its commitment to the city of Detroit.

Although the ads are visually stunning (but many of the ads produced by Wieden+Kennedy advertising company are–just look at their roster of clients and click on some of the brands), the ads also stage a conflict between race and class through the soundtrack. What is the message these commercials are trying to communicate through their music and their cars? On the one hand, they affirm the presence and reemergence of an American car company, one of the major car companies that was hit hard in the most recent U.S. recession. On the other hand, the ads use a discourse of class (also race) to sell a luxury product. The commercials want to connect Chrysler to Detroit’s working-class identity, and the soundtrack is supposed to act in service of that through the choices of artists and music.

A good example of this is the John Varvatos “Attitude” ad for Chrysler (less popular than the Eminem ad and the more recent Chrysler 300 ad).

Varvatos is a designer from Detroit, located in New York. The commercial shows us Varvatos at the Dope Jams record store in Brooklyn, on his way to his Manhattan studio. The voiceover tells us the key to his success is that he was “surrounded by the perfect combination of rock and roll and heavy industry.” The working-class theme is emphasized in this commercial, especially in the last line uttered by the narrator:  “that’s what a blue collar attitude can do in a white collar world.” (It also creates a dichotomy where New York is the “white collar world” to Detroit’s “blue collar attitude.”) Unfortunately, the ads commodify class struggles and class values. The ads use working-class values to appeal to the consumer.

Music is not far removed from the automobile industry in Detroit. The Motor City not only exports cars, but is also an exporter of music. Suzanne Smith, in her book Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (2000), traces the development of Motown within the sociocultural context of Detroit in the 1960s. She explains how the automobile industry in Detroit benefited from African American labor, meanwhile excluding them from “controlling the means of production” (15). On the other hand, Smith also points out that Motown profited from the introduction of the transistor radio in 1953, for drivers could now listen to music in their cars. Motown execs were very aware of the new market that this would provide them. “Both the musical form and the audio fidelity of Motown hits such as ‘My Girl’ and ‘Shop Around’ were well suited and often produced with a car radio audience in mind” (123). The ads remind us how listening to music has become part of the experience of driving–and how that was not coincidental.

Ultimately, these ads remind us of how sound can act as a door into the social and cultural context surrounding the cars. However, I want to leave my readers with a thought: the ads are also about Detroit. If car ads require, in general, remarkably non-specific setting, Chrysler goes in the opposite direction and makes it all about the location. The ads, although problematic, remind us of the power and importance of place, whether in its Detroit ads or in its Portland, Oregon ad or its Los Angeles ad. If Jay-Z and Bobby Blue Bland sing “ain’t no love in the heart of the city,” these Chrysler ads show that the city has plenty of love to give.

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Liana M. Silva is co-founder and Managing Editor of Sounding Out! She is also a PhD candidate at Binghamton University.

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