"Music became an emotional outlet for me since I was eight years old. I found it so difficult to socialise with my peers; I’d started to become withdrawn. But playing the piano seemed to help fill this gap. Performing in public helped me to overcome my nervousness and raise my self esteem. It helped to challenge audiences into thinking that deaf people too CAN become musicians. I played in brass bands, orchestras and ensembles, so I overcame that fear of communicating with others. I don’t think I’d be as confident as I am now without music.”
As far as testimonials go, the above takes some beating. The words of Danny Lane are a glowing endorsement of the work of Music and the Deaf, known as MATD. If you’re unaware of MATD – and if you’re either not one of the almost ten million individuals in the UK with a hearing loss, nor connected to a person who is in that number, there’s no reason why you should know the charity – what they do is quite remarkable. Music and the Deaf is the only organisation that is completely dedicated to bringing the world of music to anyone of any age and degree of hearing loss; it also works with those who live and work with deaf people.
Supported by a range of partners, including Arts Council England, Hidden Hearing, Yorkshire Youth & Music, Kirkless Council and Lions Club International, Music and the Deaf has music clubs in Manchester, Yorkshire and London. There is also a singing and signing choir in Huddersfield with plans to set up similar choirs in Peterborough and Oxfordshire, during 2014. In addition, MATD run practical workshops in schools. Anyone with a hearing loss can join, so too anyone with an interest in singing and sign language.
Hidden Hearing, in particular, are committed supporters to the charity. For the second successive year, the organisation will be helping to pass on the joy of music by running a campaign throughout May, donating £1 to Music and the Deaf for every hearing test attended. The campaign runs until May 31.
Danny Lane’s relationship with MATD is a professional one. He’s their General Manager, having previously spent ten years as Education Projects Manager. But his association with the charity goes back significantly further than that. As a 15-year-old, Music and the Deaf founder Paul Whittaker visited his school; Whittaker had wanted to speak with him initially to provide some helpful advice for Danny’s GCSE music course. The teenager, profoundly deaf from birth, got those tips but also discovered a positive and long lasting new influence in his life.
“When I met Paul at the age of 15, it was quite a surreal experience as he was the first deaf person I had ever met in my life,” recalls Danny. “He changed my mind about how far I could go with music. If I wanted a music degree, then there was no reason why I couldn’t! Paul was a profoundly deaf music graduate and he was a huge inspiration to me. One of the most important things about Music and the Deaf is that it provides excellent deaf role models who say, ‘if I can do it, so can you’. Paul did exactly that for me.”
From struggling to tackle the listening section of his GCSE course, Yorkshire-born Lane has gone on to achieve plenty of note in his musical career; he obtained a degree in Music (and French) from the University of Keele, as well as studying at the Universite d’Amiens in France. He founded the West Yorkshire Deaf Youth Orchestra, plays the piano, loves classical music and conducted the MATD group which played at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the 2008 National Festival of Music for Youth – more of that later.
He’s now 35 years old. In short, he’s been involved with the charity for the entirety of his adult life: two decades. In that time, he’s seen a lot of changes, and witnessed a lot of joy. “It has always filled me with pride to be involved at Music and the Deaf,” he says. “Watching people arrive for the first time and blossoming with confidence through music is always memorable for me. It’s wonderful to watch people, especially the young ones, holding a musical instrument for the first time and taking pleasure from it because they have been given the opportunity. It’s even more emotional to see them perform on stage for the first time, when at first they never dreamed of doing it themselves.”
In a mini-series of individual videos available to view on YouTube, a selection of students shared their experiences of Music and the Deaf as part of a Music Ambassadors Project. The enthusiasm of Keir Fenton, whose deaf sister also attends a music club and plays the violin, is brilliantly infectious. He confesses to fooling his mum on occasion by switching his keyboard setting to demo, so that his practice sessions sound perfect, and he sings along to a Katy Perry track. But the five-minute video also shows Keir playing almost faultlessly. He’s already passed his grade 1 piano. His sister, also deaf, attends music club and plays the violin.
“Music is very important to me because it can affect the way I’m feeling,” says Keir, cheerfully. “It can be happy, sad, slow or fast and I also think music is very good because it helps me to keep calm when I am feeling stressed or cross.”
Jake Lamb is an older student. The Halifax teenager joined Music and the Deaf at eight years old; he’s now 19. He signs throughout his video, explaining why he’s progressed to playing the cello, preferring that over his former instrument, the double bass (‘the cello is a lot better for me because it is easier and more reliable… the double bass was a bit too much and too big, and it wasn’t fair on my parents either, it was too big for their car….’)
Jake was a member of the MATD group, Hi Notes, which performed at the Royal Albert Hall. “I won’t forget the occasion, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I got to do it. It was amazing,” he said.
“The group composed a piece called Tutankhamun’s Curse,” recalls Danny. “It was a very descriptive piece and the members used all their musical skills to create a story about Howard Carter’s archaeological expedition. The adjudicators at the regional festival loved and praised the performance. The group then competed in the national heat in Birmingham, and were selected to perform in front of 10,000 people at the Schools Prom in London. The group had only met up for three months prior to the festival so what they achieved was truly remarkable.”
There is much to be proud of, yet still progress to be made. Music and the Deaf is now becoming recognized internationally, working around Europe and influencing the creation of new groups in Singapore and the Dominican Republic. The profile of the charity is growing.
“There are still people out there who have never heard of Music and the Deaf before,” says Danny. “We want to build our reach across the world. We’re planning to run an activity programme across three states in Australia next year. We want to expand our training programme and help professionals to work directly with deaf people; to set up more community signing choirs and raise the profile of signed song around the UK; to set up more music groups.”
The ambition is there, certainly. But the real value in what Music and Deaf do, surely, is not losing sight of the first time one of their students experiences the uplifting qualities of music. “The most unforgettable moments for me,” says the pupil-turned-teacher, “are when the people we work with are making new steps such as achieving their grade 1, performing on stage and telling us they wouldn’t have been able to do it without the charity. That’s always a wonderful highlight for me.”