History of Rock Assignment 12/19

Hello, Rockers:

Here is your assignment for today.  CLICK HERE for the link to the assignment.   Please save a copy of the assignment to your google drive account.   Make a copy in your name, and share it with me.

Good Luck!

The Cassette - Performance Based Assessment

What's up, Rockers?

Here is your assignment for today.

Your mission is as follows:

1.  Review the material from our unit on the cassette...

2.  Based on the material, and what we've discussed in class, create a ONE-PAGE response to the following questions...

1. Overall, how did the cassette tape change the way people interact with music?
2.  In what ways do you think some of the new ways of interacting the music enabled by the cassette are reflected in how you listen to music, today?

DUE: BEOP 12/14/16.  

Your essay must be one handwritten page!  

Making a Mixtape - Project Based Assessment

Essential Question:

How did the cassette tape change the audience’s experience by allowing the listener to record, compile and disseminate music?

Task:

You are tasked with compiling a mix tape following these steps:

1. Decide who the tape is for. It should be for someone who means a lot to you. A friend? A family member? A love interest?:

2. Decide the emotion you’d like to convey with this tape. Is it a party tape? A dark, brooding tape? Does it convey love, longing or loss?

3. Does this tape have a theme? Songs that start with “Z”? Songs about food? “My favorite ‘80s jams”?

4. Decide where this tape will be played most often. Privately or publically? In a bedroom or a living room or a car? Somewhere else?

5. Brainstorm eight to ten songs that will fit on your tape (remember, you’ll break them up across two sides). Write the songs on a separate piece of paper.

6. Take all of the information from steps 1-5 and create a blank cassette J-Card.  Remember, be colorful, and add artwork and personality; the look is important, especially if you’re trying to impress someone

You can click here for a J-Card to print.   You may also print the handout from class, and cut out the card.   Maybe your parents have some old ones laying around that you could use.

Once you complete the j-card, you will complete a one-page reflection, in which you discuss the answers to the questions above, as well as the reasons behind each of the songs chosen for your particular mixtape.

Here is the rubric, upon which your work will be evaluated.  Please print the rubric, and include it with your work.  

Due Date:  December 19.  

Work hard.  Be creative.  Have fun.

The Sun King: Sam Phillips

Read, "The Sun King" , the story of Sam Phillips.  Here is a link to the article in Google Docs.  You can make a copy to your drive, to make it easier to annotate.

After reading the article...Create a one page reflection paper that discusses

• Who Sam Phillips was 
• His accomplishments at Sun Records 
• What made Sun Records important 
• Why Phillips was in a position to discover Elvis Presley

Due Date: Monday December 5, 2016.   

Please attach the following rubric to your essay

Elvis and Race Relations 11/30/16

Please sign in to your WJPS account, before beginning the assignment.

Carefully, examine the information below.  Based on your knowledge of Rock history, as well as US History, answer the questions that follow.  You will post your answers in the "comments" section below.  

Section 1:

While the audience reaction to Elvis’ first single was largely very positive, many people, particularly in positions of authority, were angered by Elvis and his music. Read the two quotes below:

"The big show was provided by Vancouver teenagers, transformed into writhing, frenzied idiots of delight by the savage jungle beat music."

-- Review of an Elvis Presley concert in The Vancouver Sun, September 3, 1957

"When our schools and centers stoop to such things as ‘rock and roll’ tribal rhythms, they are failing seriously in their duty."

-- Letter from Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, banning Catholic school students from attending Presley concert, Feb. 28, 1957

Questions:

1. What do you think the authors meant by the terms:

• “Savage jungle beat music”?
• “Tribal rhythms”?

2. Why might these authors have used these terms to describe Presley’s music? What do they seem to fear about Presley?

3. Where were these comments made? What conclusions can you draw about racial tension in the mid-1950s in other parts of North America besides the South?

4. Think back to the video from Eyes on the Prize at the beginning of the lesson, and discuss:

• In this historical context, why might it have been more acceptable for some people to hear African-American music from a white artist than from an African-American artist?
• Why might any type of music bearing an African-American influence have been unacceptable to some people in this climate?
• How did Elvis’ first single reflect the racial and social climate in America in 1954?
• Looking ahead, how do you predict Elvis’ embrace of African-American music would influence the way people would come to think about race in the late 1950s?

