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Teaching Literature and Music

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Jackie
mixtape

mixtape (Photo credit: miss_rogue)

The sweet spot between literature and music has always fascinated me, as both are among the primary forces that shape my life and how I see my place in the world. In teaching, I’ve tried to weave them together whenever I can, using music to introduce elements of tone and theme when discussing novels, and sometimes sharing songs with my students that I think connect to our texts. So far, I’ve seen three major ways to connect music and literature, all of which could have great implications in the classroom.

Type One: Literary Mixtapes

The major source for Literary Mixtapes I’ve found is at Flavorwire, a real treasure trove for book and music lovers. They’ve done mixtapes for characters from Holly Golightly to Harriet the Spy and tons in between, and the newer ones connect to Spotify playlists, which is even better for me.

My friend Dana Huff also made mixtapes on Spotify for Holden, Gatsby, Harry Potter, Lady Macbeth. This could be a great assignment for teaching characterization, especially for these kinds of complex characters, really encouraging students to delve deep into that character’s identity and the forces that have shaped it.

Type Two: Music Mentioned Explicitly in Book

This is a fun project for books that are built around certain musical forms or that mention music explicitly in the book. I’ve subscribed to a playlist on Spotify that compiles all the opera mentioned in Bel Canto , for example. This is great especially if you are unfamiliar with the style of music or with certain songs, and can really enrich your reading experience. As far as the classroom goes, I would see this more as an extra credit project, as it doesn’t really address literary elements, but it could prove that a student did a close enough reading of the book to catch every song reference. One recent popular YA novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, would lend itself really well to an assignment like this.

As a book-and-music nerd, there are a few playlists I’d like to tackle myself. The first would be a pair inspired by a great book I read recently, This Is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl (review coming soon). One playlist would be of the songs that are mentioned as inspiring Dave Grohl as a musician, which run the gamut from the Beatles to Metallica to Fugazi, and others might be songs by Dave himself in his assorted bands: Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Them Crooked Vultures, Queens of the Stone Age, etc. The other would be a playlist of all the songs mentioned in High Fidelity, which would be a massive undertaking, but such fun!

Type Three: Music That Accompanies the Book

This is the category I’ve had the most luck with as far as classroom assignments. In a senior elective I taught last year, I gave them the option of making a soundtrack for King Lear and got a few really outstanding examples, where the students clearly put a lot of thought and care into matching up the songs with different characters, tones, themes and plot points. Inspired by that success, this year I gave my freshmen the option of making a soundtrack for The Catcher in the Rye, and the examples I’ve gotten so far show a real understanding of the novel. Coincidentally, as I was working on this post, Dana did a blog post about theme songs for books, which would be a great shorter assignment as well.

I find this to be a wonderful assignment because while it usually produces high levels of student engagement, it also encourages them to make connections between the novel and their own lives, which is one of the key reasons I think it’s important to teach literature at all. Music is a big deal for many teenagers, and so this meets them on their own turf, but as a music fan myself, it gives me a chance to connect with them and the choices they make.

 

 

In the future, I’d like to try some lessons built around music and song analysis, connected to literature. The Experience Music Project in Seattle has some great resources on its website for lesson plans, oral histories, and multimedia timelines, and I’ve thought a lot about their free distance learning courses for teachers. Also, it’s just an amazing place to visit, if you’ve never been. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland also has some great resources on its website, including lessons and units and information about a summer teacher institute, which has just earned a spot on my professional development dream list!

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Singing My Song

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Jackie
Sharon Van Etten

Image via Wikipedia

You know how it goes, right? When you hear that song for the first time, and you tell your kids or your husband to stop talking, or you pull over on the side of the road and close your eyes and let the song fill you up. And you don’t know whether it’s the lyrics, or the voice, or the music itself, but something in that song has wound itself around your heart.

