Good morning, welcome to Homeschooling Music Class. Please grab your copy of Country Music An Illustrated History. I would like for you to read pages the beginning to section one.
This gorgeously illustrated and hugely entertaining history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on Saturday nights.
With the birth of radio in the 1920s, the songs moved from small towns, mountain hollers, and the wide-open West to become the music of an entire nation–a diverse range of sounds and styles from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the decades to the music’s massive commercial success today.
But above all, Country Music is the story of the musicians. Here is Hank Williams’s tragic honky tonk life, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt-poor childhood, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into songs that spoke to women everywhere.
Here too are interviews with the genre’s biggest stars, including the likes of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with rare photographs and endlessly fascinating anecdotes, the stories in this sweeping yet intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to an extraordinary body of music that lies at the very center of the American experience.
In your Journal please write down three things facts you learned about Country Music. Remember everyone’s answers will be different.
Spelling:
Country Music, Bird, Jukebox, Ghosts, Ancient Tombs, Apocryphal, Wisdom, hank Williams, Farmhouses, Texas, Oklahoma, Simplicity, Authentic
Art Class: Take a look at the clothes and instruments in the pictures. I would like for you to draw one of the outfits from back then and one from today Country Music Stars would wear. Include a explanation explaining how the clothes have changed and why.
Cooking Class: Look up one of the stars you read about and find out what there favorite recipe is. Visit your Grocery Store and purchase the ingredients and make the dish for your parents. (Remember for everyone this will be a different dish).
Drama Class/ Music Class:
Watch or listen to a song by one of the singers you learned about today and perform a act from the Movie or Song you listened to for your parents.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
