Teaching American Music to Undergraduates

[Big Beat Steve]

The cd I mentioned in post 6 covers Depression Era material from Eddie Cantor to Wilmoth Houdini with a bunch of blues/folk/country in the mix. This disc is worth other board members consideration.

So ... where is this available as a DISC rather than just an mp3 download (as shown on amazon here)?

[Chuck Nessa]

7 new, 9 used via Amazon sellers here.

[Hot Ptah]

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.

[cih]

It's a shame if that's the case - because if you think of who is singing those songs (and look at what they're singing), it forms a valuable historical record of people who were very often illiterate and had no access to telling their stories in another means. It'd be a mistake to believe that it's all autobiographical, or that the records weren't made for entertainment - but for example when you hear Son House, who had at least for a time experienced the life of a Mississippi farm worker, singing about a drought thusly..

I stood in my back yard

I wrung my hands and screamed

I couldn't see nothin'

couldn't see nothin' green

.. it provides some kind a window into his world.. similarly with a hundred other examples - hoboes travelling across the States - where else do we hear their stories?

Edited April 25, 2013 by cih

[A Lark Ascending]

The trick is to use the music sparingly. I often use things as lesson 'starters' to get initial engagement (Civil Rights history course). The students enjoy it as an alternative to reading text. You just have to make sure you don't overdo so it doesn't look like you are being a bit self-indulgent. My 16-17 year olds think of my occasional musical starters as Mr S's weird music.

Edited April 25, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[Hot Ptah]

It's a shame if that's the case - because if you think of who is singing those songs (and look at what they're singing), it forms a valuable historical record of people who were very often illiterate and had no access to telling their stories in another means. It'd be a mistake to believe that it's all autobiographical, or that the records weren't made for entertainment - but for example when you hear Son House, who had at least for a time experienced the life of a Mississippi farm worker, singing about a drought thusly..

I stood in my back yard

I wrung my hands and screamed

I couldn't see nothin'

couldn't see nothin' green

.. it provides some kind a window into his world.. similarly with a hundred other examples - hoboes travelling across the States - where else do we hear their stories?

The entire subject matter though is just not covered in an American university history survey class covering many years of history, which is what the initial poster said he was going to be teaching. No one would expect it to be, or want it to be, in my experience.

The trick is to use the music sparingly. I often use things as lesson 'starters' to get initial engagement (Civil Rights history course). The students enjoy it as an alternative to reading text. You just have to make sure you don't overdo so it doesn't look like you are being a bit self-indulgent. My 16-17 year olds think of my occasional musical starters as Mr S's weird music.

I agree with that. I think that in an American history class in an American university, if you used maybe a 10-15 seconds snippet of music up to three times in a semester, at the beginning of class sessions while everyone was taking their seats, as a seque into your first sentence of your lecture, that might work. More than three 15 second pieces of music during the entire semester would be too much though, I think. Even if you used a 10-15 second snippet of music three different times during the semester, you would become known as the weirdo professor, most likely.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Hot Ptah

[JSngry]

The cd I mentioned in post 6 covers Depression Era material from Eddie Cantor to Wilmoth Houdini with a bunch of blues/folk/country in the mix. This disc is worth other board members consideration.

Considered and ordered. Thanks for the pointer.

[A Lark Ascending]

Oh, I go for 3 minute topical songs - Josh White, BB Broonzy, the Nevilles, James Brown etc.

They can be used as 'sources' to both illustrate the changing attitudes of the times and to then evaluate - how reliable? how representative etc. Just as you'd use a written or picture source.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

There's a difference between teaching at university and at secondary school. My older grandson (18) has been doing some interesting stuff with music at school, which I don't think is part of a 'standard' curriculum. I should think there's more flexibility at school.

MG

[A Lark Ascending]

Not for much longer!

[cih]

Even if you used a 10-15 second snippet of music three different times during the semester, you would become known as the weirdo professor, most likely.

Seriously? Then we're in bad shape.

On an unrelated note - my wife played Monk in an assembly a couple of weeks ago at her infants school, as background music for a book she was reading (she can't be called self-indulgent as she claims to not like jazz).. the little twerps loved it, and were bobbing up and down to the drum & bass solo

Not for much longer!

just what I was thinking.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Not for much longer!

Two years to go

MG

[Hot Ptah]

Even if you used a 10-15 second snippet of music three different times during the semester, you would become known as the weirdo professor, most likely.

Seriously? Then we're in bad shape.

On an unrelated note - my wife played Monk in an assembly a couple of weeks ago at her infants school, as background music for a book she was reading (she can't be called self-indulgent as she claims to not like jazz).. the little twerps loved it, and were bobbing up and down to the drum & bass solo

>Not for much longer!

just what I was thinking.

