Jump to content

Face of the Bass

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    893

  • Joined

  • Donations

    0.00 USD 

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Face of the Bass

  1. Teaching American Music to Undergraduates

    in Recommendations

    Posted · Edited by Face of the Bass

    I am going to throw a lot of cold water on your plan. I started teaching a college course as an adjunct professor about 20 years ago, and still do so. I started out with ideas of how to make the course more interesting and how to teach it more creatively than it had been taught before. These efforts were resisted by the students and basically hated by the administration, which ordered me to go back to a standard syllabus. I was told that the students, and their parents, were paying for academic rigor and I was reducing the amount of academic content in the class with my new approaches.

    I think that your inclusion of music, and emphasis on music, in an American history class for undergraduates in any American university, will seem way outside of the mainstream, and not academically rigorous enough. I do not know what African history courses are like, as I have never taken one. I have the feeling that African history is more of an unknown field of study to most American undergraduates, so an inclusion of music will come across as just one more unusual feature of the hitherto unknown subject matter.

    But with American history, all American undergraduates have taken American history classes in elementary and high school, and have an ingrained vision of what they are like, and expect more of the same, but at a higher level of thought, in college. If you hit them with a musical emphasis, this will come across as very weird. I think your American history class with its music, will become a campus joke, and will get you into trouble with the powers that be. I would drop the whole idea, or at least run it by one of the more friendly members of the administration before using it.

    Also, I think that older people like us are very prone to underestimate the lack of feel which students ages 18-22 now have for any blues-based music. I am 56, and when I was in college I had heard a ton of blues based music in my life, just on the radio--we all did, as so much rock and pop was based on the blues. Not so in the past 10-20 years. A blues based pop song is unknown to many younger people now. So your students are likely to rebel because they hate the music, or at least have no familiarity with anything like it.

    I think your plan is the equivalent of this--if I had taken an undergraduate class in the history of Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries, and the class turned out to be largely devoted to listening to, and reading about, a lot of different plainchants and Gregorian chants. I would have personally rebelled against this, and may well have complained to my parents, and maybe even to the school administration. My parents would have complained to the school administration, that is for sure.

    Your students today will find blues music to be as exotic, strange, unwelcome, unlistenable, and outside their experience as learning about many different strains and types of chants from the 9th and 10th centuries.

    I would love to take your class now, if it was offered as adult education at a local college. I just don't think it is going to be appropriate for today's youth in an American university.

    Well, I think I know this undergraduate population very well. I have taught classes in Modern African History, South African history, and Twentieth Century World History. In every class I have used art and music in order to elucidate themes for the course. My African history courses cover juju, highlife, and Afrobeat. My 20th century world history courses talked about jazz, Abstract Expressionism, and Italian Futurism. The response to this has been overwhelmingly positive; my student reviews are very good, and enrollment for my classes is always high.

    I'm not trying to brag but frankly I found reading this email more than a little depressing. I mean, holy shit, if there's one thing I did NOT get into academia to do, it would be to offer a higher-level version of high school material. I don't use any textbooks in my classes; I use monographs and memoirs and anything I can find to make the study of history relevant and interesting to my students. For a general education course, most of my students are taking a history class as a requirement. It is my obligation to show them that history is not what they think it is, i.e. a boring recitation of facts or regurgitation of a dominant narrative.

    Of course, the whole class is not going to be about music. I'm talking about having one of the four books they read be about music. I'm talking about having one of the three papers they write be about music. The fact that most 18-20 year old Americans are unfamiliar with the blues idiom is PRECISELY why such an assignment would be worthwhile. I came to this board because I have major respect for the people here and I wanted some help in conceptualizing one project for the semester.

    I think any American history class that does not take serious account of American forms of cultural expression, including but not limited to music, is a wasted opportunity.

  3. Teaching American Music to Undergraduates

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    Thinking about this more, what I might be able to do is to maybe pick at minimum ten songs that could be interpreted by students in short essay papers. There are going to be 50 kids in the class so if you have at least 10 songs that would be five students per song, and perhaps they could choose then which one to write about. I'd need the songs that I picked to have clear historical or social themes that could frame a paper. It would also probably help to pick songs from one region, as that would make the accompanying lectures more coherent. If I opened it up to anything then we would be having to cover everything from the Delta to the Appalachians and so forth. It might get unwieldy at that point. On the other hand maybe you could just identify a body of songs that deal with the Depression, and orient the papers around that.

    Allen I'm going to send you a message in a moment.

  4. Teaching American Music to Undergraduates

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    I'm hoping the Organissimo community can help me. Next Fall I am teaching an undergraduate course on American history post-1865. It's a general survey course, and I'll have a lot of freshmen and sophomores in my class. This is somewhat outside of my field--my Master's is in American history, but my doctorate work is African history. When I teach African history, I always make sure to incorporate African music as a way of elucidating larger historical themes, and I'd like to do the same for American history.

