Sign language interpreter who signed along to Stormzy at Glastonbury, to make music accessible to deaf members of the audience, goes viral
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A video of a sign language interpreter signing along to Stormzy during his headline set at Glastonbury on Friday night has gone viral.
Tara Asher is one of the volunteer sign language interpreters working at the festival this year and was put in charge of signing along for the grime artist’s acclaimed performance to the deaf fans in attendance.
Grime is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged in London in the early 2000s. It developed out of earlier UK electronic music styles, including UK garage and jungle, and draws influence from dancehall, ragga, and hip hop.
As a specialist in grime music, she was the perfect fit for the role and her amazing interpretation of Stormzy’s smash hit ‘Shut Up’ has earned her a lot of love and praise after the BBC‘s entertainment correspondent, Colin Paterson, shared it on Twitter.
Only 4 British Sign Language interpreters in the UK are specialists in Grime. Tara Asher signed Stormzy’s Glasto set for deaf festival goers. She rehearsed each song for a day. This is joyous. She LOVES her job. Have a watch please. @BritishSignBSL@deafzone1#glastonbury19pic.twitter.com/OkeW9irIoG
— 📻 Colin Paterson 📺 (@ColinGPaterson) June 29, 2019
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live before Stormzy’s performance, Asher explained the amount of work and preparation that goes into her job.
A lot of preparation work goes into all performance interpreting. For me, I spend probably approximately a day per song translating it.So before I come here, I print out set lists, try and work out what songs they’re going to play, stalk them a bit on the internet and find out what’s happening.
She also confirmed that the interpreters have to sign any of the artists chat with the audience between songs too.
So we make sure that everything is accessible to deaf people, chat, crowd participation, when they say ‘everybody over here scream, everybody over there scream.’So then it’s kind of an overall experience of being part and parcel of a festival.
