Patricia M. Bissell
Around the turn of the century, this unique African-American music and poetry art form was born. It was more than just music and poetry about feeling “blue,” “low,” or “troubled” coming from the African American culture, as commonly defined. The philosophy of the blues is a universal one—by confronting your situation, sharing your troubles with others, and being self-reliant in learning to deal with your problems, you have learned how to live; you have become a hero, so to speak. The improvisation of lyrics and music with style and flexibility in this art form addressees the pain of discrimination, oppression and personal discontent.
Through readings in prose and poetry, I learned to more fully appreciate the philosophy of the blues, which has given me greater perspective and depth of understanding of this art form.
Cane,
by Jean Toomer, (2) is a literary masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance from the early part of this century which is part drama, part poetry and part fiction. In a contemporary criticism of this book it is said that “the difference between the possibility of black life and the reality of black life is the blues. Yet the blues idiom itself celebrates life; it celebrates the will to endure and the necessity of survival, to keep on keeping on.”(3) In this book, a character named Kabnis is tortured as he confronts his problems of being a northern teacher in the South; he is one of them, yet set apart from them. He gives intellectual expressions to the burdens of oppression and persecution through descriptions of his personal pain and dialogues with his friends. In a book by Gwendolyn Brooks (4), a woman by the name of Maud Martha had to confront poverty, an unsatisfactory social life and the feeling of being trapped. She did this by being thankful for little things, such as the dandelions in his yard, or freeing a mouse from a trap; she used her imagination to cope with a distressing reality.
My unit is for fourth grade students in the Martin Luther King and Lincoln Bassett elementary schools in New Haven who are mostly materially disadvantaged African Americans. They need to become knowledgeable about their African American heritage in order to develop more self-esteem and pride. As they learn about, and participate in, various African and African American experiences in poetry and music that are a part of the blues, they will increase their knowledge of geography, historical events, contributions of musical performers, vocabulary associated with this art form and most important, a relevant philosophy of life.
In addition, many of the nine national music standards, part of the legislation of America’s schools 2000, are addressed through this unit. These include: standard a) singing alone, and with others, a varied repertoire of music, b) performing a varied repertoire on instruments, c) improvising melodies, variations and accompaniments, d) composing and arranging within specified guidelines, e) listening to, analyzing and describing music, f) evaluating music and music performance, and g) understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.
Students have music two one-half hours per week. Throughout September and October, my strategy is to have everyone first read aloud a brief background of a section of the unit (five minutes), and then learn to sing either an African song or African American spiritual or worksong with the accompaniment of at least one African type percussion instrument (twenty minutes). The last five minutes will be an oral assessment through questions, or visual or written assessment (to be handed out as homework, such as answering questions or expressing text through drawings). The musical elements explored will include singing, playing instruments using particular patterns, the call and response form, syncopation, ostinatos, polyrhythms, and vocal and instrumental improvisations.
From January through March, students will continue to read together a brief historical and musical background (five minutes), and listen to and sing the blues (fifteen minutes). In the second class of the week, they will learn to accompany their singing by playing a sequence of chords in the blues form on the small keyboards, as well as the C major and pentatonic scales and two blues notes (twenty minutes). The last five minutes of each class will incorporate some type of assessment, whether oral, or visual or written homework. Students will write, sing and accompany their own blues verses as a culminating project. The musical elements explored will include singing, playing scales, blue notes and chords on a musical keyboard, vocal and instrumental improvising, and listening to and recognizing instruments, compositional form and various vocal and instrumental performers and styles related to the blues.
Eleven sections comprise this unit. They are:
-
1) African Roots, 2) Spirituals, 3) Work Songs. 4) The Blues, 5) The Classic Blues and Bessie Smith, 6) The Country Blues and Blind Lemon Jefferson, 7) Leadbelly, 8) The Chicago and Urban blues with Muddy Waters and B.B. King, 9) The Blues and Louis Armstrong, 10) The Blues and Duke Ellington, and, 11) Playing and Writing the Blues.
Objective One:
Students will learn the roots of the blues in African culture, and demonstrate or describe the form, instruments, vocal techniques, scale, rhythm and improvisation.
Activity 1:
Students will read about music in African society. (5)
Music is a vital part of African life from the cradle to the grave and covers the widest possible range of expression, including spoken language and all manner of natural sounds. It means poetry, singing, dancing and playing on instruments which is shared by, and serves the whole community. Music marks the special events of life, as well as being a comprehensive preparation for life.
