AMST 430.02

Songs of Protest, Songs of Praise

Roger Williams University

GHH 208, 

M, TH 2:00 -3:20

Spring Semester 2013

Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D.

Office:  GHH 215

Hours: T, TH 9:00 - 11:00

M, W, 1:00-2:00

mswanson@rwu.edu

(401) 254 3230

For Monday,  March 25

Read, in Heilbut

Part IV,  The Gospel Life, concentrating most upon

16:  "You may never go to Prison"   255 - 263

17:  "Turn your Radio On"  265-281 

If you get scrunched for time, you may skip chapter 18  BUT make sure you spend a little

time with the pictures.

Epilogue and Postscripts One and Two.  (especially the one from 1997)

As the picture at the top right indicates, we're in a week of ransition.  Helibut's subtitle, with its emphasis on "hard times" makes it logical to look at  the role of Music in the Labor movement next. These chapters are a little sad, as stories of the passing of a memorable generation are always sad.  I saw some of these performers (Odetta, Miriam Makeba) at the Newport Folk Festival the years before they died.  I first became interested in Gospel in the early 1960s, listening to black radio stations on Sunday Mornings.  These people gave us so much culturally.  We live in a quite different world because of their efforts.

INTERNET EXERCISE (This should look familiar) 

Go Online to YouTube and/or Google, and plug in the name of one or more of the persons or groups mentioned in the chapters above.  Find some whose song or music you like, and cut and past the URL (universal resource locator) into your resource file, using the add link button.  Google will require an extra step, clicking on the video button, but there are videos on such sites as hulu which aren’t on YouTube.  Then see if you can find the lyrics to the song, and plug them into your resources, as well.  We’ll do a “show and tell” session using this material.  (Of course, include the singers who are the chapters’ main subjects.)   I have a couple of people in the class who haven't started  working with these tools.  I'm working hard at avoiding the grumps. 

Sweet Honey in the Rock (I confess that these are my favorite contemporaries  They have performed together for more than 30 years, and now some of the first generation have been replaced by their daughters) provide a perfect performance to help us in our transition.  Visit the group's website, and if they're performing where you can get to see them, go, go, go.

For Thursday,  March 28

Read, in Weissman

From Chapter 5.  Protest Songs as Music for Social Change

Joe Hill

Songs of the Miners and Textile Workers

Conservative Songs

Music and the Communist Party

Radical Music of the Thirties and Black Protest Music.

INTERNET EXERCISE (This should look familiar) 

Go Online to YouTube and/or Google, and plug in the name of one or more of the persons or groups mentioned in the chapters above.  Find some whose song or music you like, and cut and past the URL (universal resource locator) into your resource file, using the add link button.  Google will require an extra step, clicking on the video button, but there are videos on such sites as hulu which aren’t on YouTube.  Then see if you can find the lyrics to the song, and plug them into your resources, as well.  We’ll do a “show and tell” session using this material.  (Of course, include the singers who are the chapters’ main subjects.)