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PLAY: the recording of “I’ll be good to you” with RAY CHARLES LINING CHAKA KHAN (BACK ON THE BLOCK) OR (THE FILM CLIP THIS SONG’S RECORDING SESSION IN LISTEN UP—THE MANY LIVES OF QUINCY JONES) Quincy Jones.
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Day five: Today we are exploring the use of “Blues” in Literature and learning about the lives of early Blues and Jazz Musicians and Writers at the turn of the Century. Show the 20 minute film clip of “Duke Ellington Swings Through Japan” from the TV show the (20th Century with Walter Cronkite) up to Duke Ellington famous line “We love you Madly”. Have the Class read Page 234 from the Miles Davis Autobiography: “This time I added some other sound I remembered from being back in Arkansas, when we were walking home from church and they were playing these had gospels. So that kind of feeling came back to me and I started remembering what that music sounded like and felt like. That feeling is what I was trying to get close to that feeling had got in my creative blood, my imagination, and I had forgotten it was there. I wrote this blues that tried to get back to that feeling I had when I was six years old, walking with my cousin along that dark Arkansas road.” . . . . . .
Have the class also read from (The Biography of James Baldwin by David Leeming) page 135.
“And when the Narrator observes Sonny playing in the Village he realizes what it is that the artist faces. Here the narrator serves, in effect, as a mouthpiece for Baldwin’s own feelings about the creative process and its cost to the creator:
Sonny moved, deep within, exactly like someone in torment. I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to dill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own.”
While the class is reading, play one selection from Miles Davis “Jack Johnson” and “For Duke (He loved him Madly) three minutes”.(3) (see 3 for home work assignment)
Play for the class, while they write in their journals in the listening skills section “Little Boy” Side One, “Ma Rainey”, and “Get up Blues” Side Three. Also play “Black and Blue” from a recording by Eubie Blake and his friends Edith Wilson and Ivan Harold Browning.
MUSICAL FACTS and CONCEPTS:
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Lining: This is a another form of Call and Response, where the leader will say one line or musical phrase to a group, gathering or church congregation, and the group will repeat the line back exactly the same as the leader in the response to the call.
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Strong Beat: a naturally occurring accented note or sound, such as in a march that has two beats, the first beat would be the strong beat.
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Weak beat: a unaccented note which is in effect from the strong beat; such as the second beat of a march.
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Syncopated Beat: a shift of accent in a passage or composition that occurs when a weak beat is stressed.
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Pentatonic Scale: a Pentatonic Scale is build on all of the Black keys of the piano. Starting with F#, if one were to expand the intervals equally they would stack perfectly into Perfect fifths.
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Sharp Sign: the sharp sign raises the pitch of a note that it is next to by a half-step.
(figure available in print form)
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Flat Sign: lowers the pitch of the note that it is next to by a half step.
(figure available in print form)
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Natural Sign: returns the raised or lowered pitch back to its original pitch.
(figure available in print form)
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Treble Clef: the symbol which is standard clef.
(figure available in print form)
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Bass Clef: the symbol which makes the staff represent the low notes.
(figure available in print form)
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Swing: is a style of playing in Jazz where musicians play notes with a special kind of pulse and feeling that sounds like syncopation on all the notes yet stays in time on the beat.
VOCABULARY WORDS:
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Autobiography: the story of a person’s life written by his or her self. Biography: a written account of a person’s life.
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Jim Crow: words taken from the title of a song popularized by a white “Blackfaced” minstrel—became the term for this segregation based on color.
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Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or symbol is transferred to an object.
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Novel: a fictional prose narrative of considerable length.
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Poem: a composition designed to convey a experience chosen for its sound or suggestive power as well as its meaning.
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Prose: ordinary speech or writing as distinguished from verse.
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Verse: one line of poetry.
SCIENTIFIC FACTS:
The use of the pentatonic scale for tuning the Mariba in Africa suggests that there was an understanding of temperament. If one understands the Harmonic Overtone Series, one would naturally organize evenly spaced intervals [pitches] made of perfect fifths and arrange them so the voice can easily sing them, thus the pentatonic scale.
One of the first recognized Black American Scientists was Benjamin Banneker quote from In our own words Vol. 1 “The writer was Benjamin Banneker, born in 1731 in Maryland. As a young farmer he had shown astonishing mechanical skill when he built a clock out of wooden materials. A Quaker who settled nearby loaned him some books on astronomy and some surveying instruments. Fascinated by the world of mathematics, Banneker was soon able to correct errors in texts and predict a solar eclipse. His genius won him appointment to the commission to plan and survey the new city of Washington. By the 1790’s he was editing a series of almanacs which earned him popular favor at home and abroad.”
