A Social Studies Residency by Jeff Newell’s New-Trad Octet

Summary

A six-week residency which focuses on cultural blending as seen through the lives of several influential American musicians and how the musical traditions they represent impacted the music of John Philip Sousa.

This program has been funded by 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) in 2008 and 2009 and by a Chamber Music America  Residency Partnership Program Grant for 2009-2010

Shared Educational and Artistic Goals and Expected Student Outcomes

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 of historically significant American musicians and how they 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 Unites States.  With a concluding concert by Jeff Newell’s New-

Trad Octet playing their modern Haitian-influences Sousa arrangements, students will also see how this process continues as new immigrant influences become a part of the American experience.  In addition, students will be exposed to and have and “up close and personal” experience with wind instruments from the brass and woodwind families.

Art and Non-Art Curricular Areas of Focus

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, Westward expansions, 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.

The New York State Applied Learning Standards will be implemented as students learn the stories of historic Americans, analyze the cultural blending process, and examine their own classroom’s cultural makeup.

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 are also brief listening and written multiple-choice tests about the woodwind and brass instruments.

Methods Used to Capture Changes in Student Learning

As a part of the residency, students create a project that relates

to the people and ideas we cover.

1. • Write/Draw about a character (non-fiction/fiction)
   

2. • Write/Draw about a life way represented in these musicians’ stories
   

3. • Write/Draw about an instrument
   

4. • Build a model of and instrument, a piano roll, etc.
   

Photo by Nathalie Schueller

Robert Johnson and the other blues artists we study have quite and impact on the students.

Here you can see:

Howlin’ Otto

&

Blind Lemon Daniel

playing “The Brooklyn Blues”

at the final concert of our residency this spring.