Since music is such an integral part of Carnival, one may think deaf people cannot appreciate the festival, but that is a very wrong assumption.
Dr Kristin Snoddon, a deaf scholar, associate professor and graduate programme director with the School of Early Childhood Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, said she had always been fascinated by music and looked for ways to experience and understand it more.
“Because of coming to Trinidad Carnival, I started to think more deeply about the way we (the deaf) experience and orient ourselves to the world. Carnival made me feel like the experiences and knowledge I have of music are valid.”
Snoddon first came to Carnival last year. She explained she had a friend in Toronto who did sign language song translations whose father was deaf and from TT. She loved her friend’s work and became interested in how deaf people relate to music.
She then started reading about TT Carnival. She learned music, community and culture were important aspects of the festival, and she wanted to learn more about the deaf community’s relationship with it.
So last year she came to Trinidad and took part in 3canal’s J’Ouvert celebrations with about four or five other deaf people, and did so again this year with JouvayLove. She also played mas on Carnival Monday in Port of Spain with WeCare Deaf Support Network and Blow Mano Blow Mas for the second year in a row.
Speaking to Newsday at the Queen’s Park Savannah during the Parade of the Bands on Carnival Tuesday, Snoddon said she was tired but invigorated, and loved that everyone was very friendly.
“It was a beautiful experience. My spirit is just feeling so good right now. If I could come here every year, I would. I love Trinidad so much.”
She hoped to play pretty mas one day but was considering attending carnival celebrations in other Caribbean countries.
Snoddon said she experienced music because she could feel the vibrations, especially when standing close to large speakers or music trucks. And her deaf Caribbean friends could sometimes feel the rhythm enough to identify the soca songs.
“The epistemological question around how deaf people know the world and how we know music, there are different kinds of knowledge and different ways of experiencing music. I learned so much about that from deaf Caribbean people – different ways of knowing music, and I think that’s what I wanted my film to showcase.”
According to Britannica, epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature, origin and limits of human knowledge.
Coming out of her experience last year, Snoddon made a short documentary for the deaf in TT and the broader Caribbean deaf community called Deaf People At Trinidad Carnival.
[caption id="attachment_1143171" align="alignnone" width="689"] Lecturer at the Toronto Metropolitan University Dr Kristin Snoddon takes a photo at De Carnival Gallery, Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah, Port of Spain. - Photo by Ayanna Kinsale[/caption]
The first viewing was in Guyana and the second was in TT in December 2024. The
