“Hands up, if you love family, show me your hands if you is one of we”.
So sings St Vincent and the Grenadines soca sensation Gamal “Skinny Fabulous” Doyle in his verse of this year’s Road March contender “Famalay”.
Well, it appears that the girls of Convent High School (CHS) in Dominica accepted the challenge and did just that.
They performed the song using American Sign Language (ASL).
Their teacher Leandra Lander uploaded a video of their rendition of the song to Facebook on Wednesday and up to Thursday, it was viewed more than 31,000 times.
“We are sensitive there are people who cannot hear so we use our hands,” Lander told Guardian Media in a telephone interview on Thursday.
Lander said when she was studying at the University of the West Indies’ Mona campus in Jamaica she got involved in sign language.
When she returned to Dominica to teach she introduced a Sign Language Club at CHS.
Currently, there are 40 girls in the club.
“Every week we meet to learn vocabulary then we would use music as a way to cement the information in their mind,” Lander said.
“Because if they can start associating words and signs, they can perform it in music which is faster for them to learn,” she said.
“So since then we have done productions, we’ve done plays so they have signed almost every genre by now. We have done Bouyon, Gospel, Classical, the (Dominican) national anthem, the school song, so anything we can get our hands on we sign,” she said.
Lander said the aim of the club was to do more videos this year and get people interested in sign language.
“This year, one of our aims was to do a lot more videos for the public so that people can learn a little thing because often when we go to perform on stage at least one person in the audience should learn one word and be able to sign it out,” she said.
So on Saturday, Lander and girls shot the video for the song.
It took two hours to record.
Lander said the reason she chose “Famalay” was because the song was produced in Dominica by a national named Krishna “Dada” Lawrence.
On Wednesday, she posted the three-minute video with the caption:
“You’ve heard ‘Famalay’ a million times! But here it is in American Sign Language (ASL).
My babies, the CHS Sign Language Club in sign and choreography continues to promote the skill while strengthening the bonds of our family!
UMOJA CHS of DOMINICA continues to build the confidence in our girls!”
Umoja is the Swahili word for “unity”.
Lander said she did not expect the response the video has since gotten.
“I totally didn’t expect this reaction. Because Famalay is so well loved we did expect to go a little far but when I checked it was 18,000 views this morning so I was like ‘wow’,” she said.
While ASL has a grammar of its own Lander said the video was done as “direct sign as we speak”.
Lander said the most gratifying thing for her since the formation of the CHS Sign Language Club is when her students talking say they have been able to communicate with hearing impaired persons.
Lander said the video was 90 per cent ASL and also included special choreography.
Two of T&T’s most easily recognisable soca artistes Machel Montano and Ian “Bunji Garlin” Alvarez also sing Famalay.