Vocal music is center of such music. The utilization of the voice includes its different qualities obtained by such means as stopping the ears, pinching the nose, vibrating the tongue, and producing echoes. The objective is to translate everyday experiences into living sound. Anyone can sing, and everyone does; it is not a specialized affair. This is the essence of the collective aspect of African music. People perform it everyday of their lives as a confirmation of the importance it has in their society.
A great variety of musical instruments are used, all hand made. Children even make their own instruments at an early age. Instruments, critical to African music, are primarily used to support the spoken or sung language. The xylophone and drum are especially important. Drums are always present in this music, or hand clapping and stamping as a substitute. They are even used to communicate messages from one place to another. The types of drums used differ in construction and techniques from region to region.
African music is structured to promote participation of all peoples, such as in call and response song. Improvisation (to make up as you go along) is encouraged and individual contributions are welcomed; thus from a young age, as children learn traditional songs, they also learn to improvise around these songs, both with their voices and instruments.
Activity 2:
Students will read a definition of improvisation. Selected students will demonstrate improvisation on three African types of percussion instruments—the conga drum, agogo bells, and affouchet, and the pentonic scale on the xylophone.
Activity 3:
Students will learn an African call and response song “Kye Kye Kule” (6) by repeating each short phrase with movement after it is demonstrated by the teacher. It is a very popular motion game played by young children in Ghana. The words do not have specific meaning, and the emphasis is on mastering the traditional movements. A student leader will then sing the call alone, followed by the student response.
Activity 4:
Students will read definitions of ostinatos—short repeated patterns. and polyrhythms—contrasting rhythms heard at the same time. They will then create ostinatos and play them together to create polyrhythms on African type instruments for a musical accompaniment to the African song.
Materials needed:
-
a) Copies of the student group reading and question sheet, b) conga drum, agogo bells, affouchet and xylophone.
Objective Two:
Students will learn the roots of the blues in spirituals, the church music of early African Americans, and demonstrate or describe the form, instruments, vocal techniques, scale, rhythm and improvisation.
Activity 5:
Students will read about the history and musical practice of African-American spirituals.(7)
Slaves were brought from West Africa to the United States from around 1600 to the 1800’s, especially from Senegal, the Guinea coast, the Niger delta, and the Congo. The first expressions of these enslaved peoples in music were limited to the spirituals—church songs, and work songs. As African vocal performance practices included slides, slurs, notes slightly flatted or sharped, whistles, yodels and changes in rhythm and types of sound, when they combined their musical style with the church hymns of white people, a whole new type of music was created—the spiritual.
There was always tension in the words of the spirituals, and, despite the troubles they faced and the wish to leave, the early African Americans expressed an affirmation of life in that there was always a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The spirituals were a striving for humanity in a society of oppression and racial hatred For example, in the spiritual “This Little Light of Mine,” (8) the hope of people was symbolized by a light that was going to shine or endure through the pain of the black experience in this society. Improvising the music as a solo singer or collectively with the group was a way through by which each person could express his or her joys and sorrows, and somehow get the courage and strength to make it through. The music united them as a community. and gave them power; the music was functional in their life, as in their home in Africa.
The African American tradition of singing these spirituals was in a cappella (without instrumental accompaniment) style using the pentatonic or five tone scale, commonly used in Africa. As a part of congregational hymn singing, the call and response form that was used would include a proposition or call by a lead singer, with the congregation responding to the soloist in the same convincing tone, mood and emotion. A strong beat was kept throughout the singing. Each singer would be encouraged to improvise to better express the lyrics, and improvisation was collective—a group of singers simultaneously asserted itself within a group. There was space for innovation; this caused a healthy competition. Foot stomping and clapping with up beat tempos were sometimes used in this religious music.
The philosophy and style of this singing as a powerful and unique expression of early oppressed African Americans provided the roots for the later blues and jazz.
Activity 6:
Students will read a definition of syncopation—shifting the rhythmic accent to a normally weak beat of music, and sing a cappella the familiar spiritual “This Little Light of Mine,” (8) with clapping on the second and fourth beats of the measure to demonstrate this element, important in African rhythm. They will tell what the words mean to them.
Activity 7:
Students will improvise the pentatonic scale on small xylophones.
Activity 8:
Students will learn to sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,”(9) as well as other spirituals. Students will sing each phrase after it is modeled by the teacher, and then sing the whole spiritual. A selected student will sing the verses in an improvised style, followed by the group singing the response “Comin’ for to carry me home.”
Activity 9:
Students will create their own African American music book by having a page for the words of each spiritual with questions to answer, and a space to draw a picture to accompany such words, such as shown in a sample lesson. They will tell how these peoples expressed hope and joy in a difficult situation.