My impression is that you will get a much better reaction to playing jazz for infants or toddlers, than you would for college students these days.

I am curious whether anyone else is regularly around a lot of American high school and college students today. To me, many of the comments in this thread reflect a longing for a reality which does not exist, a reality in which American college students would be open to hearing blues and jazz in class.

I remember that shortly after I started teaching my university class, the Either Orchestra jazz group was going to appear in the student union auditorium. I remember researching the academic code of the university to see if there were any guidelines about professors fraternizing with students outside of class, as I wondered about my interactions with my students at the concert.

I did not have to worry. Fewer than twenty students from the entire university showed up. None were from my class. The concert was moved from an auditorium to a small lunchroom, where we sat at three round tables to listen to the group.

To me, that is a good illustration of the level of interest in jazz, or blues, among American university students today. Both are considered old folks music, for the over 50 years old crowd.

[A Lark Ascending]

Kids do react in different ways. Some classes are so scared to be showing an interest in something outside their particular tribal zone that they just don't react. But all you need is one confident soul prepared to, even ironically, start twitching in their seat and you can get a much more positive reaction. No, they don't rush up demanding playlists. But you'll be amazed at how often you can get the bobbing effect!

In my case it's vocal music I use with pertinent words - 'Uncle Sam Says' is as perfect a way as any to start an exploration of the impact of WWII on civil rights. I don't use it to proselytise for the music.

Edited April 25, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[Sundog]

I've seen first hand young children (2-3 yrs. old) on a number of occasions reacting to both Monk and Roland Kirk's music very positively. Pretty cool, but unfortunately they tend to grow out of it. One can only hope that some kind of seed has been planted.

[Chuck Nessa]

Kids usually react positively to mayhem but they grow out of it, sadly.

[Mark Stryker]

It's a shame if that's the case - because if you think of who is singing those songs (and look at what they're singing), it forms a valuable historical record of people who were very often illiterate and had no access to telling their stories in another means. It'd be a mistake to believe that it's all autobiographical, or that the records weren't made for entertainment - but for example when you hear Son House, who had at least for a time experienced the life of a Mississippi farm worker, singing about a drought thusly..

I stood in my back yard

I wrung my hands and screamed

I couldn't see nothin'

couldn't see nothin' green

.. it provides some kind a window into his world.. similarly with a hundred other examples - hoboes travelling across the States - where else do we hear their stories?

The entire subject matter though is just not covered in an American university history survey class covering many years of history, which is what the initial poster said he was going to be teaching. No one would expect it to be, or want it to be, in my experience.

>>The trick is to use the music sparingly. I often use things as lesson 'starters' to get initial engagement (Civil Rights history course). The students enjoy it as an alternative to reading text. You just have to make sure you don't overdo so it doesn't look like you are being a bit self-indulgent. My 16-17 year olds think of my occasional musical starters as Mr S's weird music.

I agree with that. I think that in an American history class in an American university, if you used maybe a 10-15 seconds snippet of music up to three times in a semester, at the beginning of class sessions while everyone was taking their seats, as a seque into your first sentence of your lecture, that might work. More than three 15 second pieces of music during the entire semester would be too much though, I think. Even if you used a 10-15 second snippet of music three different times during the semester, you would become known as the weirdo professor, most likely.

I was an American history major at the University of Illinois at Urbana in the early 80s and one of my main professors was Robert McColley, who specialty areas were the colonial and early national periods and the founding fathers. He taught the second half of the freshman American history survey that I took, picking up with reconstruction and continuing to the present. He was a serious classical music guy -- some of you may recognize his name from Fanfare, for whom he reviewed records for many years and was their resident Brucknerian. Anyway, he had music playing before every class as people were taking their seats, the pieces and composers always tied to the topic or time period at hand. I would have to go back to my notes from the class -- yes, I still have them; weep for me -- to see what all he played. But I know for a fact that the first time I ever heard Charles Ives was in his class. Made a big impact on me ...

Edited April 29, 2013 by Mark Stryker

[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.

Edited April 29, 2013 by Face of the Bass

[Face of the Bass]

What I've found as a college professor is that anytime you go into a class with an assumption that your students won't get something or won't be interested in something because of who they are, you've already lost the battle. I play music in my classes from time to time. I play it loud. I play it for longer than 15 seconds. I play recordings of Kenyan children singing songs about a mythical creature named after the country singer Jimmy Rodgers. I play songs of Xhosa women singing about their troubles while playing an uhadi. I play Fela. I play Fela loud.

Do students think I'm weird? Maybe. But they keep coming back. It is not my goal to be normal.

[cih]

Edited April 29, 2013 by cih