Seeing Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music (Oxford Studies in Music Theory)

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 Voices: Analyzing Sign Language Music, author Anabel Maler argues that music is best understood as culturally defined and intentionally organized movement, rather than organized sound.This re-definition of music means that sign language music, rather than being peripheral or marginal to histories and theories about music, is in fact central and crucial to our understanding of all musical expression and perception.Sign language music teaches us a great deal about how, when, and why movement becomes mu