Right now, that song is Sharon Van Etten’s Save Yourself, and it’s absolutely permeating my world these days. Sharon’s got all kinds of heat and attention right now, and she has a new album just out, and I’m slowly falling in love with that one too, but this song, this song is it for me. Her voice and harmonies are hitting me where I live, and the lyrics and the music are equally as gorgeous and haunting.

Has a song done that for you recently? What was it?

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52 Songs, 52 Stories

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Jackie

Someday, if I’m feeling ambitious and ready for a challenge, I’m going to do a version of this amazing project: 52 Songs, 52 Stories. The blogger chose a song each week, posted a video for that song and wrote a very short story inspired by the song. He was inspired by several projects, including A Month in Music, where a blogger played his music collection continuously, on shuffle, for 30 days and wrote about what he heard each day. If I did a similar year-long project, I would not only write flash fiction, but also flash creative nonfiction, riffing on the songs I chose but also soliciting reader requests, I think.

This is the kind of inspiration, however, that I think would be easily adaptable, as writing prompts for poems or any short pieces of writing, especially for people like me who think about their identities or periods in their lives in terms of music.

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Versatile Blogger

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Jackie
A heap of old and unwanted cassette tapes.

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My bloggy friend Sara tagged me as a Versatile Blogger about a month ago, and I’ve meant to post on it ever since, but have been stumped by the requirement: listing “seven facts about me that you are unlikely to learn elsewhere.” I’ve been blogging for over seven years, so the list of things I haven’t blogged, but am willing to blog, is rather short. But then again, who knows how many of you have been reading all of those seven years, so really, I decided to get over it and just make a list, focused around music in my life.

  1. The first cassette tapes I remember owning were George Michael’s Faith and Madonna’s True Blue. I believe that tells you all you need to know about which generation I belong to, both by the artists mentioned and the words “cassette tapes.”
  2. I will further incriminate myself by saying my eighth grade boyfriend bought me a tape for Christmas, and it was Naughty by Nature’s self-titled 1991 masterwork, featuring “O.P.P,” a song to which I used to know all the lyrics and probably can sing embarrassing portions of even today.  It was my favorite tape for months, second only to Boyz II Men’s “Motownphilly.”
  3. I have a Mariah Carey station on Pandora, and I’m not ashamed.  I also have a Britney Spears one, which I love as well.
  4. For our wedding, my husband and I made mix CDs and gave them out as favors.  I’m still pretty proud of our tracklisting, and I still play the CD regularly, though I’m not sure how many of our wedding guests would say the same.  Songs included the Indigo Girls, “Power of Two,” Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” Al Green, “Let’s Stay Together,” and the Cure, “The Lovecats.”
  5. If forced to choose, I would choose the Beatles over the Rolling Stones, which my mother believes is one of the classic musical divides of our age.  She’s a Stones fan, so we never speak of this.
  6. If forced to choose again, I would choose Led Zeppelin over the Rolling Stones.  While the Stones have many amazing songs, from “Sympathy for the Devil” to “Wild Horses,”  there’s something so epic, legendary, decadent and just plain rockstar about Zeppelin.  Not to mention I know their albums by heart (III is my favorite), have read extensively about their lives, and went through several obsessive phases dedicated entirely to them.  Plus, Robert Plant is hotter than Mick Jagger.
  7. I wrote a paper in graduate school on Eminem’s deployment of class and race imagery, which was accepted for presentation at the next meeting of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.  Chuck D was the keynote speaker, it was supposed to be my first conference presentation, and I was thrilled–until it was canceled, as it was scheduled for the weekend after September 11th, 2001.

As for tagging, I’m listing some here, but feel free to jump in, if this appeals to you!

