WHAT A GREAT PROJECT!
Don't know that this will help, but the late Archie Green
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Green and former early member of
ARSC devoted a good part of his years teaching at Illinois University
writing the book, /Only a Miner,/ a story of coal mining as set to music
in recorded sound.
Paul Jackson
On 8/14/2018 12:46 PM, David Katznelson wrote:
> Dear ARSC-ers,
>
>
>
> Last year we (two ARSC members) piloted a program teaching 8th graders
> about the Great Depression using music recorded during that time. We
> reached out to the list during this project for questions about specific
> songs. Todd Harvey at the Library of Congress helped us a great deal to
> find recordings that we used. We divided an 84 student class into 21
> groups, giving each group a track to study. They were asked to transcribe
> the lyrics of the track, research the performer (s), writer (s), the
> engineer, and generally unlock the mystery and stories of the song as a
> musicologist might. We even called the students the first cohort of The
> League Of Young Musicologists.
>
>
>
> Our premise, which we are sure many of you will relate to, was that music
> can tell the stories of our lives…of our history and our humanity…better
> than anything else. The students gathered pictures, articles, self-made
> drawings and other ephemera about the material and were tasked to write a
> final essay for each track. We then had Barbara Bersche (designer of
> amazing box sets like ALAN LOMAX IN HAITI, PAUL BOWLES IN MORACCO, and the
> most recent set of Bill Ferris’ life work) take all that the students found
> and create an incredible book/CD package for the students to keep.
>
>
>
> The school….the students…their parents…had never seen anything like it. The
> feedback we got was pretty great all around.
>
>
>
> We are going to repeat this curriculum next year and we are looking to
> potentially offer a small amount of finished book/CD packages for public
> consumption (obviously getting the rights to do so) making the students
> graduate junior high with a publishing credit.
>
>
>
> So here is why we are telling you all of this. We are going to focus on
> the 20s this year and we are beginning the process of finding tracks that
> can tell stories about that era. We are reaching out to all of
> you…especially those who oversee music archives that might have recordings
> that fit this project or that know where there are recordings that fit this
> project—to help us get our track list together. We prefer recordings that
> have not had much public distribution (makes the recordings less googleable
> and makes the research seem more meaningful to the kids). We are
> definitely interested in the obscure. Last year, one group tracked down an
> obscure singer that was in a quartet that John Lomax recorded in the 1930s
> to his church in San Antonio, to a niece that was still living. We received
> a photo of the singer later in life...and suddenly for the students,
> history came alive.
>
>
>
> We hope to hear from you!
>
>
>
> David Katznelson & Skip Walter
>
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