Shreya Jain, SME at Edumarz
Evelyn lost her hearing power at the age of eleven. But she didn’t lose hope. She was determined to live a normal life and pursue her passion for music. Although she was discouraged by all her teachers, Ron Forbes, a percussionist, observed her potential. He tuned the drums into two different notes and then asked her to sense it in some other way and not to listen to the tunes with ears.Through this test, she realised that the higher drums she could feel from the waist up and the lower drums from the waist down. Forbes continued the same exercise of drums and Evelyn, due to the exercise, soon discovered that she could sense certain notes in different parts of her body.She mentioned that ‘ I had learned to open my mind and body to sounds and vibrations.’Evelyn feels music entering her body through various parts like hair, skin, and cheekbones. When she plays the xylophone, she feels the sound move from sticks into her fingertips. When drums are played, she can feel resonances flowing through her body. She removes her footwear when performing on a wooden platform so that she can feel the vibrations produced by various instruments pass through her feet up to her legs. Thus, Evelyn has refined her body to music.