Music, Signed

Music is conventionally perceived as an art form that utilizes sound as its fundamental medium of expression. The omission of Signed Music from scholarly works has been due to the common perception that music is identified solely through audition and a lack of awareness of both what constitutes Signed Music and how Signed Music has developed as its own performance art. However, recent scholarship has examined how musical cultures treat performance as the central component of the artistic work. In this regard, the Deaf community shares in the performative practice of music. When signed language, visual-gestural performance and multisensorial input are used to express artistic performances within the Deaf community, the result is called Signed Music. The emergence of American Sign Language (ASL) poetry and ...