Martyn Kenyon: Life as a deaf sign singer and performing alongside George Ezra (BSL)

My name is Martyn Kenyon. I am profoundly Deaf, from a hearing family. I wear two hearing aids and I use speech and British Sign Language.

For the last 8 years, I have worked as a Communication Support Worker with Deaf children at mainstream schools. Working with Deaf children has been a passion of mine since leaving college.

Another passion of mine is music. Growing up in a hearing family, enabled me to be surrounded by music, whether it’s a radio or CD/Cassette playing at home, in the car, etc. You would often find me watching music video of certain artists.

I first started signing songs when I was a teenager with my mum to help her to learn sign language and it grew from there. Over time, I developed it more into BSL structure for Deaf audiences. After watching some cringeworthy sing signing attempts on YouTube, I decided to post a few of my own.

Fast-forward 8-years after a few invites to sign at weddings, events, small gigs and festivals and more YouTube videos, I was asked to join a Deaf choir, Unify – the only all Deaf Sign Performers, which went onto perform at the Queen’s Jubilee and the King’s Coronation.

The challenges I face as a Deaf Sign performer begin with most importantly not always having a quality sound system. Also, last minute changes to songs or not being given and not being given enough time to prepare/rehearse makes it difficult. I overcome these by having sound checks in advance of the performance and having constant contact with the organisers.

My first live performance was at Deaf friends’ wedding, then went onto small gigs & Blackpool Pride. My biggest solo live performance to date has been at Lytham Festival in July this year. With all these, I felt extremely honoured and proud of myself that my talent had been recognised. I wanted to share it with the Deaf community.

In 2019 Cuffe & Taylor contacted the director of a local interpreting agency, CoSign, asking to provide a signer to translate for Lytham Festival 2020. I was chosen to perform. Unfortunately, due to Covid19 it was cancelled.

3 years later, I was asked again if I would be interested in translating songs for George Ezra. Of course I said yes! I was overjoyed but also realised there would be lots of work to be done. I researched George’s set list and started listening, translating to BSL then started rehearsing 11 songs daily for the next 8 months.

The performance, from us both, was phenomenal. Luckily, George stuck to his set list and the sound system was brilliant. The crowd was very delighted to see a BSL signer.

Social media, local newspapers and local radio were mentioning the BSL signer (and the moves) at the festival. Sadly, I didn’t get the chance to meet George face to face but at the end of his performance, I did get double thumbs up.

I absolutely think there should be more Deaf performers. Organisers need to be more aware that there are Deaf performers out there and to stop choosing hearing over Deaf. The challenges can be easily overcome by making small adjustments for Deaf performers. I feel that the organisers believe that working with Deaf performers, in the music industry, would be too difficult, so they don’t try.

As a Deaf person who is a lover of music, I access by reading lyrics to memorise the words and watch the music videos to see the artist’s body language/emotions.

For music to be more accessible, we need more Deaf performers with some assistant from an interpreter. We need more festivals, live gigs & music events to have a Deaf sign performer.

For me, I would love to have more opportunities to perform for well known artists and possibly tour with them. Getting my name out there to encourage more Deaf communities to get involved and hopefully embrace music in their life.

You can follow Martyn on his YouTube channel here.