History of Rock Assignment 11/21/16

Hello, All:

Here is your assignment for 11/21/16.

Carefully, read "The King and I; a Visit to Graceland."  .  Then, Imagine that you have just visited Graceland as a tourist and write a one-page letter to a friend or family member describing your trip.  Be sure to include your own thoughts about what the American Dream means to you personally and how Elvis’ life, as displayed at Graceland, compares to your own ideas for a successful life.  

History of Rock Assignment 11/17/16

Hello!

Here is your assignment for today!

Click the link.  Please save a copy of the document to your google drive.  Please share it with me.  Follow the directions carefully.  Good luck!

History of Rock Assignment 11/14/16

Hello, Rockers.

Here is your assignment for today.  Anything that you don't finish, you will be responsible for completing for HW.

1. (period 8 only): Carefully read Handout 1: Horatio Alger.  After reading the handout, answer the following questions:
1. What is Dick (the protagonist) likely to achieve by diving off the boat to save the drowning child?
2. Based on this scene, what does Alger imply about the protagonist’s moral character?
3. In a larger scope, what does Alger suggest about a person’s opportunity to achieve upward mobility in America? In other words, what traits does an American need in order to succeed?
2. Read Handout 2: John Steinbeck. Then answer the following:
1. In passage 1, what kind of imagery does George use to describe the farm to Lennie? How does George’s vision connect to the idea of the American Dream?
2. In passage 2, how does Crooks respond to George and Lennie’s dream of owning a farm? What does Crooks’ observation suggest about the state of the American Dream during the time of the Great Depression?
3. Explain how Steinbeck’s understanding of the American Dream is similar to or different from that of Alger’s.
3. Examine Handout 3: Elvis' Houses.  Analyze the two houses Presley lived in during his lifetime: a  two-room wooden house (sometimes called a “shotgun shack”) in Tupelo, Mississippi, and the Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.  After looking at the houses, answer the questions that follow (the questions are located on the handout).   

History of the Electric Guitar Day 3

***IF YOU DIDN'T FINISH YESTERDAY'S ASSIGNMENT, YOU MUST FINISH IT, BEFORE MOVING ON TO TODAY'S***

Today, we will begin researching some of the early electric guitars.

We will start by exploring the Rickenbacker "Frying Pan" guitar, as shown in the picture.

CLICK HERE for the handout about the "Frying Pan." 

You should consult at least THREE reliable internet resources to help you complete the handout.

You may choose to print out the worksheet, or create a google doc of it.  If creating a google doc, please be sure to share it with me, by adding my email address (michael.tesler@wjps.org).

If you don't finish the assignment in class, you may finish it for homework.

Some suggested sites:
http://www.rickenbacker.com/history_early.asp
https://www.vintageguitar.com/1969/rickenbacker-a22/

History of the Electric Guitar Day 2

1.  Visit the website, http://invention.si.edu/invention-electric-guitar

2.  Using the website, complete the questions on the following worksheet.

http://teachrock.org/media/handouts/handout1.pdf

The Great Migration Day 9 - Life in the North

As a summary activity for our unit, you will imagine that you are an African-American, who has moved to the North during the Great Migration.

In order to complete this assignment, carefully analyze the following handout.  Explore what living conditions, employment opportunities, and community activities were like for African-Americans who had moved to the North during the Great Migration.

You will compose a letter in the imagined voice of an African American who has moved to the north, and is writing to a relative living in the south.  Reference details from the handout, to illustrate what life is like in a northern city.

In composing your letter, you should answer the following questions:

• What state are you originally from? 
• Where do you currently work, and how does it compare to the work you did before moving
• How would you describe your living situation?
• How do you spend your time when you are not at work?
• How has your new life in the North met the expectations you had before moving? How has it not?
• What role has Blues music played in your life since moving from the South? Where, when, and how do you most often listen to Blues music?

You will be evaluated using the following RUBRIC 

DUE DATE:  

• 1st Draft: Wednesday October 26th
• 2nd Draft: Thursday October 27th
• FINAL DRAFT: FRIDAY OCTOBER 28th

***LATE ASSIGNMENTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED***  

Blues and the Great Migration - Day 8

Hello, Rockers!

Here is your assignment for today.  Please save the document to your google drive, and make a copy. Use your name in the file name.

Answer the questions, and then email me when you're done (michael.tesler@wjps.org).   If you don't finish, you must finish for HW.

