Ruth Montgomery tells us about her charity Audiovisability and the Calypso project working with the deaf community in Barbados

My name is Ruth Montgomery. I was born in London but I reside in Essex. I have been profoundly deaf since birth and I communicate in both BSL and speech.

I happen to have been born into a musical family; my mum sings in amateur opera and runs a music club for babies & toddlers, my dad plays the classical guitar professionally and my 3 brothers play piano too.

I started playing the piano at 8 but I chose the flute because I thought it was beautiful looking and, being close to my face, I felt it was an extension of my voice.  I could express myself through playing.

I first started to play the flute at age 12 as part of my education at a deaf school, and upon leaving I studied for my Bachelor of Music (BMus) majoring in Flute performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music in Cardiff.

Having graduated, I quickly realised that the opportunities for deaf musicians were few and far between which is why I moved into teaching as part of Essex Music Service. I had over 250 students successfully pass their exams (all were hearing), this was my main driver behind founding Audiovisability.

Personally, I struggled at primary school because there wasn’t any support offered to me and this is something that is always at the forefront of my teaching style – to ensure that no student feels unsupported.

I dislike the attitude that Deaf people don’t have a place in music, it’s something I completely disagree with – we can be successful musicians if we are given the opportunity, as I always say ‘music is not about hearing any more than language is’’. Nothing was going to stop me from pursuing a musician career.

Key to my teaching is finding the visual information. Music has a visual nature –  think of notes on a score – and seeing that information helps me to understand the language of sound. Being able to read sheet music is very important, I think of it like my superpower!

I firmly believe that any deaf child can be taught music if it is done in a way that recognises that they have an extra visual learning style. I’ve been working with Music of Life for the past 5 years delivering such lessons in deaf schools across London.

My charity Audiovisability is an amalgamation of “audio-visual-ability”.  I like to think of music in visual terms, by combining art, sign language, movement and such. This is what music is. It is a form of communication, and a form of expression too. There is a place for music in our lives, and in that we can show our culture, our experience, our language and all the amazing things which make us proud deaf people.

At first I started small, running projects with the deaf community, for the deaf community, and then having run a number of successful ones I decided to move forwards with becoming registered as a charity.

The Calypso project is a work of many partner collaborations here in the UK and Barbados coming together to support social change through music and it’s my personal experience of being a deaf musician that sparked it. I knew I wanted to do something that gave Deaf people in Barbados a voice, in a way that created meaningful change.

I think that this was an incredibly bold thing for Deaf Bajans to have done – hearing people often use music as a form of politics but Deaf people do not. The track One Day really speaks to the experience of those on the island and was written by Deaf musician, Sean Forbes with the deaf community there.

It’s important that anyone listening to the tracks realise that it wasn’t about what I wanted to say, or what Sean wanted to say, it was about the deaf community there. We had a fantastic team behind the project and what unified us all was the deaf experience – it doesn’t matter that the final songs are in ASL because we can all understand the message.

You can read all about the project here: https://www.thecalypsoproject.com

Lastly, I hope you enjoy the videos, if you are an emerging musician or an experienced musician I’d love to hear from you!

The second music video from the Calypso project, ‘One Day’ is now out! You can see it here: www.audiovisability.com.

Ruth Montgomery is a deaf musician, music teacher and founder of Audiovisability.

www.RuthMontgomery.co.uk