Rebecca A Withey: Contending with cultural appropriation in the music industry (BSL)

“Can you just sign that line again, but this time don’t move your lips” a musical director once asked me.

“But then it won’t make sense?” I replied.

“It doesn’t matter, it still looks good. Do it.” I was told.

Like a lot of deaf artists, sometimes I’m put in difficult situations when it comes to maintaining my morals. Nobody wants to turn exciting jobs down, but sometimes when the job is for the ‘wrong reasons’ I have no choice but to decline.

As a sign singer, I have recently become acutely aware of just how much cultural appropriation is going on with sign language. It occurs not only in the music industry but across the arts and media in general too, but most of my own experience comes from working in music and signed song.

My first encounter with it happened years ago when I was taking part in a musical show. I had been cast as a deaf character who signed along perfectly to the songs; it was a dreamy ethereal character with an other-worldly feel to it. I liked the creativity I had with translating the songs and the opportunity to lead a show felt exciting.

However, I was not prepared for what was asked of me. I was asked to remove all of my lip pattern and facial expression. I was also asked to expand the size of signs until they became unrecognisable and the speed was altered too.

I had not long left University and so I had not yet gained the life experience and confidence I needed to challenge the professionals I was working with. I felt young and powerless. Looking back, I was perhaps very naïve.

The worst thing for me was when I I found out the show was not being captioned or interpreted and was therefore inaccessible to a deaf audience. I unhappily completed one run of the show and declined any further work with the company. Later on when I challenged the team as to why they hadn’t made it accessible, I was met with silence.

It’s only now looking back I can see that the company viewed sign language as just a novelty; it was something pretty for the audience to oooh and aaahh at. I wasn’t listened to as a deaf person and my concerns were ultimately ignored.

This was almost 20 years ago and since then I have always been very wary of the work I take on especially if I’m not leading it creatively. So when I received a call out last week asking for a ‘BSL user to teach a hearing artist a bit of sign language’ alarm bells started to ring.

Delving into the job description, it seemed that the casting agent wanted a BSL user to simply show a hearing singer how to ‘sign a few lines’ so they can pop it into their music video and use it as a part of the choreography.

I shook my head reading the email. You see – that, my friends, is cultural appropriation in a nutshell.

When we appropriate from a culture, it is always a majority that takes from a minority. So the act of hearing non-signers deciding to use a language from the deaf community for their own gain with no deaf involvement pretty much fits the bill.

Respecting and appreciating a culture will always involve people from that community and will always derive from an effort to understand and embrace the culture they are learning from.

When pop artists use a ‘bit of a sign language’ for a music video yet don’t promote or celebrate BSL in every day life, that is just encouraging BSL to be seen as a novelty throw-away.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love seeing hearing people learn sign language and appreciate the effort it takes to learn a brand new language. But I am sick and tired of the music industry using sign language for nothing more than its aesthetic.

Whats more, there are a wealth of deaf artists across the UK and worldwide who would be absolutely awesome to feature in a music video, yet for some reason we don’t see these talents on our mainstream screens yet.

Simply throwing a few unrecognisable signs into a song doesn’t make it accessible to deaf people. It’s making a mockery of a language that the deaf community have fought for access to for such a long time.

Taking away all lip pattern and facial expression might also make signs seem more dramatic and ‘attractive,’ but it ultimately makes the signs incomprehensible and therefore pointless.

I would love to see more deaf artists in music videos and shows, but we must first contend with the multitude of cultural appropriation that goes on. This journey starts with spreading awareness.

Many times, those who are working in an offensive or ignorant manner are simply unaware of what they are doing.

They may innocently ask, ‘isn’t sign language for everyone?’ to which I’d answer that of course it’s for anyone to enjoy, but just as French is best taught or delivered by a native French person, jobs in sign language should also honour its native users too.

To integrate BSL into a musical project, show or video, it is native BSL users who are best equipped and naturally able to ensure the authenticity and accuracy of the BSL being used.

Do you remember the social media hashtag, ‘nothing about us without us?’ If you want to use BSL, find yourself a BSL professional to guide you – it’s as simple as that.

If people truly understood the oppressive history BSL has endured and the battles that BSL users have even had to face to obtain legal status of the language, they would see why we just can’t tolerate the cutesy throw away use of BSL in music videos.

Rebecca Anne Withey is a freelance writer with a background in Performing Arts & Holistic health. She is also profoundly deaf, a sign language user and pretty great lipreader. She writes on varied topics close to her heart in the hope that they may serve to inspire others.