Here's a link to the assignment.  

Rock on!

Blues and Great Migration Day 7

CLICK HERE FOR YOUR ASSIGNMENT 

Due BEOP (By the end of the period), or for HW

The Blues and the Great Migration Day 6

Greetings, young Rock and Rollers!

CLICK HERE for a link to your assignment.  

Assignment is due, BEOP (by the end of the period).  If you don't finish, you must complete it for HW by TOMORROW!

The Blues and the Great Migration - Day 5

1. Visit a page from the 1940 U.S. Census. Explain that a census is a process of recording information about a population. This page is a record of the people who lived on a plantation outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, and was taken around the same time as the photographs we previously examined.

If the image is too small to read, you can access a high-resolution scan of the full census page here.)

In your notebooks, please answer the following questions...

• What kind of information is collected on this census form?
• What race are most of the people who live on the plantation? Can you find anyone who is not a member of that race?
• Look at column 28, which lists “Occupation.” What is the reported occupation for most of the African Americans on this list? What is the reported occupation for one of the white people on the plantation?
• Look at column 7, which lists the names of the plantation’s inhabitants. Locate the name “McKinley Morganfield.” What sort of information does the census tell us about Muddy Waters in 1940?
• Based on the materials discussed thus far, what are some general conclusions we can make about the lives of many African Americans living in Mississippi around 1940?

The Blues and the Great Migration - Day 3

Complete the exercises below.

1. In his 1955 article “I Got a Right to Sing the Blues,” Muddy Waters says that when he first started playing in Chicago, people called his songs “sharecropper music.”

Review the reading on sharecropping.

Answer the question below:

How did the sharecropping economy in the southern United States function, and how did the system keep sharecroppers stuck in a cycle of poverty?

2.  Study the lyrics to Muddy Waters’ “Burr Clover Farm Blues.”   Muddy Waters recorded this song in 1941, when he was living on a Mississippi farm and working as a sharecropper. Muddy was recorded by Alan Lomax and John Work, two musicologists working for Fisk University and the Library of Congress to study the folk traditions in rural communities. Muddy Waters left the farm and moved to Chicago in 1943, two years after recording this song.

Answer the questions below:  

• According to the lyrics, what seem to be the singer’s feelings about the possibility of  leaving the farm? How do the lyrics convey the singer’s sense of “displacement”?
• Why might some audiences have identified this sound as “sharecropper music”? How do you visualize the setting for a song such as “Burr Clover Farm Blues”?

3.  Carefully study the following photos

• What are your first impressions of the photograph on the left? How many people do you see, and how would you describe the way they look in this photo? What relationship do you think these people might have to each other?
• What are your first impressions of the photograph on the right? How would you describe the size of the house?
• Notice the proximity between the house and the cotton pile. What might this proximity suggest about the relationship between work and home life for someone working as a sharecropper? How much leisure time do you think a sharecropper living in this cabin had?

The Blues and the Great Migration

In this lesson, we will discuss the factors that led to the Great Migration.

Please complete the following.

1. Read the following handout.
2. Complete the questions at the bottom of the handout in your notebook.
3. If you don't finish the assignment in class, you must finish it for homework.

Assignment #2 - Country Blues Scrapbook

To commemorate our "journey" through the Mississippi Delta, we will create a scrapbook, to illustrate what you have learned about the socioeconomic conditions that led to the rise of the Country Blues.

The following elements must be included in your scrapbook:

The following elements must be included in your scrapbook:

• Map (from the opening part of the lesson).

• Historical Statement – Write a statement of about 200 words summarizing the economic conditions confronting southern African-Americans in the early part of the 20th century. Your statement should also discuss the relationship among these economic conditions, racial attitudes in the South, and the Country Blues music of this time and place.

• 3 Visuals – Collect three images of important artifacts either from the lesson or independently researched. Your images these may be hand- or computer-drawn original images or photographs. Each visual must have a caption that identifies the subject AND explains its significance.

• 3 Blues Lyrics – Identify at least one set of lyrics from each of the stations. These lyrics must be presented in a way that clearly and specifically connects the lyrics to the places, images and/or historical statement that you write.

Your scrapbook will be assessed based on (1) depth of intellectual engagement; (2) incorporation & sophistication of blues lyric analysis; (3) selection of visual material; (4) seriousness of effort to render a creative, visually compelling scrapbook.  Here is a link to the scoring rubric.  PLEASE PRINT THE RUBRIC, and include it with your scrapbook.