What Now?
Bumblebee Sweet Potato
Geeky Mom
Lone Star Ma
She Started It

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Bullets of Love

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Jackie

 

Boardwalk Empire

Image by Paul Lowry via Flickr

 

I know that sounds like the title of an album My Bloody Valentine
never made, but it’s really just an excuse for a bulleted post full of things I’m in love with these days:

  • Boardwalk Empire, the newest drama on HBO in their long string of beautifully shot, well-costumed/acted/written, and historically accurate shows. Except this one is directed by Martin Scorsese, features incredible acting from Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt, among others, and also includes Omar from The Wire in some impeccable pinstriped suits.
  • My fall and winter this year are going to happen to a soundtrack of First Aid Kit, a pair of Swedish sisters with gorgeous harmonies, a band one of my students introduced me to by using I Met Up With The King in her King Lear soundtrack project. Bonus awesomeness: they do an amazing cover of a former favorite winter/fall song of mine
  • I’m so exhausted these days it doesn’t take me much to get to sleep, but I’ve gotten into the habit of reading each night before I go to bed, and right now it’s Washington, by Ron Chernow, one of my favorite biographers. I’m a big fan of presidential biographies, and this one is no exception, presenting a much more nuanced and rich portrait of our first president than any I’ve read before. I’m at the point now where Washington, weary, fearful and broke, is traveling towards his first inauguration–gripping stuff.
  • I first read this book at the pool this summer, which is appropriate because it’s a book set mostly in the summer, featuring summer houses and vacations and other summertime magic, but I recently reread That Old Cape Magic and it is still one of the best novels I’ve read in a long while. I’m a big fan of Richard Russo, and this one stands up to the best of his, in my opinion, full of dark humor, the bittersweetness of marriage and family, and his trademark ability to look fully and kindly at his characters while never letting them off the hook.
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Singing My Life

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Jackie

When I spent a semester abroad in college and arrived in my new British dorm room, the first task I tackled was to unpack all the postcards and posters I’d brought from my old dorm room and stick them up on the wall.  I hadn’t unpacked, didn’t know where I was going to eat dinner yet, but needed to feel like I belonged inside those walls and like they truly belonged to me.

All my life, whenever I get a new space to call my own, whether it’s been a dorm room or an entire house, my first priority is decorating. Some may need to feel organized and unpack every box, and I know a colleague of mine needs to scrub down every possible surface, but I need to see bright colors and pleasing images, some old and some new, before I can really feel at home.

Right now, I have a print of Salvador Dali’s “Meditative Rose” on my classroom wall that came from my house, for example, and when I look at it or the pictures of my kids or my new favorite Nikki McClure print, it’s a little anchor in the middle of each day. What I’ve (re)discovered since the school year has begun and as I settle into my new classroom is that being able to have music playing as often as possible also makes an incredible difference in my sense of ease in a space. Whether it’s one of my six Pandora stations, streaming radio or one of the CDS I keep on hand, it’s been just wonderful to be able to put on some music in my downtime, music to lift my spirits or make me bob my head or smile, music to help me relax from the class I just taught or get geared up for the class I’m about to teach.

I say (re)discovered because in my personal life, this has always been true for me–whether driving, cooking, relaxing or reading, I’ve always loved having music on in the background. In college, my dorm room was always one of those with music spilling into the hallway, and I always brought a discman (I know) and headphones when I went to study in the library. Today, I would definitely be one of the students I often saw when I was adjuncting, walking around campus with little white earbuds and a hooded sweatshirt, cocooned away from the world but moving in it just the same. There are songs and bands from every part of my life that bring me right back to those moments, and I can see the unpacked boxes in my dorm room that first day and hear 311 on the stereo, the first flag I planted in alien soil.

I guess I’m thinking about college days now because I’ve been watching my former students arrive at college and start to settle in. Through the magic of Facebook, I can see the new friendships pop up, the posts about their first football games, pictures of new roommates, encouraging messages to each other as they start to find their way in the world. My own college days are also the last time I looked at painted cinder-block walls and tried to figure out how to make them mine, and the last time I turned on some music and started to create my own little nest in a bustling hive of activity.

Back then I was jubilant at all the possibilities that unfurled before me. These days, I’m almost incredulous when I think of all the treasures I’ve managed to discover along the way.

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