#artsedge

THE BLUE NOTE EXPERIMENT

STARTER PACK

If you are short on studio time, the easiest entry point for the studio or production component of the Experiment might be to use our Starter Pack, featuring Jason Moran, the Kennedy Center’s artistic advisor for Jazz.

Introduce students to Jason’s music through the playlist here, or through other resources like CDs.

Learn more about Jason as an artist on his web site, then ask students to continue getting to know him through Web research. Building a sense of who Jason is, and how he approaches art and art-making, will help them create a cover that reflects his music.

View selections from the ARTSEDGE podcast series, In the Studio with Jason Moran.

Recap with a listening party, tying their new understandings (and new musical vocabulary) with the music in the playlist. Ask them to point out things that sound like they are unique to Jazz, and things that might be influences from other music (like Hip Hop) or events.

Show the photographs in the collection. Take some time to note the influences of Frank Wolff’s style—dark backgrounds, emphasis on capturing the moment, etc.

Discuss what elements of the photographs “map” to the music or themes of the playlist. (This might be a time for small group work, mind-mapping, or other teaching approaches.)

   LEARNING LENSES

Historical Thinking

Those 75 years did not happen in a vacuum—in 1939, the year Blue Note was founded, Europe descended into World War II; Marion Anderson was refused the stage at DAR and performed instead at the Lincoln Memorial.

Depending on your area of study, here are a few questions to kick-start discussion with high school students: 

What was the social context around Blue Note in the 1940s and 50s? Was the music (or the musicians) connected to the war?

How did race impact the creation and spread of Jazz? In what ways did Jazz musicians deal with the early Civil Rights movement? How did Americans – particularly in the segregated South—view records with such strong visuals of African American men?

Artistic Literacies

Founded when a German immigrant named Alfred Lion produced his first recording session on January 6, 1939 in New York City, the Blue Note catalogue traces the history of Jazz and its movements– from Hot Jazz and Swing, deep into Bebop, Hard Bop and Post Bop, through Soul Jazz, Avant-Garde and Fusion, up to and including its numerous modern-day incarnations.

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