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Sousa—Music of All Americans A Social Studies Residency by
Jeff Newell’s New-Trad Octet
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Shared Educational and Artistic Goals and Expected Student Outcomes
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Through participation in this project, students will become familiar with the process by which people from diverse backgrounds come together to form new and unique cultural entities. By learning about the lives and cultural backgrounds of several historically significant American musicians and how the idioms they represent influenced the work of John Philip Sousa, students will gain insights into the process of cultural blending and how it occurred in the United States. With a concluding concert by Jeff Newell’s New-Trad Octet playing their modern Haitian-influenced Sousa arrangements, students will also see how this process continues as new immigrant influences become a part of the American experience. In |
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addition, students will be exposed to and have an “up close and personal” experience with wind instruments from the brass and woodwind families. |
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The New York State social studies curriculum for the fifth grade is the primary target of this project. The New York State Learning Standards set in the area of Applied Learning will also be dealt with in the project’s implementation. The fifth graders, with their social studies focus on American history and the individual United States, will study musical traditions of Mississippi (blues) and Missouri (ragtime) through the persons of Robert Johnson, W.C. Handy, and Scott Joplin. They will see how these traditions influenced the Eurocentric music of John Philip Sousa and led to the creation of music with a uniquely American flavor. |
Art and Non-Art Curricular Areas of Focus
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The New York State Applied Learning Standards will be implemented as students learn the stories of historic Americans, analyze the cultural blending process, and talk about their own classroom’s cultural make-up. |
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l Write / Draw about a character (non-fiction/fiction) l Write / draw about a life way represented in these musicians stories l Write / Draw about an instrument l Build an instrument or piano roll model |
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After the culminating concert, the students undergo a classroom listening test in which they identify some of the styles and artists that have been discussed during the project. There is also a brief listening and written multiple-choice tests about the woodwind and brass instruments. |
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Photos from Jeff Newell’s New-Trad Octet residency at Brooklyn’s P.S. 8 — March/April 2008. The project was made possible with funds from the Local Capacity Building Initiative, a regrant program of the Arts in Education Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, administered by BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn and the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). |
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Copyright Jeff D. Newell, 2008 |
Summary
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Methods Used to Capture Changes in Student Learning
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ZA four-week residency which focuses on cultural blending as seen through the lives of several influential Americans musicians and how the musical traditions they represent impacted the music of John Phillip Sousa. |
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As a part of the residency, students create a project that relates to the people and ideas we cover. Topics may include such things as: |