Seeing Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music

We often think of music in terms of sounds intentionally organized into patterns, but music performed in signed languages poses considerable challenges to this sound-based definition. Performances of sign language music are defined culturally as music, but they do not necessarily make sound their only—or even primary—mode of transmission. How can we analyze and understand sign language music? And what can sign language music tell us about how humans engage with music more broadly?

In Seeing ...