Kerr's West African Music



Horace Mann Middle School
7th grade - Ms. Kerr

Horace Mann LRC
LESSON 1
Begin your journey into the music and instruments of West Africa at Arts Edge
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/aoi/music/pan.html

Day One
Click on the Music section to find resources about African Music. Spend time at two different sites. They may be sites from this introductory site, or two of the ones about music and instruments listed below.

Write a paragraph about each site you visited.

Write the words and their meanings on a separate sheet of paper. Draw an illustration of the word, if it is a NOUN.

You may have learned something not related to the above questions at the two sites you visited. Be sure to include those discoveries in your two site paragraphs. Include the URL and name of the web sites at the beginning of each paragraph.

Links For Lesson 1:

Cora Connection. Hear and learn about some of the traditional instruments used in West Africa.
http://www.coraconnection.com/

Read more about the music of West Africa.
http://wus.africaonline.com/AfricaOnline/music/Nigeria.html

African Music Encyclopedia.
http://www.africanmusic.org/

West African Instruments.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/features/africa/windex.shtml

Mali Museum web page: See an original song with commentary!
Read about and hear many original instruments from Mali.
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Instruments/Anglais/mnm_c_txt02_en.html

River of Sand Interactive site about the people, music and culture of Mali and West Africa
http://www.kensingtontv.com/go/riverofsand/indextop.html

LESSON 2

Day Two
Again, begin your work at this web site: ArtsEdge
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/aoi/music/pan.html

Once on the web home page, click on the Lesson section and read about Storytelling and the arts. Your group is to find an African story and choose one of the arts along with music, to tell the story. There are many good suggestions about drama, puppet shows, and musicals. The example they share is the Lion King. Most of you have seen the Disney film version of this African story. We will look at parts of it to identify some of the African instruments used. Think of how you can use percussion instruments to help tell your African story. Many links below will tell you lots more about the type of instruments as well as how they sound. What could you use to achieve similar sounds? Could you make an instrument that may work?

Also, I have added some sites that have African tales for you to choose from. This first period you will need to spend time just exploring and carefully reading about all the elements in telling a story well. You will become storytellers of an African tale. You will be both performing and a griot or jeli (If you read closely, you will discover what I mean by these terms).

Links For Lesson 2:

African Folk Tales
http://www.phillipmartin.info/liberia/text_folktales_intro.htm

http://www.phillipmartin.info/liberia/homepage.htm

http://www.toptags.com/aama/tales/tales.htm

http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/aoi/literary/storytelling/trove.html

BOOKS