Bridging the Atlantic: Music and Media in the African Diaspora
Professors [DELETED]
TASS-1 University of Michigan Summer 2006
Overview of the seminar
The intellectual heart of this seminar was to explore how music and
media (film and video) can express and create meaning across cultural
boundaries. The locus of our inquiry was on the African continent and across
the Atlantic to the Americas. We focused on the diasporic connections between
several African countries and the United States; however, we also touched upon
the Caribbean and Latin America. We treated these connections as
conversations and stressed the back-and-forth influences all of these places
have had on each other.
As a microcosm of the central themes in the course, on the first day we
viewed The Language You Cry In, a documentary that traces the history of a
song sung by women in the Gullah islands off the coast of Georgia. Through
historical recordings and documents and painstaking fieldwork, scholars were
able to identify a village in Sierra Leone where women sang a version of this
song as they prepared bodies for burial. Thus throughout the history of the
Middle Passage, slavery in the U.S., and civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s,
this song has remained a powerful cultural artifact on both sides of the
Atlantic. Though the original Mende lyrics and melody underwent modification,
enough was recognizable to have unearthed otherwise lost connections and
shared origins of two communities profoundly affected by the African diaspora.
Following the thread of diasporic origins in Africa, the beginning of the
course focused on the African continent. In the first week students learned
about the geographical components of continent (the diversity of climates,
topographies, natural resources), took a map quiz (memorization of 25
countries and major cities and 10 natural resources/geographical features),
and wrote an essay and gave a class presentation about traditional and popular
music in an African country of their choosing. To get them comfortable writing
about music, we introduced cross-cultural music vocabulary for western and
non-western musics (terms relating to melody, rhythm, texture, and form). As
case studies, we focused on two musical traditions from Zimbabwe: the Shona
mbira dza vadzimu (traditional music for sacred and secular occasions) and
Chimurenga popular music (music associated with Thomas Mapfumo and the
war for independence, 1979-1982).
The rest of the seminar focused on a series of selected themes: (Week 2)
Spirituality in Music, with attention to Shona mbira music, slave spirituals,
and contemporary gospel; (Week 3) Literature, Jazz, and the Harlem
Renaissance, with attention to major figures in the Harlem Renaissance and
how desires to reconnect with African roots took on primitivist/romanticized
overtones; (Week 4) Opera, in particular how Bizet’s Carmen has been recreated in multiple African-American and African settings and how the genre
relates to African forms of musical theater; (Week 5) Music, Politics, and
Power, focusing on the social/political roles of West African griots, East African
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taarab poetry, and South African anti-apartheid music; and (Week 6) World
Beat and Hip Hop, with attention to the rise of world beat/Afro-beat musical
fusions and the spread of American hip hop culture to Africa and beyond. In
addition to a wide-ranging coursepack of reading materials, the main texts for
the seminar included Eileen Southern’s comprehensive history of AfricanAmerican music (The Music of Black Americans, 3rd ed.), the ‘slave narrative’ of
Olaudah Equiano, Ntozake Shange’s novel Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo
discussed in Week 3, and the autobiography of Manu Dibango (Three Kilos of
Coffee), popular African and world beat musician, discussed in Week 6.
In keeping with our joint focus on media, we also viewed together a series
of films that related to or exemplified the themes listed above. These included:
a documentary on Shona mbira music; Steven Spielberg’s Amistad; an awardwinning documentary on gospel titled Say Amen, Somebody!; Lena Horne,
Katherine Dunham, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Cab Calloway in Stormy
Weather; Francesco Rossi’s filmed version of Bizet’s Carmen with Placido
Domingo and Julia Migenes-Johnson; Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte
in Carmen Jones; Beyonce and Mos Def in Carmen: A Hip Hopera; Karmen Gei (a
Senegalese reinterpretation of the opera); a documentary on Ghanaian musical
theater; Keita! The Heritage of the Griot; two African feature films on the
intersections of traditional and modern ways of life in Africa (Maangamizi: The
Anceint One from Tanzania and Jit from Zimbabwe); a documentary on taarab
music; the award-winning documentary Amandla! on music in the struggle
against apartheid; and a selection of contemporary African music videos. Not all
of these films were viewed in their entirety in class. Those that the students
were avid to finish, however, we sent home with them to the Telluride House to
finish viewing after dinner.