Here are links to the road trip "destinations" we visited in class.

• Station 1: Yazoo City in the Mississippi Delta. Poor southerners, black and white alike, lived in the shadow of natural disaster. Students will examine songs, paintings, and imagery to learn about the floods, pestilence, and drought that threatened the lives of southern field workers. The resources for this station are:
• Video: Bessie Smith, “Homeless Blues” (1927)
• Video: Charley Patton, “Bo Weavil Blues” (1929)
• Video: Son House, "Death Letter Blues" (1968)
• Image: Paintings of Jacob Lawrence from the Great Migration Series, Panel 9
• Image: Photo of destruction from the 1927 Mississippi River flood
  
• Station 2: Hillhouse, Mississippi. Even though slavery was abolished after the Civil War, African-American and white tenant farmers lived a life of grinding poverty under the rules of sharecropping. Students will examine texts to learn about this economic system. The resources for this station are:
• Video: Lightnin’ Hopkins, “Cotton” (1959)
• Handout: Explanation of Sharecropping (from PBS, "Sharecropping in Mississippi")
• Image: Paintings of Jacob Lawrence from the Great Migration Series, Panel 17
• Images: Dorothea Lange, Photographs of Sharecroppers (c. 1937)
• Cotton sharecroppers. Greene County, Georgia, 1937
• Poor mother and children, California, 1936
• Sharecropper's cabin and sharecropper's wife, ten miles south of Jackson,
• Mississippi, 1937
• Thirteen-year old sharecropper boy near Americus, Georgia, 1937

Station 3: Indianola, MS - Birthplace of BB King

• Video: The Blues Were Born
• Video: My Back Porch Guitar
• Video: Skip James, “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”

Handouts for the stations:

1. Map of Mississippi Area.  Follow the directions, and label the places which we visited on our road trip.  
2. Questions for Road Trip Stations.  We’ve completed these questions in class.  Use them to guide you, as you write your response.  

DUE DATE:  FRIDAY OCTOBER 7, 2016.  

Assignment #1 - Your Favorite Song

Overview:

Music is a very significant aspect of people's lives.  It  plays a very vital role in educating, influencing and entertaining people. While music is a very broad field, it has attracted and influenced many people. Once music is played, it draws the attention of almost every person around. There are wide varieties and forms of music which include gospel, reggae, rock,  and hip hop among many others.

Task: 
You will write an essay (minimum 350 words/1 page), in which you will analyze your favorite song.  Although 350 words may seem daunting, once you start writing, I'm sure that you will wind up writing much more than that!  

Here are the topics you should address in your essay: 
1. Description of the song:  Use the song analysis template to help you.  Identify the following: 

• Title/Artist
• Instrumentation 
• Mood
• Tempo
• Lyrics
• Genre 

2. How you became familiar with the song:  When did you first hear it?  Where were you?  Were you with anyone?  Did someone tell you about it?  How did it make you feel when you heard it?  

3.  Importance of the song to your life:  Does this song make you happy?  Does it motivate you?  What do you think of, when you hear this song?  When do you listen to it?  Why do you listen to it?  How has this song made your life better?  

Due Date:  Monday 9/19/16 

Course Overview

Welcome to The History of Rock Music class blog.  

You do not have to be musically talented to take this course. This course seeks to balance understanding the development and significance of Rock and Roll in its historical and social environment with maintaining a focus on listening to the music as the main mode of understanding. Through listening, analysis, discussion, music, and film students will explore the music and the culture and society of the day.

Class assignments will be organized around song analysis, small group discussions, and in-class activities. The course begins with an overview of ancestors and influences: blues, boogie-woogie, jazz, swing, country & western, gospel and popular music, and the crossover success of rhythm & blues acts that marked the true birth of rock & roll.

We will study the musical and social trends of the 1960s, including the influence of the British Invasion, which really signaled the arrival of rock’s second generation, the rock explosion and social upheaval of the late 1960′s, and the changes in Rock & Roll music during the seventies, eighties, and nineties. The course will culminate in an exploration of today’s current musical trends and icons including rap/hip hop.

Students in this class are expected to enjoy learning about this material and to try and get an appreciation about this type of music, which is such an important part of your lives.