A link to the resources for all five of the following pieces (including a complete score, parts, Sibelius files, XML/MIDI files and sample recordings) are included in the notes section for the teacher’s use 13.
- The South African Zulu folksong “Nampaya Omame” was introduced in Unit 3 and is just as effective as a concert piece as it is for rote teaching and student-led learning. This piece of thanksgiving and familial love is upbeat and provides an opportunity to dialog with students about African culture and open discussions about their own relationships within their families and other areas of their social lives.
- “We Shall Overcome” is a Civil Rights Era anthem. Its origins date back to Charles Albert Tindely’s 1901 composition “I’ll Overcome Someday”. This song may already be familiar to students and will provide an obvious opportunity to talk about the Civil Rights Era with students. It works very well as a part of a celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday or a school-wide Black History Month assembly.
- “People Get Ready” by Curtis Mayfield is another Civil Rights Era anthem that is more widely known, particularly to the general pop music community. There are many versions of this song. This arrangement is based largely on Mayfield’s original recording with The Impressions 14.
- “I Look o’er Yander” is an African American spiritual that has its origin in the Bahamas. It is a song of loss and death that is framed in a harmonically bright setting but maintains deep emotive content. This is another song that hopefully allows for dialog with students about history and other communities involved in the era of chattel slavery in the West Indies. Additionally, it allows for a space for the teacher to engage students in dialog about death, loss and resilience. The lyrics are as follows:
I look o’er yander, what did I see?
Somebody’s dying everyday
See bright angel standing there
Somebody’s dying everyday
Everyday, passing away
Everyday, passing away
Everyday, passing away
Somebody’s dying everyday
I would encourage the teacher to find other melodies like “I Look o’er Yander” that lend themselves well to the beginner musician. I found “I Look o’er Yander” in a collection of African American spirituals entitled Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music 15 by Henry Howard Krehbiel published in 1914.
- Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” is the possibly best known of the five pieces presented here. I include it because of its obvious message of comradery and community but for opportunity to examine and tell Withers’ life story 16. As mentioned at the start of this project, a Padlet timeline should be used throughout the school year to ensure the telling of all narratives from all communities. Along with concert hall-type composers like Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, I suggest that composers like Withers from outside of the classical canon be included.
The goal of any performance ensemble should be to create better informed citizens not just better students. Included in being better informed, the students should be acquiring a broad sense of knowledge about many areas and genres of music. This includes artists from all parts of the world, from many different communities and also from varied genres. In this way, they learn to tell the narrative of a modern society, which includes many stories and experiences that have been ignored or underappreciated for far too long. This curricular unit provides a start in helping students realize there are many narratives within the musical world. Being made aware of counter-narratives they might better relate to will hopefully create the type of citizens and thinkers so badly needed in the world today.