Essay: Evelyn Glennie's Journey - Music, Deafness, and Inspiration

This essay explores the life and musical journey of Evelyn Glennie, a renowned Scottish percussionist who has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12. It examines her perspective on music, emphasizing that hearing is a specialized form of touch and that music is a medium within time, encompassing beat, pitch, tempo, and rhythm. Glennie's approach to music focuses on feeling vibrations throughout her body, which allows her to experience and interpret sound. The essay highlights her dedication, the challenges she overcame, and her philosophy that deafness does not limit one's ability to perceive and create music. It also includes the author's personal reflection on Glennie's work, emphasizing the universal and emotional impact of music and the importance of focusing on passion and talent over disabilities. The conclusion underscores the message of perseverance and the power of music to transcend physical limitations.

Running Head: EVELYN GLENNIE 0
Evelyn
Glennie
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EVELYN GLENNIE 1
The movement of social and art work defines music showing sound as a medium within time. It
is linked to the normal components of incorporation consists of beat and pitch for instance. Beat
includes tempo, articulations, meter and rhythm with music’s two dynamics of it being soft or
loud. Evelyn Glennie, Scottish percussionist who was born on 19 July 1965. She suffered from
deafness since age of 12 years but her dedication towards music. Accordingly, there is famous
quote by Glennie saying “Music represents life”. The idea for not providing information to the
audience about her deafness was related to not to fail as a musician. The audience needs to be
entertained no matter what the issues are without discussing about her hearing impairment. The
nature of hearing is different from people taking it as a misconception as they do not understand
it. It is important to understand that ear begins to be inefficient with the very low frequency of
vibration and the touching sense of the body starts to take over. The totally deaf person can even
feel or hear the sounds.
According to Glennie, “Hearing is basically a specialized form of touch”, expressing her view
from deciding to take help and increasing her ability to detect vibrations and managed to counter
the notes regarding rough pitch. It is basic to know that people unable to hear can feel the low
sounds majorly in legs and feet while high sounds on chest, face and neck particularly. She
specified of not being totally deaf but profoundly deaf covering broad aspect of symptoms
considering quality of sound heard being not sufficient enabling to understand the spoken word
from sound individually. Further, it is not necessary that everybody has the same problem
regarding this but in her case, the amount of volume is decreased comparing with basic hearing
where the major concern is of the sound quality being poor. Never think of any problem with a
disadvantage as everything has a backup option with better outcome through learning skills and
getting trained. The reason of it being able to generate electrical signal in ear and other senses to
work on multiple bits transferred to brain to process the data creating a complete image.
“Deafness does not mean that you cannot hear, only that there is something wrong with the
ears”
The perspective of every individual is different regarding hearing where it is the role of brain to
make a complete image for showing no difference outside. Glennie needs to lip-read for
understanding the speech but her performance and awareness at concerts is brilliant. It is legit
that this problem bothers some people but she never considered it as a problem personally. There

EVELYN GLENNIE 2
is a solution to every problem and so does with her relation to music and hearing but it is basic. It
is essential to understand the people facing problems regarding deafness but it is also important
to make everyone understand for better outcomes and experiences.
According to me, music is like a blank canvas on which an artist can paint the colors of life. This
canvas can be painted to express the emotions of love, lust, pain and joy. It is not a problem but
something not to be worried of. Her song made me realized to ignore the problem as it was a
great experience listening of the songs. The soothing beats helped in relaxing and music the only
thing for making feel everyone a lot better.
Some of the rhythms forced me to groove and forgetting all my problems. This denotes that
deafness is not at all a problem when you are focused to reach where you want to be and it can
be avoided by the audience experiencing the brilliant performance at the concert. I feel music
and my day is incomplete without it so does for every individual. It can be felt, make our senses
work and generates the feeling of relaxation.
Thus, it can be concluded that there is one similarity in between the thought of Evelyn and mine;
it is that music can be felt it needs dedication and passion to understand music. Any sought of
disability or incapacity cannot stop a person from listening music. The people facing this
problem need to be strong enough to ignore all the controversies and focus on the thing they
want to achieve in their lives. The basic motto of this essay is to forget all the disabilities and
encourage the talents by motivating individuals to lead success.