My most important objective is simply to expose my students to this material., to proffer food not just for thought, but a feast for all of the senses as well. And they can gobble, nibble, taste test, digest, just look, just listen, or whatever combination suits them.
I hope that they will come away from the life stories of the Blues women with a sense of the glorious and indomitable nature of the human spirit. I hope that they will recognize some aspect of themselves in these stories, and see themselves as courageous and resilient. Although this unit deals with an African American experience, I hope that it is the human experience that emerges above all . These stories can be owned by all of the students, a source of pride, inspiration, and hope. It would be wonderful if, when taken as a whole, the presentation and the activities serve to broaden the picture of slavery to include some of the positive aspects of this moment in history, because it is healthy to understand that life experiences are rarely entirely bleak or entirely happy.
I hope that the students will come away from this presentation with the following, as well:
Again, I come full circle in stating that my desire is not to force feed, but to simply serve a nutritious meal. Bon Apetit!
Actor #2
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live in it
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Actor # 4
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wash in it
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Actor # 3
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icd even smell it
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Actor # 5
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wear sound on my fingers
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Actor # 6
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sound falls All: so fulla music
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ya cd. make a river where yr arm is &
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hold yrself
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Actor # 2
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hold yrself in a music
(Slides and music out.)
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Actor # 6
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You are gathered here to listen to some WONDER-full stories about some African American women who lived in music . . .
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Actor # 4
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They all lived in music called the Blues. Has anyone here ever heard of the blues?
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(encourage audience response here)
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Actor # 5
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Well, all of us, those who have heard of the Blues as well as those who haven’t, are in for a DEE-licious experience. Everyone loves a good story. And these are good ones.
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Actor# 6
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We are going to tell our stories with your help, because the listeners are an important part of the telling. So, gather round, eyes, ears, and hearts open . . .
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All
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And let the telling begin.
(As actors say this line, they take their seats on the stools. Live or taped drumming begins here, as well as slides depicting scenes of African life and Art.)
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Actor # 2
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The Blues has its deep roots in Africa where music played a vital and integral role in every aspect of life—birth songs, naming songs, planting songs.
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(There is a pause here as the music plays and the slides are viewed.
)
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History, traditions and daily life were all expressed in song—even the language was musical. The blues were an expression of the rich, often painful African American experience which began with slavery
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(the African slides and the drumming end here, abruptly. A slide depicting middle passage is shown here.)
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Actor # 6
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The Blues emerged from the shouts, hollers and the Spirituals of the peoples of Africa who had been brought here against their wills to be sold into slavery.
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(Tapes of shouts and hollers begin here, as well as slides of plantation life.)
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Actor # 3
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The shouts and hollers which had their origins in West Africa became the slaves work songs. The rhythms helped the workers to endure hard days in the hot sun. Have any of you ever found that music helps you to get through some thing difficult ? Homework? Housework? Exercise?
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Actor # 2
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Because music had always played such an important role in the lives of these African peoples, you can understand how it is that they brought their music along
in
them. The music always expressed
who
they were.
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Actor #4
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It was soul music.
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Actor # 5
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The Spirituals, or sorrow songs were religious in nature, songs in which the African Americans sang the pain of captivity and the sustaining belief in a God who would relieve their suffering by taking them “ home” to heaven.
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(Hollers tape ends here , slides pause here on one poignant image . . . perhaps a face )
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Listen to the words of a famous spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
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Actor # 7
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(sung)
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Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,
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Coming for to carry me home
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Swing low, Sweet Chariot,
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Coming for to carry me home.
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Actor #4:
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Many of you may remember the line from the Negro spiritual made famous by Martin Luther King: “Free at las’, free at las’; Thank God Almighty I’m free at las’!”
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Actor #5:
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These songs took the form of African call—and—response style singing and story telling where the singer or story teller would interact with the audience. It made the experience more alive and exciting.
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Actor #3:
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Have any of you experienced the call-and-response relationship in your churches, in the dialogue between the preacher and the congregation?
(preaching)
Brothers and Sisters, it is a soul- stirring, foot-stomping, joy-filled experience. Can I hear a Amen?!
(to audience)
Can I hear a Amen?
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(encourage audience response) All right now!
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(Actor # 3
should feel free to improvise with the audience).
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Actor #2
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Let’s begin our stories with Mahalia Jackson, one of the most beloved interpreters of the spiritual who ever lived.
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(Slides of Mahalia. Tape of Mahalia singing begins under intro. Actor #1 moves to platform L. Puts on costume piece, eg choir robe.)
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Actor #4
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Mahalia was born in 1911 in New Orleans. Even as a child she lived in music. At home it was only religious music, per order of her daddy, a minister.
