“Precious memories keep a lingering on
Every time I hear our favorite song…”
- “The Same Old Song” by The Four Tops
At the end of events, it’s natural to evaluate and determine the tools and valuable life experiences you gained from that event. True to this, the past few days I have begun this evaluation of this experience. Following are some of the thoughts I’ve been having these past few days.
As I’m sure we’ve all been contemplating, I have been trying to determine exactly where I will be able to embed this information into my curriculum. An idea I had was sparked by Dr. Early in his discussion on music being a form of social critique. (Please remember this is still a brainstorm!) I would like to have my students work together to create a musical scrapbook of a time period (perhaps the 1960’s). Each student would responsible for choosing 3 songs and using the lyrics, album art, and performances to discover how this song is a reflection of the historical events, feelings, problems, celebrations, and/or attitudes of the time. Links to each of these elements would be put up by each student on a class wiki page along with the students’ critical analysis of the song and the elements surrounding it. At the end of the quarter I’m envisioning the students having access to a wiki site with a long list of popular songs along side of their cultural significance. Along with learning and analyzing the fusion of popular culture into history, students will hopefully be exposed to, in some cases, a new collection of high quality music.
My final reflection is upon the content of the seminar. In one of our first meetings Dr. Early mentioned that musical taste has something to do with nostalgia. This point made perfect sense to me because, as it turns out, all of my favorite music comes from the 80’s and 90’s-the years in which I “came of age”- or the late 60’s and early 70’s, which is the time period of my mom’s favorite music and thus, what she played in our home. Every time I hear Marvin’s “Heard It Through the Grapevine” I can’t help but remember being 7 years old trying to match Marvin word-for-word on my karaoke machine. (I never sang to the instrumental versions because Marvin MAKES that song, just as Stevie MAKES “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”.) Music is, for most of us, a catalyst to memories.
All this being said, I wish we would have spent more time discussing Motown and its many implications on American culture. The information given in these lectures and readings is the bulk of the information I’ll bring back to my students and implement into my curriculum. As well, as is oozing from this post, my love of this music has been life-long.
During another lecture Dr. Early said that you should listen to music to appreciate it, and that it doesn’t matter if you like the music or not. Though I see the scholarly angle he is taking in regard to this comment, I disagree. I’m going to always listen to Motown because I love it. And if I’m flipping through radio channels in my car and have the option of listening to “Bad Romance” (Lady Gaga) or “It’s the Same Old Song”, I’m choosing The Four Tops every time.
-- Kelsey Snyder
