Last Week Review (end Oct9)

This week had me present to you the Civil Rights  Movement and some of the songs that are around it.  There was a lot of information here and I hope all of you are keeping your notes for this (Remember the LES is coming up).  We did not get as far as I had hoped, but slowing down and taking a different tact, I think, has been a good idea.  Originally I was going to do three presentations, but as we were going on I felt that we needed to work more closely with the material and look directly at some protest poetry/songs.  (leave comments and tell me what you think...)

Handing out a little package to you all, I thought our class today (Thursday) went really quite well.  I encourage you to talk amongst yourselves, do a bit of research, and search out other song examples to build a definition of what a "protest song" is.   Remember that I will be marking you on your talk next class.   There are other questions to consider when talking about these poems: structure, voice, atmosphere, etc.  I also encourage you to seek out examples of these songs so you can hear them as they were recorded.

You also got your presentations back.  I hope none of you are too disappointed, but you have to remember this is where you are launching from.  Also now some of you might wish to look at what you need to work on (or at least what I think you need to work on...)  For me as a teacher it was good to get an idea what you are capable of and what we need to work on. 

Hint to you all: there is a reason that I have not talked about the last stanza of "Go Limp" by Nina Simone . 

Coming up:  We are going to continue the group conversations and working toward a definition of what a protest song is.  The other thing that we are going to consider is why have these songs at all.  Are there songs that you would like to hear now...? 

For the time being I have shelved the other two presentations ( Neil Young: a Career in Protest, and Michael Franti: a Career in Being Human).  While the topics are dear to me, I thought that it would be just too much information at this time.  We might see them later

 
Your LES, final term exam, will start Wednesday Oct 28th (Day 9).