I recently went to an Ani DiFranco concert. She’s been a constant in Veronica’s life since the 90s and now I’m a huge fan too. We’ve seen her on a few tours but this time, I was nervous. It was my first concert after the latest series of ear infections, which left me with a much narrower range of hearing. I didn’t know if I would go and be unable to get anything out of the night and if it would be too emotionally draining to be there, unable to recognise songs that I love.

At the same time, I didn’t want to miss seeing her with Veronica. Lack of accessibility for deaf people prevents us from doing a lot of things that we used to share. It’s hard on me to be out and detached from what’s going on; it’s hard on her to always be out on her own. So, of all the things coming up in 2025, going to this gig was a priority.

I’ll look back on that night as a pivotal one for the rest of my life because that’s when I came to understand the shape of music.

Music played directly through hearing aids via Bluetooth is distorted, squeezed into the frequencies that are amplified, and regardless of whether that amplifies the bass, middle or treble, it sounds hollow due to the speaker quality. Ambient music usually fares slightly better, but can still have a thin quality. The better the speakers on the television, record player, etc., the more chance the music will have some body, but it’s still distorted because of the settings on the hearing aids.

However, at a concert, with or without the hearing aids, I found myself enveloped in the music, feeling it more than hearing it. The sounds came borne aloft on waves of chest-vibrating thumping bass and drums: packages of blocky or rounded noises that I felt with my ears and throat. The former weren’t angular or painful, but rather solid, bouncing off my ears, muffled but making an impression. The latter seemed to roll in, like bubbles of mercury, breaking apart, bouncing and collecting in my ear drums. I realised the muffled sounds were the ones outside my range but strength of the speakers was giving them form, while the bubbling sounds were the overlapping impressions of the sounds within my range. I couldn’t understand them the way I used to, as they seemed divorced from their usual companions, but I could feel them all.

I chose to keep my hearing aids on some of the concert and turn them off for some of it, to experience things differently. Thanks to the great acoustics and the impressive speakers at the venue, I could get something regardless. The songs I know and love were still recognisable; the less familiar ones and new ones still made an impression.

The shape of Ani DiFranco’s music: Imagine a controlled flow of waves, coming on the backs of each other, growing and dwindling in recognisable patterns, thumping and resonating against your chest. On their backs, rolling and powerful amorphous forms that wrap around your head and then break into more recognisable bubbles of sound, bursting with occasionally legible words and chords, but always giving the impression of a slightly wild voice full of gravel and instruments allowed to come in and out of control. And occasionally, the impression of something more, a soft blocky shape that bounces past, just giving a sense of its passing.

I’ve been going to concerts since I was 16. They’ve been hugely important to me, marking stages of my life. I’ve been feeling lately like I would had to give them up, that there was no sense in paying the cost of a ticket if I couldn’t fully hear the music. This was the night that taught me I didn’t have to let go of something that was so important to me.

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