Monologues are excerpted from Mahalia’s autobiography,
Movin’ on Up). (2)
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Actor #1
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“Those people had no choir and no organ. They used the drum, the cymbal, the tambourine, and the steel triangle. Everybody in there sang and they clapped and stomped their feet and sang with their whole bodies. They had a beat, a powerful beat, a rhythm we held on to from slavery days, and their music was so strong and expressive it used to bring the tears to my eyes.”
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Actor# 5
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Mahalia moved to Chicago in 1928, founded a singing group, the Johnson Gospel Singers, then went solo, supporting herself as a laundress. Her first record, “God Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares”, was not a hit, but Mahalia had a dream to anoint the world with her soul lifting music. She saved her money and opened Mahalia’s Beauty Salon and House of Flowers so she could chase that dream. In 1946 her determination paid off. Her recording of “I Will Move On Up a Little Higher” sold 2 million copies. The rest is herstory: concerts, film, the Ed Sullivan Show, Carnegie Hall, a European tour, both a local radio and TV show on CBS.
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Actor #6
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All of her success could not get Mahalia over, around, or through the walls of segregation in the South or in the North. She was threatened when she sought to buy a house in a white neighborhood in Chicago. She bought it anyway. But perhaps her music could help chip away at the walls. She became a civil rights activist in the late 1950’s. In 1963 she sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for the march on Washington for jobs and freedom.
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Actor #4
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Mahalia went back to God in 1972. Not only hadn’t she disgraced her parent’s memory, but she had graced the world with the music which was her life.
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Actor #1
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“I make two kinds of gospel records—one for Negroes who like to tap their feet, and ones who like religious songs sung for them. But I would never sing a song to be laughed at or to help sell a bottle of whiskey!
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I tried to give it the way I felt, and most of the time I felt real good.”
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Actor #6
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Through Mahalia, the spiritual revealed the resilient soul of her people, their deeply rooted spirituality: a spirituality which wasn’t a one day-Sunday thing, but a twenty-four seven thing.
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Actor #3
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So the blues emerged from this rich, rich heritage—distinctly African and African American—taking on a life and form of its own.
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Actor #5
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The blues are about taking what life dishes out and then dealing with it.
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Actor #3
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The blues are not about giving in and giving up, but about gettin’ on with it; about getting a lemon and making lemonade.
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Actor #2
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Just singing the blues made the singers and the audience feel better, less alone.
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Actor #4
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The pattern of the blues often goes something like this.
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(Singing in his/her best blues voice, and playing guitar if possible. Words flash on screen.)
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A. I got the homework blues cause I ain’t close to through.
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A. I got the homework blues cause I ain’t close to through.
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B. “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is on and I don’t know what to do.”
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Actor #6
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The first two lines are the call, and the third line is the response. Those three lines are called a stanza, and that pattern is often, but not always, repeated throughout the song. You would think this structure would limit the singer, but when he/she finished improvising, the song never sounded the same way twice.
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Actor #2
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In the 1920’s, when the blues began its rise in popularity, the black woman had her own reasons for singing them.
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Actor #4
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Being black And female in a racist, sexist society was a double whammy! Stop for a moment and imagine the frustration of this situation . . . do you think much has changed since then?
(Actor #2 takes her place at platform L. Puts on costume piece.)
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Actor #3
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Sojourner Truth’s famous speech made at a convention center in Ohio in 1852, expressed some of the frustrations still felt by women some 70 years later.
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Actor #2
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“That man over there says women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place. And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as any man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children., and seen most sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
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“Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [Intellect, someone whispers.] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negro’s rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?
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“Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
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If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
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Obliged to you for hearing me and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.”
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Actor #3
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(Slides of Bessie Smith shown throughout.)
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The blues woman who became a spokesperson for her sisters and earned the title Empress of the Blues, was Bessie Smith. She put their feelings of lost love, hard times, invisibility, and loneliness into words and music which they could relate to.
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Actor #4
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Bessie had a full, rich voice but what packed them in wasn’t a voice that could shatter glass, (Langston Hughes once said you could hear Bessie up AND down the street!), but a voice that could break a heart. She sang it how she felt it!
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Actor #6
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She wanted the world to know that a woman’s pain was real, that it counted.
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Actor #2
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But that a woman’s STRENGTH was real too! Her ‘story singing’ seemed to reach down and call forth the stamina and grace which mother Africa had planted there.
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Actor #3
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This big, beautiful, brown woman holding forth, in her silks, satins and tiaras, transformed the often painful life of the African American woman into something glamorous and graceful without losing any of its grit and gumption.
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Actor #4
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Bessie’s blues celebrated survival, survival with dignity and flair.
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Actor #5
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For a magic moment, when those lights went down, the cares of the day fell away and the captivated audience became empresses too. And rightly so.
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Actor #3
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The spiritual music form, the blues music form, plus a few other key ingredients produced jazz. This is where Lady Day makes her entrance, but first . . .
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(puts on chef’s hat, gets props from prop table and returns to his stool.)
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