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Deaf March - London, 2001
Sometimes, just sometimes you end up playing at a legally sanctioned occasion like the deaf march, and sometimes, when that happens, you're glad you did. This march was to draw attention to the fact that British sighn Language is not legally recognised as a language, with the implications being that in this country profoundly deaf people do not have the right to translators during court cases. And it's an insult, of course. My mum was deaf, and I know how marginalised she was.
We arrived at the meeting point at Manet Street to find a decent crowd by any standard, a nice mix of people, some wearing costume, lotsa banners, and as I strapped into my drum, I caught many wicked glances and enthusiastic sighned exhortations to PLAY HARD. Of course, we kept everyone waiting as usual, the faff involved in getting a large street band together and running can be as awesome as the sound.
And we're off! To the sound of a million football whistles we get moving. And do these high-energy people know how to party? You betcha skinny ass! When you get a bunch of people dancing like there's no tomorrow, there's nothing like it to make you play as hard and fast as you can go. I glance up and see a group of dressed-to-impress dancers punching the air from the top of some weird piece of street furniture, at my side there are several more, grinning widely. I see everywhere the beautiful language of the deaf - not many people can hold conversations while standing right next to us. We sweep around the Aldwych and into the Strand, not feeling tired yet, really kicking as we give the tourists and shoppers a good reason to be in that place at that time. Our mestre tujours knows how to build a sound, and keeps it low and understated, almost a whisper till we are completely round the corner and within sight of Trafalgar square.... Then BAM, he pulls us all into a dizzying blast of sound and the dancers go wild, and so do we. On the pavements the familiar sight of dazed shoppers blinking like moles in our aural sunlight, some are even moved to enjoy this break from their heads down consumerfest.
And so we party on down the road, to that traditional old agitators stomping ground Trafalgar Square, where energy is either dissipated (in boring old speeches) or released (in invigorating riots). So what now? Usually we would play one more tune at this point, and the dancers, now gyrating wildly at the foot of Nelson's column, are beckoning and pleading for more. But look! No one else is paying us any attention; all around us is a weirdly silent and hugely animated sea of conversation. The buzz is tangible, if not audible. We put down our drumsticks.
I became aware that everyone was looking towards a woman stood at the foot of the column where the dancers had been. She seemed to be the first speaker for the day, although as a hearing person it was at first hard to tell what was going on. It was a fascinating reversal, the first few minutes of speech being purely in sign language gave a slight sense of how it feels to not be able to access what everyone else takes for granted, of being the minority. Suddenly, a spoken word translator appeared and hearing and deaf alike were told the tales of those who are fighting to get their language accepted as real. Every so often a silent cheer rippled through the crowd as hands were thrown upwards in agreement. There was enthusiastic vocal cheering too of the kind you rarely hear at demos - the passion of the occasion was infectious.
So there we were, with all this excess energy, a fabulous crowd and a cause to die for. A group of protestors approached us with a proposition we just couldn't refuse...
As the last speech ended, those of us with energy to spare strapped on our drums and got ready. Casually, we stepped out into the fierce traffic to the south of the square, and began to play. The police made desultory attempts to push us onto the pavement, but got drowned in a sea of dancers, and where could they send us where we wouldn't cause worse disruption? At last, the unplanned for, the unofficial, the spontaneous moment had arrived. Tourists trapped on open topped buses cheered us on. Others, eager to know the score were informed of our reason to be there, of the police brutality shown to deaf protestors at other demo's, and the crowd closed in protectively as we played.
Then the (for me) most beautiful moment arrived. A couple of our long-suffering mestres are frequently misunderstood by random drunks, who don't understand that all that arm waving serves an actual purpose. They try to join in too - and they can't. However, our new friends had clocked pretty quickly that the mestres were communicating with us in some kind of sign language, and it didn't take long before they could speak it too. At one point the whole crowd behind the mestre were counting us into the breaks, and when he realised what was going on, he turned the band over to the crowd.
That was magic I won't forget in a hurry!
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