Andrew Korah
Teaching Writing through Music: Composition, Conviction, and Aesthetics
Using music to teach rhetoric, writing and composition seems counterintuitive. However, drawing students through an engaged aesthetic process, and teaching them to be engaged in that process, can contribute to the development of mature and thoughtful reflection. From the classes I teach, I noticed that students often know to say that music makes them “feel things”, or they can identify what the musician is talking about in the lyrics, but rarely do they seem able to point out what exactly they are feeling and why the music they are listening to is eliciting those feelings in them.
I believe that teaching through music can benefit the teaching of rhetoric and composition in two specific ways:
“Who did this blues talk to?
How did it talk?
What got talked back to this blues?
Was the talkback blues too?
What kind of language is this, anyway?” (Carroll 161)
While these questions are asked specifically about the Blues, I do think they can be asked of music in general, especially the many genres historically tied to the blues that students in American Universities (and KU specifically) are lot more familiar with, such as Rock, Bluegrass, Country and Hip Hop.
Through these questions, over the course of the semester, students will transition from understanding their aesthetic responses to music, to paying attention to the “calls” or exigences that are in the world around them, understanding the issue through their senses, and “responding” to it by affirmative and affective/effective action.
The course will also encourage students to conceptualize their relation to music and the enjoyment and pleasure they find in that music to the cultural stories that they relate to. In her essay, “Gumbo Ya Ya: Tapping Cultural Stories to Teach Composition", Ampadu suggests that learning can be found through a “Gumbo Ya ya—a Creole expression that means ‘everyone talks at once.’ At times it has the jaggedness of an improvisational jazz or blues piece—a little Ma Rainey and Louie Armstrong rolled into one,” (73) which emphasizes “the interrelationship between orality and literacy and by teaching respect for the home language and culture of others” (Ampadu 73).
Students will be required to bring to class music from their own cultures, songs they grew up listening at home, or which reflect their sense of musical ‘taste’ in order to recognize what they thing of as ‘folk’ or as familiar and comforting. approach will connect conceptualizing one’s aesthetic connection to music through the vernacular and folk, to the exigences of the “folk,” in the sense of one’s familiar local spaces, where students can recognize their ability to compose a public awareness campaign and effectively intervene. From this perspective we can continue to ask the following to encourage a deeper questioning:
“Who has power in the blues?
Where did it come from and where did it go?
Is this power different along race, class and gender?
What language does the colonized speak in the blues?
Does the blues solve a problem for the colonized or colonizers?
How is the blues a symbol of postcolonial black America?” (Carroll 161).
Annotated Bibliography
Ampadu, Lena M. "Gumbo Ya Ya: Tapping Cultural Stories to Teach Composition." Composition Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, 2004, pp. 73-88. Web.
This article provides an interesting perspective on how to encourage students to approach rhetoric and writing through vernacular, and how to help them develop an open-mindedness to vernacular ways of self-expression, while also demonstrating how speaking/writing in one’s vernacular (the language you are most fluent in) helps you be more effectively rhetorical. It also suggests a unique pedagogical method of the “Gumbo Ya Ya -- a Creole expression that means ‘everyone talks at once.’ At times it has the jaggedness of an improvisational jazz or blues piece—a little Ma Rainey and Louie Armstrong rolled into one,” (73) which emphasizes “the interrelationship between orality and literacy and by teaching respect for the home language and culture of others” (73).
Carroll, Jeffrey. When Your Way Gets Dark: A Rhetoric of the Blues. Parlor Press, 2005.
I primarily focused on the final chapter of this book, titled “Teaching (by) the Blues”. This chapter provides a method that doesn’t simply teach you music or teach you about music, but teacher through or “by” music. The chapter focuses on the rhetorical strengths and uses of the blues. I think it most importantly recognizes the “Call and Response” format as a way for the student to develop their own rhetorical consciousness, i.e. to recognize that in the world which calls out to them (an exigence) and how they can respond to it (their intervention).
Gilrain, Jane. “Homer to Hip-Hop: Teaching Writing through Painting, Performance, and Poetry.” Language Arts, vol. 92, no. 5, 2015, pp. 328–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24577590. Accessed 29 Oct. 2022.
This paper provides a unique and creative defense of engaging students in creative practices that helps them develop a love for art and literature and encourages them to become effective interpreters and finally producers of art and literature. “In the beginning of the year when asked, ‘Have you seen a monster?’ [one of Gilrain’s student] answers, ‘No, I have not seen a monster.’ Of course not. Literal thinking. At the end of the year, she is thinking in metaphors: ‘Yes, monsters happen all of the time. The way I see it, problems are monsters’ (Gilrain 335). Gilrain traces out a way of engaging with students’ creativity and imagination to transition from simple observation to interpretation, and even, as you can see in the above quote, to thinking in a writerly mindset. I think this paper can be most helpful for when students are transitioning from practicing analysis to producing their own texts.
