For nearly twenty years I’ve been doing a program called Blues For Schools. The American Roots Music In Education program is that program taken to the next level.  The soul and meaning of America is found in its folk music.  Folk music has come about through the experiences and travails of our fathers and mothers.  Roots music is a generic term, which can be applied to many styles of American traditional music.  It includes spirituals, worksongs, blues, early jazz, country, western, cajun, zydeco, gospel, and old time folk music.  All of these styles represent a blending of various cultures and approaches to both instrumental and vocal music. They are also the roots or the genesis of the popular music that we listen to today.  Rock, jazz, R&B, and even rap are all derived from this music.

 

American Roots Music is already so much of a part of our shared culture that many of the songs are familiar to us.  Most people, however, are not familiar with how these songs reflect our culture’s diversity and development.  As each person, family and culture came to meet the promise of America they brought with them songs, instruments and traditions of storytelling and dance.  While no one can convey all of these styles and traditions, there is a vast storehouse of cultural education and entertainment available to those who would look for it.  For example, the spiritual is what happens when European religious songs meet African singing.  The blues is a result of the melding of African ideas of rhythm and singing when played on European instruments, while bluegrass comes from adapting blues to the European music preserved in the Appalachians.

 

The American Roots Music In Education  (ARMIE) seeks to fight a different kind of war, using different kinds of weapons.  This ARMIE uses guitars, banjos, fiddles, mandolins, harmonicas and other instruments, as instruments of mass instruction, that bring people closer together.  This music is very intimate.  It is accessible.  It is designed to be heard, up close, to be clapped to and to be sung along with.  Instead of leaving music to a talented few lone “professional” performers, Roots music calls us to the idea that music is available to everyone.  We can all sing.  We can all make music.  

 

Looked at more broadly, we also see that music has the ability change minds and affect feelings.  Social change has always been accompanied by folk music. Issues like America’s fights for freedom and independence fair labor, civil rights, suffrage, war and opposition to war have all been addressed by the people’s music.  This music is also personal.  Folk music is about everyday living.  It sings about work and poverty, about love and loneliness, about bravery and fear, and it tells stories.  Some stories are fun, some are poignant and some strike to the heart of who we are and who we aspire to be.  Those of us who play this music have a responsibility to take it into the classroom, and pass along its lessons to students who are ready eager to listen and learn.