Annie Clark's Silent Songs
by Ed SwanzeyThe band is playing a stomper! banjos, guitars and fiddles whalin' away You're tapping your toes and snapping your fingers. You came to this concert to hear the band, but realize you're not watching it. Your attention is fixed on the graceful, attractive woman who is singing with movement. Her performance is like a dance, incorporating hand movements, body language1 and facial expressions. You realize that here is a dimension to music you have never experienced before. You can't help but be moved by it. Annie Clark is singing to you in American Sign Language.
Annie is multi-talented: she plays several instruments, paints, sculpts, and loves to cook. She has an open, engaging smile and teaches at a local College. She has recorded two albums of original music, and sells every piece of stained-glass art she makes, but she feels these are not her most important achievements. Her main contribution is yet to come, that of creating better understanding between people. She wants to help an unnoticed minority, the deaf and hard-of-hearing, to join into the American mainstream. She will do it in part with music.
Her eyes light up when she talks about her subject. "Deaf people enjoy music just as much as hearing people do. They can feel the vibrations and sense pitch. They understand rhythm, and love loud music". She adds that some can even perform music1 that she had once played at a jam with a deaf flute player. He was able to determine the key of the music by touching the scroll of the fiddle, and could recognize chords. She feels that more opportunities can be made for the deaf to participate in music. "I want to make it more accessible for them all," she said.
She first encountered sign language at a show in which she had played the fiddle. After the performance, a deaf young woman came backstage with her mother, to learn more about AnnieTs playing. "We talked together, and the mother interpreted for us," she said. "I played my fiddle for her, and let her touch it to feel the vibrations. Then I put it under her chin, and let her play it." It was a moving experience for Annie, and she later wished she had been able to communicated more directly with the young woman.
Her commitment to communicating with the deaf began at a program she attended in British Columbia. At this program, sign language interpreters were working on stage with the performers. "It seemed they were beautiful!"she told me. "I was seeing into the deaf culture, and I was being invited in." She quickly found herself involved with the problems encountered by the deaf and hard-of-hearing in a society that can hear, which led her to study American Sign Language. Naturally, nature took its course, and soon she had found a way to put sign language and music together.
Annie has performed at many festivals, fairs, and concerts, and has appeared on television. her appearances have drawn raves from both musicians and audiences. Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary, said of her perfor- mance: "beautiful!" Audience members have often told her how she has given the music new meanings. Every one of her newspaper reviews has been a rave, something that almost no performer encounters during his or her career This is a result of the uniqueness of her performance.
There are other people who sign at musical events, but unlike most, Annie does not interpret by hand-movements alone. It's like an elegant dance. She's not just signing the words, but pulling the audience into the whole music with her body and facial expressions. During the breaks between lyrks, she gently moves with the music, hands at rest gently flowing her body with the rhythm.
Annie Clark will sign at this year's Port Townsend Blues Festival in June, and at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, at Centrum, in July She may also be featured at several not-as-yet scheduled events. To find out when her next performance will be, call the Centrum Foundation, (360) 385-3120.
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