Ellis, James W. “Spirituals and Gospel Songs: Messages of Unity, Hope, and Deliverence. International Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, vol. 4, no. 2, 2021, pp. 42-57. Web.
Anton, Karen. “‘My Country! ’Tis of Thee, Strong Hold of Slavery’: The Musical Rhetoric of the American Antislavery Movement”. Young Scholars in Writing, vol. 7, Sept., 2015, pp. 30-40, https://youngscholarsinwriting.org/index.php/ysiw/article/view/93.
Both the above works provide a historical context for how specific forms of music emerged out of exigences and contexts of oppression and the movement toward freedom. Karen Anton points out that “when the spirit of music and the logic of words combine in song, they form a commanding source of rhetoric more powerful than either may be alone” (30). I found these pieces particularly useful in conceptualizing how students can be directed toward developing their own Public Awareness Campaign by recognizing that aesthetic forms, such as the Blues or Hip-Hop, often have fraught points of origin. By paying attention to the socio-cultural and historical contexts of music from civil rights movements, students can be taught to recognize meaningful exigences that originate in small, every day, and nevertheless deeply political, activities.
Teaching Application
Singing Along to the Blues
This activity can be quite exciting because it begins by asking students to sing (yes, in class). I understand that there might be some hurdles of awkwardness or shyness. However, by now students would have been asked to engage with the music by tapping along to the beat and humming melodies to whatever we listen to in class. This activity encourages them to engage with the music at the level of music itself, and not analysis.
As characterized by the theoretical framework above, encouraging creativity while being emotionally present and engaged in the art form (in this case music) is absolutely necessary for students to effectively grasp what “being rhetorical” truly means. This activity also encourages students to think about their cultural associations and personal connections with music that they may originally view as mundane or inconsequential. By having students connect the music they listen to in class to that which they personally relate to, their personal experiences and associations can be brought into discussion, emphasizing autonomy and experimentation.
Overview
This activity is part of the introduction to the concept of “exigence” to students. Prior to this, students will have explored different aspects of the expanded rhetorical situation, including socio-cultural and historical context.
Activity Objectives
Prepare students to “respond” to the Blues, by participating in it and then asking questions of the music, the same way they would talk to a friend.
Estimated Duration
The activity will most likely take a good 40 minutes. This is because you want to encourage relistening, rethinking and reinterpreting past the initial first impression. It is also important to account for different levels of engagement, and that it might take some time to get students to actually sing.
Breakdown of the Activity
Introducing the Topic (5 minutes)
You can begin with a brief class discussion, by asking students whether they’ve listened to songs that have the call and response format. You will most likely get people saying no. However, as you prod, get them to think of gospels or spirituals, with perhaps an example or two, you might see a glimmer of recognition in their eyes. It would be a bonus if someone in the class is able to mention a song that they’ve heard that has a call and response style.
Listening to the Music (5 minutes)
The song that I would suggest is “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, as there are a variety of versions of the song, from Gospel, Blues, Jazz with a swing tempo, to Eric Clapton’s rock version. At the first listen students would simply have to clap or tap to the beat/rhythm.
Singing Along (5 minutes)
Once the different parts are identified, the class can be divided into two (more if you are brave enough) parts: the ones that “call out” and the ones that “respond”. The song can be played again, with each groups singing their assigned part.
Class discussion (15 minutes)
From the singing we move to the analysis, where the questions provided by Jeffrey Carroll:
“Who did this blues talk to?
How did it talk?
What got talked back to this blues?
Was the talkback blues too?
What kind of language is this, anyway?”
I recommend that parts of the song be replayed and re-listened to that apply to relevant questions or ideas that come up in class.
Conclusion
The primary takeaway from the class has to be aesthetic pleasure that is then used to arrive at the rhetorical situation of both the song, and its form, which is this case is the “call and response”. This leads to, in the next class, conceptualizing, in a relatable way, the meaning of the term exigence. This process also lays the groundwork for arriving at an instinctive understanding of exigence required for final compositional assignment, the Public Awareness Campaign, where the idea of “call and response” will be recontextualized as the model for engaging with issues in the immediate surroundings of the students.
