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New Harmonies in the Classroom Welcome to the New Harmonies: Celebrating Roots Music education page. Lessons from the New Harmonies teachers' guide are available for download in PDF format from this page. Please visit again in the coming weeks as we add links to additional lesson plans and activities. The exhibition: If you listen to America's music, you hear America's story. It's the story of people in a New World places they have left behind, and ideas they have brought with them. It is the story of people who were already here, but whose world is remade. The distinct cultural identities of all of these people are carried in song -- both sacred and secular. Their music tracks the unique history of many peoples reshaping each other into one incredibly diverse and complex people -- Americans. Their music is the roots of American music. The music that emerges is known by names like blues, country western, folk ballads, and gospel. The sounds are as sweet as mountain air, and as sultry as a summer night in Mississippi delta country. The instruments vary from fiddle to banjo to accordian to guitar to drum. But a drum in the hands of an African sounds different than one in the hands of a European. And neither is the drumbeat of an American Indian. Yet all the rhythms merge, as do the melodies and harmonies, producing completely new sounds -- new music. The musics merge because this is America. New waves of music ride ashore in the hearts and heads of new immigrants and they create still new sounds from what they have brought with them and what they find here. And nothing expresses the tensions -- or the triumphs -- of this journey into democracy quite like the music that it spawns. Each of the activities below will help your students as they explore New Harmonies. New Harmonies Teachers' Guide Activities for students in Grades 4-8
Activities for students in Grades 9-12
Additional Activities Scavenger Hunt |
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