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Hip-Hop in School

• Posted by Kara Cook March 15, 2015 - Filed in Music Education - #  #music education  #school  #general music  #hip-hop  #teaching  #teacher  #middle school  - 6,217 views

   

              The 7^th graders in my general music class at school are completing a unit on jazz right now. Technically, they’re done with the jazz portion, and now we’re talking about genres that were influenced by jazz or blues like rock, country, R&B and hip-hop.

              The other day, we analyzed the Tribe Called Quest song, “Can I Kick It?” I have to say, I was pretty proud of myself. This is a hip-hop group that most of the kids have actually not heard of, but the majority of them do listen to some type of hip-hop. I chose A Tribe Called Quest because most of their early stuff is pretty clean, and because they were kind of pioneers of the genre. They had such a different sound than most of the other hip-hop groups of their time. My assistant principal was in to evaluate me during one of those lessons, and he was very impressed. The kids dug it, and it made them hear things they might not have otherwise heard.

              The first part of class involved reading a short biography of A Tribe Called Quest describing how they started and why they are so revered. Then they had to define the words “Afro-Centric” and “sampling” just based on context clues in the reading. They did an awesome job with that, so we moved onto the next part.

              We listened to the whole song, and I had the first two verses written down for them to read along. Then, they had to talk about why the words could be considered poetry. The answers I was looking for were that the end of each line rhymes and they use similes and metaphors. Some of the students even thought of other ways it was like poetry based on the rhythm of the words and the way the verses looked like stanzas and contained a limited amount of words in each line. That led to a discussion about rhythm in hip-hop. That song mentions the word rhythm quite a bit, and it’s because hip-hop is all about rhythms. Tribe uses samples to create underlying rhythms, and then they really vary the rhythm of their words. There is no melody in hip-hop, so they have to make it aurally interesting otherwise it would just sound like they were talking.

              The last part of the lesson was that I chose 4 of the samples that ATCQ used in “Can I Kick It?” and played short segments of those songs for the class to hear. Each of those segments contained the sample used by Tribe, and the students had to identify what instrument that was, as well as the genre of the other songs.

              They did a really good job with this, and they all seemed to enjoy hearing the samples in the other songs. I had some of the best discussions with them in those classes than I have had in any other class with them. It has taken a little while, but I think I’m finally starting to break through. I find 7^th grade to be a tough age because they’re deciding what’s “cool” and what’s not. More often than not, things are not cool. But I try to tell them that this class is all about listening a different way, and if they keep an open mind, they may discover something they like that they never thought they would.

              I think it’s all about making connections as well. They know about poetry, so when we talked about the lyrics, they could talk about that. I am trying to connect all of our listening examples to something they already know so that they don’t completely dismiss it. I think it’s starting to work, and if I am in this position next year, it will be great to start the year off this way. I came to this school in the middle of the year, and I am doing something completely different from the previous teacher. So now the kids are getting used to it, and I am constantly changing the way I run the class to try and make it more appealing to them. This is why I love teaching – it’s all about creativity. I get to teach about the music I love and be creative about it. It’s really an art in itself.