Using music to teach rhetoric, writing and composition seems counterintuitive. However, drawing students through an engaged aesthetic process, and teaching them to be engaged in that process, can contribute to the development of mature and thoughtful reflection. From the classes I teach, I noticed that students often know to say that music makes them “feel things”, or they can identify what the musician is talking about in the lyrics, but rarely do they seem able to point out what exactly they are feeling and why the music they are listening to is eliciting those feelings in them.
I believe that teaching through music can benefit the teaching of rhetoric and composition in two specific ways:
- Encouraging students to approach the music through their vernacular language so that they are empowered to express their experiences of specific texts and the world around them.
- Bringing awareness to their senses and the use of that as the bases for recognizing exigences in the world that they have to capacity to respond to rhetorically.
“Who did this blues talk to?
How did it talk?
What got talked back to this blues?
Was the talkback blues too?
What kind of language is this, anyway?” (Carroll 161)
While these questions are asked specifically about the Blues, I do think they can be asked of music in general, especially the many genres historically tied to the blues that students in American Universities (and KU specifically) are lot more familiar with, such as Rock, Bluegrass, Country and Hip Hop.
Through these questions, over the course of the semester, students will transition from understanding their aesthetic responses to music, to paying attention to the “calls” or exigences that are in the world around them, understanding the issue through their senses, and “responding” to it by affirmative and affective/effective action.
The course will also encourage students to conceptualize their relation to music and the enjoyment and pleasure they find in that music to the cultural stories that they relate to. In her essay, “Gumbo Ya Ya: Tapping Cultural Stories to Teach Composition", Ampadu suggests that learning can be found through a “Gumbo Ya ya—a Creole expression that means ‘everyone talks at once.’ At times it has the jaggedness of an improvisational jazz or blues piece—a little Ma Rainey and Louie Armstrong rolled into one,” (73) which emphasizes “the interrelationship between orality and literacy and by teaching respect for the home language and culture of others” (Ampadu 73).
Students will be required to bring to class music from their own cultures, songs they grew up listening at home, or which reflect their sense of musical ‘taste’ in order to recognize what they thing of as ‘folk’ or as familiar and comforting. approach will connect conceptualizing one’s aesthetic connection to music through the vernacular and folk, to the exigences of the “folk,” in the sense of one’s familiar local spaces, where students can recognize their ability to compose a public awareness campaign and effectively intervene. From this perspective we can continue to ask the following to encourage a deeper questioning:
“Who has power in the blues?
Where did it come from and where did it go?
Is this power different along race, class and gender?
What language does the colonized speak in the blues?
Does the blues solve a problem for the colonized or colonizers?
How is the blues a symbol of postcolonial black America?” (Carroll 161).
Annotated Bibliography
Ampadu, Lena M. "Gumbo Ya Ya: Tapping Cultural Stories to Teach Composition." Composition Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, 2004, pp. 73-88. Web.
This article provides an interesting perspective on how to encourage students to approach rhetoric and writing through vernacular, and how to help them develop an open-mindedness to vernacular ways of self-expression, while also demonstrating how speaking/writing in one’s vernacular (the language you are most fluent in) helps you be more effectively rhetorical. It also suggests a unique pedagogical method of the “Gumbo Ya Ya -- a Creole expression that means ‘everyone talks at once.’ At times it has the jaggedness of an improvisational jazz or blues piece—a little Ma Rainey and Louie Armstrong rolled into one,” (73) which emphasizes “the interrelationship between orality and literacy and by teaching respect for the home language and culture of others” (73).
Carroll, Jeffrey. When Your Way Gets Dark: A Rhetoric of the Blues. Parlor Press, 2005.
I primarily focused on the final chapter of this book, titled “Teaching (by) the Blues”. This chapter provides a method that doesn’t simply teach you music or teach you about music, but teacher through or “by” music. The chapter focuses on the rhetorical strengths and uses of the blues. I think it most importantly recognizes the “Call and Response” format as a way for the student to develop their own rhetorical consciousness, i.e. to recognize that in the world which calls out to them (an exigence) and how they can respond to it (their intervention).
Gilrain, Jane. “Homer to Hip-Hop: Teaching Writing through Painting, Performance, and Poetry.” Language Arts, vol. 92, no. 5, 2015, pp. 328–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24577590. Accessed 29 Oct. 2022.
