A Guide Through the Culture of the Blues
Sloan Edward Williams III
Your feedback is important to us!
After viewing our curriculum units, please take a few minutes to help us understand how the units, which were created by public school teachers, may be useful to others.
Lesson Three
-
Call: “WHO IS THE GUIDE” By Sloan Williams
-
Response: THE GUIDE IS WHO
-
All: CALLING UP THE GUIDE TO THE CULTURE OF THE BLUES
-
Call: I CAN HEAR THE GUIDE COMING DOWN THE RAILROAD TRACKS SOUNDING
-
Response: STOMP, CLACKA CLACKA CLACKA STOMP, CLACKA CLACKA CLACKA
-
Call: THE TRAIN’S BOUN NORTH WILL THE GUIDE BE COMIN BACK SOUNDING
-
Response: STOMP, CLACKA CLACKA CLACKA STOMP, CLACKA CLACKA CLACKA Call: “WHO IS THE GUIDE”
-
THE GUIDE IS WHO
-
CALLING UP THE GUIDE
-
TO
-
THE CULTURE OF THE BLUES
-
I CAN SEE THE GUIDE
-
STANDING BY THE YOUNG OAK TREE
-
JUSTA SHAVIN THAT WOOD DOWN
-
TI’L IT’S THIN AS IT COULD BE
-
MAKIN CHAIRS FROM THE SHAVINS
-
MAKIN BASKETS FROM THE SHAVINS
-
“WHO IS THE GUIDE”
-
THE GUIDE IS WHO
-
CALLING UP THE GUIDE
-
TO
-
THE CULTURE OF THE BLUES
-
THE GUIDE HAS MADE A QUILT
-
AND THE PATTERNS ARE IN CODE
-
IT TALKS OF MIDDLE PASSAGE
-
AND
-
THE PATH TO FREEDOM TOLD
-
SHHHH WATER
-
STAR WADE
-
“WHO IS THE GUIDE”
-
THE GUIDE IS YOU
-
CALLING UP THE GUIDE
-
TO
-
THE CULTURE OF THE BLUES
Have students break up into small groups. Students can add movement, or have solos. The first time through, just use words. The group might make up an melody or music as well in the second performance.
OBSERVATIONS:
Ask the class if there are any visual patterns that relate to the poem. Does the first stanza look like a train? Does the second stanza look like a tree? Does the third stanza look like a ship looking down from the top or from the front stern ? What science does the study of the stars come under?
LISTENING SKILLS:
Is there a section of words in the first stanza that sound like railroad tracks?
Student Journal of The Blues Style as it migrated from New Orleans north to New York, My Personal experience with learning how to improvise Jazz and Blues on the viola (using your own experience to teach improvisation), and How to make your own song.
Today’s Homework Assignment:
Date:
Name:
-
WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT THE HISTORY of The Guide to the Culture of the Blues:(5)
-
1. For a home work assignment have students listen to three songs from Wynton Marsalis’s “Blood on the Fields” (#3 you don’t Hear No Drums [have students relate the stomp of the refrain to the use of the ax, pick ax, or hammer for the railroad tracks] (#5 Soul for Sale), and (#7 Work Song * Blood on the Fields*).
-
2. Here is a diagram of a piano pointing to the notes students will use to discover the pentatonic scale (like the Marimba’s keys)
(figure available in print form)
-
____
(the black keys = Pentatonic Scale)
(figure available in print form)
-
3. For a homework assignment have students listen to the Kind of Blue Album by Miles Davis and have them write what feeling does listening to the album evoke?
-
4. The recording of “Leadbelly” is RCA Victor (vintage series—The Midnight Special).
