Jazz + Folk = American Music

When you hear the names, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Thad Jones, Ella Fitzgerald, and Benny Goodman just to name a few. What do you think of? Can you hear the sounds of the whole ensemble? Doesn’t it make you want to tap your foot to it? Nothing can be more exciting than Jazz right? Wait! What about folk music? According to Wikipedia (which is not the most reliable website resource, however this instance it proved to be), American folk music is basically a melting pot of different genres together! Gospel, Country, Jug bands, Native American music all come together to call themselves American folk music!

I bet you could ask someone how does “This Little Light of Mine” go and they would be able to sing at least two lines of lyrics back to you. Unless of course someone doesn’t know it then it’s our duty to help them along simply because we asked and knew the answer.

As music teachers, we should be able to help our students understand the different genres of music there are possibly out there! Should we be experts? Not exact experts. I think our brains would explode from all the information we have stored on the minute details of every song. However, we should familiarize ourselves with standards and some unknown songs/composers/musicians. So many songs have a part in history and it’s important for them to understand where it came from.

Now begs the question what songs do our students need to know? Of course students should know our National Anthem (without all the embellishments), Stars and Stripes Forever, and America the Beautiful. They’ll hear them a lot and it’s important for them to understand what they mean.

After those three, I think it’s up to the teacher about what they want their students to learn and understand. I would highly suggest showing students different songs that have different meanings or come from different backgrounds. Perhaps you could link songs to different holidays. For example, the next holiday that’s coming up is St. Patrick’s Day so why not have a quick lesson on Danny Boy? The opportunities are endless and it’ll be lots of fun exposing students to these American songs created by wonderful composers.