This class will explore the history of the blues and culminate in the students’ creating lyrics and a standard blues progression for their own blues tune. Slaves’ work songs, spirituals, and early Appalachian music, all of which intermingled or influenced each other, will all be explored both as expressive cultural vehicles and as musical forms. The students, many of whom are bilingual and challenged by written expression, will also explore the emotional concept of “feeling blue” with attention to semantic range to amplify literacy and, I hope, compassion. What is sad? Why did the blues emerge from the African American culture in particular? How do we use songs to express what cannot be directly discussed?
Above, the students act out stanzas from “Conversation with Death,” an Appalachian spiritual. Creating physical tableaus helped the kids to immediately internalize the meaning of the lyrics whether or not they were challenged by English, and also to consider the very powerful message of those lyrics.
Below, a student’s journal reponse after listening to “Po’ Lazarus”, a 1950s field recording of a prison work crew singing in call-and-response style while working. The children were asked to consider: what might the lyrics of this piece (concerning a confrontation between an outlaw, Lazarus, and a deputy charged with capturing him dead or alive) indirectly convey about the prisoners’ perspective on incarceration? How does this compare with a slave work song, “Hoe, Hannah, Hoe”, also sung in call-and-response style? What kinds of situations and feelings lead to these kinds of songs?
Manny is extremely bright, I think even gifted. He consistently makes observations and connections that are sophisticated, empathic, and ahead of his classmates. I hope that our work will provide him with the extra challenge he may need to stay engaged.
Ruth is highly intelligent and seems to grasp concepts quickly and completely,
In this assignment, students were asked to find a newspaper article that was
somewhere on the “sadness continuum” and to explain in a short essay why they
found it sad. This was in preparation for a blues songwriting assignment: students, when asked what made them blue, seemed to equate sadness solely with tragedy. I hoped that choosing articles would demonstrate that there was a wide range of “sadness” in the world, as well as many synonyms for “sad” appropriate to discussion of those topics. I found out later through their classroom teacher that many of the students were experiencing challenging, indeed tragic, personal circumstances.