This paper provides a unique and creative defense of engaging students in creative practices that helps them develop a love for art and literature and encourages them to become effective interpreters and finally producers of art and literature. “In the beginning of the year when asked, ‘Have you seen a monster?’ [one of Gilrain’s student] answers, ‘No, I have not seen a monster.’ Of course not. Literal thinking. At the end of the year, she is thinking in metaphors: ‘Yes, monsters happen all of the time. The way I see it, problems are monsters’ (Gilrain 335). Gilrain traces out a way of engaging with students’ creativity and imagination to transition from simple observation to interpretation, and even, as you can see in the above quote, to thinking in a writerly mindset. I think this paper can be most helpful for when students are transitioning from practicing analysis to producing their own texts.
Ellis, James W. “Spirituals and Gospel Songs: Messages of Unity, Hope, and Deliverence. International Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, vol. 4, no. 2, 2021, pp. 42-57. Web.
Anton, Karen. “‘My Country! ’Tis of Thee, Strong Hold of Slavery’: The Musical Rhetoric of the American Antislavery Movement”. Young Scholars in Writing, vol. 7, Sept., 2015, pp. 30-40, https://youngscholarsinwriting.org/index.php/ysiw/article/view/93.
Both the above works provide a historical context for how specific forms of music emerged out of exigences and contexts of oppression and the movement toward freedom. Karen Anton points out that “when the spirit of music and the logic of words combine in song, they form a commanding source of rhetoric more powerful than either may be alone” (30). I found these pieces particularly useful in conceptualizing how students can be directed toward developing their own Public Awareness Campaign by recognizing that aesthetic forms, such as the Blues or Hip-Hop, often have fraught points of origin. By paying attention to the socio-cultural and historical contexts of music from civil rights movements, students can be taught to recognize meaningful exigences that originate in small, every day, and nevertheless deeply political, activities.
Teaching Application
Singing Along to the Blues
This activity can be quite exciting because it begins by asking students to sing (yes, in class). I understand that there might be some hurdles of awkwardness or shyness. However, by now students would have been asked to engage with the music by tapping along to the beat and humming melodies to whatever we listen to in class. This activity encourages them to engage with the music at the level of music itself, and not analysis.
As characterized by the theoretical framework above, encouraging creativity while being emotionally present and engaged in the art form (in this case music) is absolutely necessary for students to effectively grasp what “being rhetorical” truly means. This activity also encourages students to think about their cultural associations and personal connections with music that they may originally view as mundane or inconsequential. By having students connect the music they listen to in class to that which they personally relate to, their personal experiences and associations can be brought into discussion, emphasizing autonomy and experimentation.
Overview
This activity is part of the introduction to the concept of “exigence” to students. Prior to this, students will have explored different aspects of the expanded rhetorical situation, including socio-cultural and historical context.
Activity Objectives
Prepare students to “respond” to the Blues, by participating in it and then asking questions of the music, the same way they would talk to a friend.
Estimated Duration
The activity will most likely take a good 40 minutes. This is because you want to encourage relistening, rethinking and reinterpreting past the initial first impression. It is also important to account for different levels of engagement, and that it might take some time to get students to actually sing.
Breakdown of the Activity
Introducing the Topic (5 minutes)
You can begin with a brief class discussion, by asking students whether they’ve listened to songs that have the call and response format. You will most likely get people saying no. However, as you prod, get them to think of gospels or spirituals, with perhaps an example or two, you might see a glimmer of recognition in their eyes. It would be a bonus if someone in the class is able to mention a song that they’ve heard that has a call and response style.
Listening to the Music (5 minutes)
The song that I would suggest is “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, as there are a variety of versions of the song, from Gospel, Blues, Jazz with a swing tempo, to Eric Clapton’s rock version. At the first listen students would simply have to clap or tap to the beat/rhythm.
Singing Along (5 minutes)
Once the different parts are identified, the class can be divided into two (more if you are brave enough) parts: the ones that “call out” and the ones that “respond”. The song can be played again, with each groups singing their assigned part.
Class discussion (15 minutes)
From the singing we move to the analysis, where the questions provided by Jeffrey Carroll:
“Who did this blues talk to?
How did it talk?
What got talked back to this blues?
Was the talkback blues too?
What kind of language is this, anyway?”
I recommend that parts of the song be replayed and re-listened to that apply to relevant questions or ideas that come up in class.
Conclusion
The primary takeaway from the class has to be aesthetic pleasure that is then used to arrive at the rhetorical situation of both the song, and its form, which is this case is the “call and response”. This leads to, in the next class, conceptualizing, in a relatable way, the meaning of the term exigence. This process also lays the groundwork for arriving at an instinctive understanding of exigence required for final compositional assignment, the Public Awareness Campaign, where the idea of “call and response” will be recontextualized as the model for engaging with issues in the immediate surroundings of the students.