 |
 Students will:
National Standards for Music Education
6--Listening to, analyzing, and describing music 9--Understanding music in relation to history and culture.
3. Have students take pencil and paper to note different genres of music they hear in the program. 4. Play program. 5. Discuss with the students what styles of music they heard Aretha Franklin sing on the video. (Accept reasonable answers, including gospel, jazz, pop, rhythm and blues, soul, motown, opera, etc...) During discussion the teacher may provide live or recorded examples of each style mentioned. 6. Ask students which style Franklin sang first. (gospel) 7. Lead a discussion about Franklin’s childhood growing up as the daughter of an African-American preacher and being immersed in traditions of the church’s spiritual and gospel music. You may wish to bring out development of the gospel tradition from your own knowledge of music history. Some of the points you might want to mention include: 8. Lead students to notice that while Franklin found popular success and fame as a rhythm and blues soloist, she frequently returned to her roots of gospel, whether singing Thomas Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in 1968, or her albums such as One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism (1987), Gospel (1991), Amazing Grace (1999), etc.... Part II 1. Choose a gospel song recording and sheet music from your school’s music library. (For suggestions, refer to Materials section above.) 2. Play an excerpt from the recording, asking students to listen for musical characteristics. 3. Lead a brief discussion of three common musical characteristics of gospel: syncopation, strong beats on two and four, and call and response form. (Students may mention other characteristics, too, including either slow long-phrased melodies or a fast syncopated melody, fervent feelings expressed by choir members, harmonies, congregational participation, etc...) 4. Explain the use of syncopation in the gospel song, and write an example of this rhythmic pattern on the chalkboard. Have students echo-clap the pattern. Play the selected gospel song again and have students listen for the syncopated pattern as you clap it each time it occurs. 5. Play the recording once again, instructing half of the choir to clap the syncopated rhythm as the other half claps on beats two and four throughout the song. 6. Ask students to listen for the call and response in the selected gospel song. Replay the recording. 7. Teach the “response” by oral tradition, choosing a lead singer to improvise on the call. After going through individual parts, have students sing the entire song with piano accompaniment--unless you have access to a Hammond organ, the keyboard accompaniment most associated with gospel music. Extension: Have students find a song in their own CD collection, their parent’s or grandparent’s record collection, a church hymnal, or other songbooks they might have access to that have a syncopated rhythm similar to the piece they have just studied in class. Have students bring in their findings. Play the music in class--if students bring in a songbook, play the selection on the classroom piano. Have students identify the rhythms in each selection. How many styles of music are represented? You may even wish to have students write a short statement on their selection’s style and how it correlates to gospel. MENC: The National Association for Music Education to develop this series of lessons. Part II of this lesson is adapted from Strategies for Teaching Specialized Ensembles, compiled and edited by Robert A. Cutietta (MENC: Reston, 1999).
| |||||||||
Home | VH1 Programming | Teachers | About Music Studio