Work by the Grade 7 Art Class at FACTS, 2008–09
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Download the Lesson Plan for Lift Every Voice and Sing.
Here are some things to think about:
Who is in your own gallery of valued cultural treasures?
From who have you learned? (And what?)
What do you value and want to pass on?
Where have you taken a stand?
Playing & Learning With Folk Arts
Lift Every Voice and Sing
Introduction
This is presented as an illustration project anchored in observation of Black History Month. (For general background on the development of Black History month, see http://www.history.com/topics/black-history-month. For other resources, see http://www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov.)
Introductory discussion also focuses on illustration – both as a kind of work that artists can do, and as a tool for getting a point across. Ask: How do you visualize (the future, work, important events?) Ask: When you graduate, what do you get? (Name degrees). Ask: What jobs can you get with a degree? (This is a way to visualize different kinds of work that artists do. Then zero in on illustration.)
This is a task in illustration, defined as “developing images to go with texts and concept.” The class discusses what this can mean. For example, “Do a verbal illustration of FACTS mealtime ritual.” (Using a verse that reinforces school values and that is collectively known and familiar to all students). How would you illustrate the words “sun,” “rain,” “circle.” What is easy to illustrate? Introduce strategies – the idea of doing sequential images, or using the idea of montage. The class creates an image collection and explores these strategies, using examples of a music poster and introducing scale, composition and overlapping.
Contextualizing Lift Every Voice and Sing
Explaining that the mealtime ritual song is part of the school repertoire, the teacher asks about other songs that are widely shared and leads class discussion: What is an anthem? A national anthem? (What is a nation?) What is the Black national anthem? The teacher shares a Melba Moore recording of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in which Jesse Jackson sets the historical context of the song. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOp6kgkbSu8. The teacher shares an explanation about Jackson and who he is…in the context of the recent election, many kids knew this.)Then, the teacher leads a discussion about folk arts. Who did people learn this song from? Discussion of the importance of people holding on to this song, over time. Stories about how schools and kids and churches have held onto this song over time.
Art-making
Lift Every Voice and Sing is sliced up into stanzas— literally— with stanzas in a hat. (See http://www.naacp.org/about/history/levas_history/index.htm). Kids pull a stanza out of the hat and begin to talk about how they will illustrate their stanza. Discuss what it easy to illustrate and what is more difficult. What are strategies that you can use to illustrate each section. What are symbols that you can use to organize the composition?
Technical matters are explained and demonstrated: solid images, cutting paper approaches, generating a line, image, text and decorative components. Consideration of design vocabulary. Folk arts residency artist Linda Goss wears clothing with African designs and patterns, and students consider how to use West African design components to make the point they want to make. Discussion of Reverend Joseph Lowery’s talk at President Obama’s inauguration helped students think about how to ”name the dark past,“ and how to illustrate “the hope” of the future.
Other Resources
Kim Weston sings “Lift” in 1972 in LA, introduced by Jackson, with historic clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGWsqR6UbGk
Julian Bond. Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem 100 Years, 100 Voices. Random House ebook, 2001. For origin narrative by Johnson and commentaries by others:
“A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercise. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children. Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it, they went off to other schools and sang it, they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today, the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used. The lines of this song repay me in elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children.”
– James Weldon Johnson, 1935
(See http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=26314&cgi=biblio&inkey=92-0375506462-0&PID=26314)
Lift Every Voice: Music in American Life (University of Virginia exhibition, 2001): http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/music/index.html
Reverend Joseph Lowery’s benediction at President Obama’s inauguration (reference to Lift every voice): http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/21/civil_rights_icon_rev_joseph_lowery
Lyrics for Lift Every Voice and Sing
The Black National Anthem by James Weldon Johnson
Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring.
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee,
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.