Sean Forbes

D-PAN Interview with WDIV Detroit's Steve Garagiola

http://d-pan.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=145 - WDIV Detroit

Musician Sean Forbes is the creative beat behind expanding Deaf Performing Artists Network.

If you can imagine explaining the color orange to a blind person, you can perhaps understand what Sean Forbes is up against.

Or maybe you can't. Maybe no one understands what it's like to be the profoundly deaf child of musician parents and who grows up to be a musician as well, as Forbes did. His "Soundless" experience of music makes him uniquely qualified to lead and co-found the non-profit Deaf Performing Artists Network, or D-PAN, a group aimed at making music accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing communities.

To read more: http://d-pan.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=144 - Hour Detroit

Sean Forbes isn't waiting on the world to change, he doesn't have any patience.

So the 25 year old hip-hop fan and aspiring musician from Farmington Hills started D-PAN, The Deaf Performing Artists Network, an organization founded to help deaf and hard-of-hearing people make inroads in the entertainment industry. Forbes himself is hard-of-hearing, after suffering permanent hearing loss at age 1.

To read more: http://d-pan.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=143&Itemid=138 - Detroit News

When Sean Forbes sent a video of himself signing the lyrics to Eminem's "Lose Yourself" to Em's publisher Joel Martin several years ago, the video had a dual effect.

Not only did it show that Forbes, a Royal Oak musician who suffered permanent hearing loss at age 1, was an astute performer, but it also conveyed that - using Emimen's lyrics quite literately - the hard-of-hearing could lose themselves in the music too.

To Read more: http://d-pan.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=142 - Detroit News

The girls would smile, and ask for more, and that's when Sean Forbes realized he was on to something good.

The 26-year-old Royal Oak resident, partially deaf since infancy, had a can't-miss party trick: interpreting hit songs for his friends, using sign language to convey lyrics in time to the beat.

To read more: http://d-pan.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=141 - Free Press - Brian McCollum

This piece was shown across the country on CNN and their affiliated networks.

This is Sean's first CNN interview.

View it here: http://d-pan.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=144 - CNN

Sean Forbes is a young musician. He grew up with musical parents and always had his own talent and aspirations in the field. But, Sean just happens to be deaf.

Not letting being deaf stand in the way of his dream, Sean started a non-profit called D-PAN, or Deaf Performing Artists’ Network. It aims to make the music industry and music culture more accessible to the deaf community, namely by making popular music videos ASL (American Sign Language) – enhanced. "When you tell people who aren't familiar with D-PAN that we create music videos for the deaf, they're always taken back. I love the oxymoron of it which is why it's so beautiful,” the 26-year-old says.

Link to article/interview: http://ypwr.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/25/sean-forbes/ - CNN / Nicole Lapin

This Fox 2 news interview was shown across the country right after American Idol.

This will give you the best background information on me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK8PtsL1DU - Fox News / Andrea Isom