A four-piece Japanese rock band with three members who have impaired hearing has marked 35 years since it began performing music expressed also through sign language.
To keep rhythm for their performances, the three members feel the vibrations of the music. Masaaki Kimura, 55, the band's leader and guitar player, says, "We want to show listeners that you can enjoy music in your own way."
The band, Bright Eyes Super-Duper, was formed in Nagoya in May 1989, shortly after Yoshifusa Narita, 59, the drummer and sole member without any hearing loss, began working as a teacher at Aichi Prefectural Nagoya School for the Deaf. Kimura, then one of Narita's students, expressed his wish to launch a music club.
Kimura and Tomohisa Yamamoto, 52, the bass player, have serious hearing loss and are unable to hear the sounds of conversations. They watch the movements of the drummer and feel the vibrations of the music to maintain rhythm during their performances.
The vibrations of the drum and the bass are all the more important for vocalist Shunsuke Suzuki, 53, because he wears a head microphone and stands with his back to the other members as he sings while translating songs into sign language.
"They feel sensations totally different from hearing. They feel the sounds of the music using the whole body, not the ears," Narita explained.
During a live concert in Nagoya last month, Bright Eyes Super-Duper was the only rock band performing with sign language among the 10 participating groups, which played before an audience of around 30.
The band's fast-paced and powerful performance overwhelmed members of the crowd, who were united as they expressed words such as "friend" in sign language during a performance of "Sign Love," a song about sign language.
Following the performance of five original songs, the band members won a storm of applause, including some in sign language.
Tokunori Furuyama, 60, the organizer of the concert, said, "I was strongly impressed to see how they feel vibrations to keep rhythm and sing songs."
Kimura once gave up playing the guitar when he was a junior high school student. But he decided to keep making efforts after he was moved by a performance by renowned singer Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi that he watched on a music program several years later.
"It doesn't matter whether I can hear or not. I can play the guitar because I made efforts," Kimura said. "I hope our audiences will remember us when they meet with obstacles."
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