    The idea that I have would be to focus on the Blues of the early to mid-twentieth century, using the texts of songs as a way to understand American cultural themes about race, class, sex, labor, mobility, etc. I thought I might assign a book like Robert Palmer's Deep Blues to give a broader and readable contextualization of Blues music, but I'd also like to try to put together a project on the Blues, using actual recordings and maybe song lyrics.

    Do you guys think that sounds like a workable plan? What texts or perhaps what song compilations might be useful? Any feedback is most welcome.

  5. Electric Blues Recommendations

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    Continuing my journey through many of the recordings recommended in this thread, I've been listening to the T-Bone Walker Capitol recordings, and the music provides such a nice contrast from the rawer blues of some of the other guys I've been listening to. I find his playing to be so wonderfully laid back, it makes me want to relax on the couch and drink until I'm barely able to stand.

    Also, I finished reading Robert Palmer's Deep Blues, which I found to be very engaging. The broad outlines of the subject were already familiar to me, but Palmer has a deft touch when it comes to humanizing his subjects, and I really appreciated that.

    Next year, it looks like I'm going to be teaching at least one class on Modern U.S. history for the first time (I'm an African historian by training) and I'm already thinking of doing a major section on the blues, with an assigned book (Palmer, or something else if I can find something better for an undergraduate audience) and maybe some recordings as well.

  7. Electric Blues Recommendations

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    So, a first observation as I begin to absorb the music I bought as a result of this thread:

    Elmore James. Holy shit, Elmore James. Listening to the early recordings 3-cd set on Ace, and the music seems to offer an almost perfect blend of raw vocals and slide guitar. I've been listening this week to Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, all of it so far is various degrees of good. But Elmore James is, for me, operating at another level. I've been listening to this set for the last three days, and I can't get past disc one because I just keep replaying it and replaying it. The blues elements found in his music are so familiar to me, being an American who has grown up listening to American music, but there is an element to his voice and his guitar that feels otherworldly and immortal. It can't possibly get any better than this, can it?

  9. Electric Blues Recommendations

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    So I've gone ahead and ordered the T-Bone Walker Imperial Recordings and Capitol Black and White recordings, as well as the John Lee Hooker Legendary Modern Recordings.

    Later, I'm thinking of making a run at some of the Chess boxes, particularly Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters.

    I love educating myself on styles of music that I have paid little attention to in the past.

  13. Electric Blues Recommendations

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    I need to expand my understanding of blues music from the 1940s and 1950s especially. All that I have in this direction is the five disc Chess box set that samples that label's output. Any other recommendations are very much welcome. I have a preference for box sets just because I like methods of chronicling the music that are more thorough and comprehensive.

    Thanks!

  16. Recommend Me Books on the Blues

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    That's really well-written, Allen. Thanks for sharing. This is giving me a lot to think about. In general I like provocative arguments, even if they are flawed; I like tracing the history of an idea, even an idea that might be out of date or wrong. I like histories that are more poetic than "objective" (since nothing is objective anyway), and I love good writing. I think I will snoop around my academic library and see what I find, then go from there. This has been really helpful. I knew you guys would come through!

  17. Recommend Me Books on the Blues

    in Recommendations

    Posted

    So, far, far, too late, I've been getting into listening to blues music recently (Blind Willie McTell, Charley Patton, Bessie Smith, etc.) and need to know what are the best books out there on the history of the blues. Basically the only thing I've read that touches on the topic is Leroi Jones's Blues People.

  19. Movie Gold label at DMG?

    in Re-issues

    Posted

    It is still pretty much my favorite place to shop for music in person. I've always found the staff friendly and knowledgeable and I try to make a point of ordering from them when I can. I've discovered more music there than at any other store.

  21. Four Mosaic Selects For Sale

    in Offering and Looking For...

    Posted · Edited by Face of the Bass

    Continuing my pruning of my current collection of box sets, I have the following four Mosaic Selects for sale. Each of them is $30, shipping included to the U.S. Paypal only. PM if interested. Will ship internationally at cost. For all four sets, the booklets and discs are in like new condition. The outer boxes have minor shelf wear consistent with what you see in most Mosaic selects. The Jones outer box is a bit more banged up than the others.

    All Sold.

    Thanks for looking!

  23. Box Sets For Sale: Avant Jazz and Mainstream

    in Offering and Looking For...

    Posted

    Update: the Bill Evans Verve set and the Roland Kirk Mercury Set are now both on E-Bay. Here is a link to the auctions. You might be able to get them for a lower price:

    The Evans is here:

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/251226782486?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

    The Kirk is here:

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/251226784771?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

    The other sets that I still have available are listed above and can be had by sending me a PM.

    Thanks!

×
×
  • Create New...