Deaf scholar facinated by Carnival music

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.

The first viewing was in Guyana and the second was in TT in December 2024. The TT showing was during UWI’s SIGN10 conference, which also trained deaf people in the Caribbean on topics like research skills, curriculum design and policy/advocacy.

She also wrote an article looking at how deaf people experience and understand music, which was the theory that inspired the film. She hoped it would be published soon.

Her feedback on the film was that it gave people a lot to think about in terms of deaf involvement in Carnival, and that having a platform for the deaf to talk about their experiences was very positive.

This year, in addition to the Carnival festivities, Snoddon was here for UTT’s 11th Steelpan Carnival Arts Conference at the National Academy for the Performing Arts, Port of Spain from March 6-8. She gave a presentation at the conference with the founder of the Deaf Empowerment and Advancement Foundation, Ian Dhanoolal, about their research on Caribbean deaf epistemology.

“I’m from Canada. In the global north, we have deaf studies that look at what it means to be deaf in this context, what it means to grow up learning sign language, to have access to deaf education, and to have these sorts of resources.

“But when I come here, what it means to be deaf is something different. That’s what I’m learning from deaf Caribbean people – their epistemology, their ways of being and their ways of knowing the world.”

For example, she said her research with Dhanoolal showed that TT’s deaf people participate in Carnival and know about Carnival on a different level than other people.

“This taught me more about what understanding means when it is not based only on sound and language. There are ways of knowing and understanding that are deeper than this.”

In order to feel her research was credible and to learn more about the Caribbean, she began taking courses in Caribbean studies at the Toronto Metropolitan University late last year. Her goal was to learn more about the region and how Caribbean people see the world.