music
feel the rhythm
Music writer Anthea Skinner
discovers a music therapy program
for children who are DeafBlind.
“Imagine living with 95 per cent their surroundings. They may think
sensory loss on a daily basis. that the environment is so small,”
Imagine every time you use your explains Justin, “Clarisa does not
senses, you miss out on 95 per know that a very big world exists…
People who are DeafBlind have a cent of the information flow to the We want to get her curious about
combination of vision and hearing brain… Clarisa’s brain is fine but her surroundings.”
loss. DeafBlind children often she has an ‘information disability.’”
experience delays in communication,
Music is a great way to encourage
motor skills and socialisation. Music The effect of DeafBlindness as this curiosity. DeafBlind children
therapy and music education can an ‘information disability’ is far appreciate music through any
assist in the development of these reaching, especially for children residual hearing or sight that they
skills, helping to bring the outside who, like Clarisa, are born may have, as well as by feeling the
world to children who often struggle DeafBlind and who have little, if any vibrations cause by sound waves.
with isolation. residual sight or hearing. Children who are DeafBlind often struggle At one year old, Clarisa Vollmar is
In Link’s October 2014 issue we to acquire language. Unable to just beginning her musical journey.
discussed some of the issues facing hear or see people speaking or Last year her family were donated a
deaf people in accessing music. signing around them, they rely on Subpac, a tactile audio system which
Depending of their level of hearing direct tactile communication, such translates music into vibrations.
impairment, DeafBlind people as tactile sign language, to learn to Subpacs are just one of a number
may hear little, if any, of the music communicate. DeafBlindness can of technologies designed to amplify
itself, but they are also cut off from also cause delays in motor control vibrations without amplifying sound.
the visual aspects of performance. and socialisation because children The most simple of these are
Unable to see musical instruments, do not reach out in response to soundboards, large, hollow wooden
or the people playing them, a objects and people that they are boards which transmit vibrations
DeafBlind person receives little unable to see or hear. “DeafBlind to anyone sitting or lying on them.
information on the way sound is babies may not know much about Unlike soundboards, which are
made or music is produced.
Justin Vollmar’s one-year-old
daughter, Clarisa, was born
DeafBlind. Justin, who is Deaf
himself, explains some of the
barriers his daughter faces in
learning to understand the world
around her: “The brain receives 70
per cent of information through the
seeing sense. The brain receives 25
per cent of information about the
world through the hearing sense.
Smell, taste and feel accounts for
only five per cent.
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music
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