Matters related to the seminar outside of the classroom
There is no doubt that the TASS program overall is extremely important
and well thought out. That said, we have a few suggestions that would help
things move even more smoothly for future TASS seminars.
Collaboration between the two TASS seminars
Since there are now two TASS seminars held at Michigan, it would make
sense to get the four professors together before session begins to coordinate
things a bit. This would not only help with planning the field trip (see below),
but would also foster great conversations outside of the classroom for the
students who are all living together in the same house. It would also help
ensure somewhat comparable standards and expectations regarding the
academic component of the TASS experience. Besides the field trip, we had one
joint class on film musicals in the Harlem Renaissance and Calypso music in
the Caribbean. This was a great success and we wish that we had planned at
least one or two other class periods together.
The Field Trip
Let the professors and tutors know about this before the seminar begins.
This way we can incorporate such an event into the planning of the syllabus.
Since we were encouraged to have the two TASS seminars go somewhere
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together (particularly to maximize transportation costs) we would have liked to
have a little more time to plan where we could go and how to best integrate it
into the syllabus. To be honest, we were a little unclear about the details of the
fieldtrip—were the professors supposed to go, or would it be better to have the
money available for the students? Was this a time for the tutors to become more
academically involved, or was it a time to have a change of pace outside of the
classroom?
We ended up visiting the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American
History and Hitsville USA, the Motown Historical Museum. For lunch, we ate at
the Blue Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant, which gave the students first-hand
experience with one variety of African cuisine eaten in the traditional way.
Overall, the whole day was a success. One suggestion if future seminars visit
these venues would be to get some information about the tours at each place.
We found that the quality of the tour really depends on the tour guide (his/her
experience and knowledge base). It would be a good idea while booking the tour
to let the curator/guide know that this is an advanced seminar program and
there should be a strong historical/academic approach to the content.
The roles of the Tutors
We were both under the impression that the Tutors were going to be
more engaged academically with the seminar. Instead, they seemed to have
their hands quite full with managing the day to day details of being surrogate
parents to the students in the house. They were very competent in handling
unexpected—and not inconsequential—challenges as they came up (e.g.,
students who were sick and needed to go to the ER, various phone calls from
parents, students dealing with the death of family members), as well as the
quotidian details of feeding students on the weekends, planning outings and
activities, and making sure all the students were constantly accounted for and
safe.
Given these duties, it is not surprising that when the tutors were in
seminar they acted as though it was their “time off.” This was contrary to our
expectations and the implication of their title as ‘tutors’ (rather than, say,
chaperones or counselors), which led us to believe that they would be actively
engaged with the course content. Instead, it seemed as though they did not
consistently do the readings, they sometimes seemed to “zone out” in seminar,
and occasionally they simply did not show up (without so much as notifying us
in advance or explaining their absence afterwards unless we queried them).
Though they had reasonable excuses, a defined policy about their attendance
and participation would help guide everyone’s expectations.
We were under the impression (per the TASS Manual) that the tutors
were supposed to have a strong role in helping the students with their writing;
specifically with revisions. More guidance from the Telluride Association would
be helpful on this front. We had the tutors meet with students after the first
papers to help them with their revisions. In preparation, we devoted our weekly
meeting with the tutors to discussing these first papers and guiding them in the
kinds of feedback we wished them to provide the students for the revision
process. Unfortunately, we were very disappointed with the results in the
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students’ revisions. When we compared the first version of the paper with the
revision, we saw very few changes and the first papers had next to no
comments on them. When we asked the tutors about this, they said that they
were told in their orientation not to mark on students’ papers. However, such a
policy makes it difficult for us then to figure out what type of feedback the
tutors had given the students. For the second paper, we took matters into our
own hands, read the first drafts, and held individual meetings with the students
with the tutors sitting in (and taking notes for the students) where we gave the
students feedback ourselves. The revision of the second paper was markedly
improved for each student. We relate this story to identify a potential place for
further refinement regarding the tutors’ role in helping the students with their
writing.
