Table for students:
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Song #1
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Song #2
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Song #3
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Song #4
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Song Title
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Artist
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What words do you hear?
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What do you think this song
is about?
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Is this song happy or sad?
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Where could you hear this
song?
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Rate this song on a scale of
1-10 (1 = L L, 10 = JJ)
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- What kind of music do you like?
- What kind of music helps you feel better?
- Does music help you feel better?
- When do you listen to music?
- Who is your favorite musician?
- What musicians/singers/guitar player/etc do you like?
- What song says something about you today? (Can be a Ukrainian song but must be said in English.)
and etc (anything- anything that comes to mind, anything they will actually respond to)...
Play the songs one at a time. Have students fill in the chart as they listen to each song. (In fact, they googled the lyrics and got the song titles and singers for each song- unexpected but fine. :) ) Talk about each song before moving on to next song (ie- go over the things they've filled out in the chart and then talk about the themes in each song. Have them tell you what the themes are, get them to tell as much as they can about each song and its meaning(s)).
(I had 4 songs ready to go for this lesson plus part 2 of the lesson but these 3 songs took us all the way through- approx 70 min. They did well with each song but 'Beer for my Horses'-- which was included because 1- it actually does have a message and is 2- fun and 3- more likely to appeal to the students-- was the biggest hit. I was impressed by how many words and whole lines that they got- without the help of google or YouTube; important to have songs with clear singing and these 3 worked well for that. There were a few funny mondegreens but that keeps things happier, really. One student heard 'I mental ask...' instead of 'I meant to ask you'. :) )
Themes/words/ideas brought up and discussed a bit: death, soldiers, war, military funerals ('Bang the Drum Slowly'); crime, vigilante justice/taking the law into one's own hands, draw a line/draw a hard line (vs Obama's 'red line' which Putin waltzes all over and which Obama allows), long arm of the law, red necks/hillbillies/hicks/country people ('Beer for my Horses'); 'take a/your/someone's life', suicide, depression ('Vincent').
Songs used for this lesson:
Printout with lyrics and short description of songs:
"Bang The Drum Slowly"
I meant to ask you how to fix that car
I always meant to ask you about the war
And what you saw across a bridge too far
Did it leave a scar
Or how you navigated wings of fire and steel
Up where heaven had no more secrets to conceal
And still you found the ground beneath your wheels
How did it feel
Bang the drum slowly play the pipe lowly
To dust be returning from dust we begin
Bang the drum slowly I'll speak of things holy
Above and below me world without end
I meant to ask you how when everything seemed lost
And your fate was in a game of dice they tossed
There was still that line that you would never cross
At any cost
I meant to ask you how you lived what you believed
With nothing but your heart up your sleeve
And if you ever really were deceived
By the likes of me
Bang the drum slowly play the pipe lowly
To dust be returning from dust we begin
Bang the drum slowly I'll speak of things holy
Above and below me world without end
Gone now is the day and gone the sun
There is peace tonight all over Arlington
But the songs of my life will still be sung
By the light of the moon you hung
I meant to ask you how to plow that field
I meant to bring you water from the well
And be the one beside you when you fell
Could you tell
Bang the drum slowly play the pipe lowly
To dust be returning from dust we begin
Bang the drum slowly I'll speak of things holy
Above and below me world without end
“Bang the Drum Slowly”- Emmylou Harris/Guy Clark
This is an elegy for my father, who died in ’93. A couple of
years afterward I was talking to (songwriter) Jamie O’Hara and said, “You
know, I just feel the need to write about my dad. But I can’t even get
started. I have so many regrets because there are so many things that I could
have learned from him that I didn’t. Jamie said, “Hust write that.” I took
the song to Guy Clark and he really helped me with the lyrics and inspired me
to write more. Everything in the song is true. That’s why it was so hard to
write—I couldn’t go into the realm of fiction or poetry. It all had to be
true.
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"Beer For My Horses"
Well a man come on the 6 o’clock news
Said somebody’s been shot, somebody’s been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole a car
Somebody got away
Somebody didn’t get too far yeah
They didn’t get too far
Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street for all the people to see that
[Chorus:]
Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we’ll sing a victory tune
We’ll all meet back at the local saloon
We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses
We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
We’ve got too much corruption, too much crime in the streets
It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send ’em all to their maker and he’ll settle ’em down
You can bet he’ll set ’em down ’cause
[Chorus (x2)]
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"Beer for My Horses" is a
song recorded by American country music artists Toby Keith and Willie
Nelson. It was composed by Keith and Scotty Emerick for Keith's seventh studio album, Unleashed. The song was
released as the album's fourth single on April 7, 2003. The song tells of a
group of men who fight injustice and celebrate with a round of drinks at a
saloon.
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"Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)"
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life, as lovers often do
But I could've told you Vincent
This world was never meant for
One as beautiful as you
Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frame-less heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will
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"Vincent" is a song by Don McLean written as a tribute to Vincent van Gogh. It is also known
by its opening line, "Starry Starry Night", a reference to
Van Gogh's painting The
Starry Night. The song also describes different paintings done by the
artist.
McLean wrote the lyrics in 1971 after reading a book about the
life of the artist.
Van Gogh's painting
"Starry Night" (pic from here)
The song clearly
demonstrates a deep-seated admiration for not only the work of Van Gogh, but
also for the man himself. The song includes references to his landscape
works, in lines such as "sketch the trees and the daffodils" and
"morning fields of amber grain" which describe the amber wheat that
features in several paintings. There are also several lines that may allude
to Van Gogh's self-portraits: perhaps in "weathered faces lined in pain
/ are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand", McLean is suggesting
that Van Gogh may have found some sort of consolation in creating portraits
of himself. However, this line may also refer to Van Gogh's painting
"The Potato Eaters", which depicts a hard-working Dutch farming
family sitting in semi-darkness and eating their meagre meal. There is, too,
a single line describing Van Gogh's most famous set of works, Sunflowers.
"flaming flowers that brightly blaze" not only draws on the luminous
orange and yellow colors of the painting, but also creates powerful images of
the sun itself, flaming and blazing, being contained within the flowers and
the painting.
In the first two choruses, McLean
pays tribute to Van Gogh by reflecting on his lack of recognition: "They
would not listen / they did not know how / perhaps they'll listen now."
In the final chorus, McLean says "They would not listen / they're not
listening still / perhaps they never will." This is the story of Van
Gogh: unrecognized as an artist until after his death. The lyrics suggest
that Van Gogh was trying to "set [people] free" with the message in
his work. McLean feels that this message was made clear to him: "And now
I understand what you tried to say to me," he sings. Perhaps it is this
eventual understanding that inspired McLean to write the song.
There are also references to Van
Gogh's sanity and his suicide. Throughout his life, Van Gogh was plagued
with mental disorders, particularly depression. He "suffered for [his] sanity"
and eventually "took [his] life as lovers often do."
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Site I used to get the songs I needed. Will rip the audio but not the actual video but for what I need, this is fine. If there were wifi at the university you could simply play off of YouTube.
