"TALKING AND TESTIFYING"/

"SPEAKING AND SPEECHIFYING": THE SOUND OF JAZZ

CREATED BY DONNA THOMPSON (ASHP)

OVERVIEW:  Jazz music records the history of African American urban life and expresses the human capacity to do more than merely survive under challenging circumstances. In voices imitating instruments, jazz music represents such themes as work-life, leisure/entertainment, relationships, food, death, and spirituals recorded in African American native voice. It captures the flare of rural and urban storytelling, "loud-talk," Awhispery romance," "spare dry poetry," "pool-hall boast" or the "jump-rope rhyme." Jazz music melts elements from ragtime, marching band music, European classic music, spirituals, work songs, the blues, and other forms of non-traditional sound expression. This activity asks students to draw from jazz sound recordings and jazz-related literary text to understand how the voice of African Americans were represented and interpreted in the early 20th century.

GOAL:  Students will draw on audio, visual, and print material to derive an understanding of how jazz music influenced visual and literary expression in the early 20th century, and records aspects of the life and culture of the African American urban community.

MATERIALS:

The Red Hot Jazz Archive

http://www.technoir.net/jazz/b.html

Culture in the Jazz Age

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~nick/e309k/jazzage.html

Harlem:Mecca of the New Negro (Survey Graphic, 1925)

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/harlem/

 

ACTIVITY:

Step 1 (20 minutes):  You and your partner are preparing a classroom presentation on early 20th century jazz and its cultural significance.  With your partner, listen to jazz recordings on the Red Hot Jazz Archive web site.  Choose one or two of the following recording artists to explore:

Louis Armstrong (with Red Hot Onions) http://www.redhotjazz.com/redonion.html

Red Hot Fives http://www.redhotjazz.com/hot5.html

Bessie Smith http://www.redhotjazz.com/bessie.html

Jelly Roll Morton (instrumental only) http://www.redhotjazz.com/jellyroll.html

Sidney Bechet (see King Bechet Trio) http://www.redhotjazz.com/Bechet.html

Mamie Smith (a blues singer) http://www.redhotjazz.com/mamie.html

What can you learn about early 20th century leisure, work, spiritual, and family life of African Americans from these recordings? What other important recurring themes are expressed in the compositions of these musicians? What do you see as the relationship between jazz vocals (or voice) and jazz instruments?  What do these recordings tell you about African-American expression?

Step Two. (15 minutes)  With your partner select and read one of the following texts from Culture in the Jazz Age and Survey Graphic web sites which documents literary expression on jazz-related themes:

Jazzonia by Langston Hughes

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~nick/e309k/texts/hughes/hughes.html

Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation by Anne Shaw Faulkner

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/-nick/e309k/texts/faulkner/faulkner.html

Jazz at Home by J.A. Rogers

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/harlem/RogJazzF.html

What do you learn about jazz from reading this author? How does this author relate jazz to the larger culture? How is African American expression interpreted in these selections? What can you learn about American culture in the 1920s and the role of music in exemplifying and shaping larger cultural developments?

Step Three. (15 minutes) With your partner, brainstorm a presentation that you will make to your class on the significance of jazz in the early 20th century. You might want to choose one or two of the following themes on which you will want to focus your presentation: Voice (or language), Dance, Perseverance, Humor, Work, Family, Relationships, Segregation, Spirituality. You can choose other themes that suggest themselves to you.

Of the resources you explored today, which would help you present your ideas clearly and dramatically? Which music? Which reading? What other kinds of resources might you want to utilize? How would you best mix different forms of media to convey your ideas and help your fellow students understand the issues involved? Be prepared to share your ideas with your colleagues in small group discussion.

Step Four: Small Group Discussion (40 Minutes)  Meet with others who used these resources to share insights, ideas, and reflections on your experience.  Share the ideas for presentations which you brainstormed in Step 3, and discuss the activity, using these questions as prompts:

 What could students learn from this activity about jazz, African-American culture, and America in the 1920s?  What kinds of background information would they need?

Would this activity, or a variation of it, play in your classroom?  If so, how would you reshape it for your students?  How would you combine it with other lessons or resources (not necessarily involving new media)?

 What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of the activity? Is it a good vehicle developing student skills in inquiry, the exploration of primary sources, and the construction of historical meaning?

 How would you describe the pedagogy that informs this activity? What aspects of the activity help to make it effective?  What skills and modes of thinking does this activity support?  Do the electronic materials being engaged suit the assignment’s pedagogy and methodological goals? What can we learn from this activity about the kinds of inquiry assignments that work best when using new media resources?

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