We would like to suggest that there be more shared control of the
financial resources for the course between the tutors and the professors. While
it is wonderful to have the tutors handle the details of getting the course
readings copied and ordering the course materials, it seems as though the
professors are put in an awkward position of needing to get permission from the
tutors for class-related purchases and events. We were fortunate to have a West
African musician from Mali perform one night here in Ann Arbor. The concert
had traditional music on the first half and African-jazz fusion on the second
half; this presented an opportunity for our students to attend a live concert that
illustrated the very themes we were examining in the seminar about crossAtlantic diasporic connections. While we were finally able to attend the concert,
it was a bit awkward having to clear things and get permission from the tutors
to purchase the tickets. It would be great for the professors to be kept more in
the loop regarding the money for course-related materials and not feel like we
had to lobby for things we felt were necessary. We had a similar situation with
the purchase of a compact disc of Tanzanian hip hop for the course.
Overall, our tutors did a very good job and it was clear that they had a
terrific rapport with the students. They handled all of the situations that arose
outside of the classroom with great competency and—mercifully—didn’t bother
us about these things at all. We would like to suggest that there be a little more
support for the tutors with the day to day administrative details and with
handling the field trip. Their having to juggle all of these things, plus the “camp
counselor” component of making sure that forty teenagers live together in
harmony demands an awful lot of them. More pointedly, it leaves little room for
them to become as academically involved with the experience as the Telluride
program desires and requires.
An introduction to how high school students learn
One of the central things that would have made our teaching experience
less complicated would be to have had some preparation for teaching high
school students. University/college professors are not intimately familiar with
how high school students learn; we are used to teaching a very different type of
student. Besides having to rely on our imagination and a bit of trial and error in
the first weeks, it would be wonderful for the Telluride Association to offer some
guidelines (suggestions, ideas) for teaching high school students and some
parameters as to what might be a reasonable work load and set of standards.
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While we realize that high school students are a heterogeneous group—like
college students—they all have different levels of preparedness and learning
styles. Here are a few suggestions for different types of assignments.
1. Writing
Mix up writing assignments so that there are shorter papers (e.g., 2 pages)
and longer papers (e.g., 5 pages). Have one (or two) of the assignments focus
on a close reading of an article or book. Have one of the assignments focus
on using references (both online and hard copy—books, articles they get
from the library); learning how to cite them correctly and differentiate
between their own ideas and a secondary source. Have one of the
assignments based on supporting their opinion about something (e.g.,
specific readings or issues). High school students seem to be strong at
summarizing materials. While this is important, the next step—synthesizing
an argument and using a reading to support a larger idea—is something
they are still learning to do. The writing assignments need to help them
along with this process.
2. Class discussions
Asking specific questions about an article, or asking them to come to
seminar with a question of their own, helps them focus their reading
process. Rather than only coming into class with a lot of text that they’ve
highlighted, they come to class with something specific to say. Sometimes
we broke the class into small groups (2-4), had them fill out a worksheet we
had prepared on the readings, and then come back to the larger group to
share points from their smaller group discussion. This seemed to help them
a lot, and we recommend it as one possible teaching strategy to assist in the
development of critical thinking.
In conclusion, while we greatly enjoyed our TASS experience and, in
particular, our group of students, there were some organizational/institutional
complications that could so easily have been avoided. We offer these
suggestions as helpful feedback to assist future TASS seminars from having to
reinvent the wheel or face unnecessary challenges in their efforts to offer
students the best possible, and most constructive, academic experience.