American Music Appreciation
Rudy Dominguez
rudypalos@gmail.com
07.01.09
EDTEC 541 – Campus 4pm Wed.

Problem, Need or Opportunity
With so much emphasis on government mandated education standards these days, cultural education often seems to take a backseat in mainstream education. Knowledge and awareness of history is imperative for understanding the current culture and to push it forward. With Hip Hop (and the internet) serving as a major source of information for today’s student, I feel, It is of value to understand and appreciate those contemporary American music concepts as they extend from a musical history (jazz) which is as rich and varied as our Nation’s. I will be presenting what, in essence, is a unit of a larger curriculum on American Music Appreciation. The Unit will focus on the Hard Bop era, a sub-genre of Jazz music, which occurred roughly between the mid-50’s and ‘60’s. Since it would be safe to assume that many students would not find this focus immediately engaging, the use of rich multimedia content will give us the needed help in engaging the attention of our students.  

Audience
I will focus this site to be presented to an audience of Junior High to High School age students. Of course anyone with an interest in American music, Jazz, R&B, Hip Hop, etc should also find the content of interest. Since the targeted audience was born in the 1990’s we can assume that they know next to nothing about 1950-60’s era Jazz music. Their computing and technical skills, on the other hand, should be at or above the appropriate level to navigate this site.

User’s Needs
When asking teenagers about being presented with a website like the one I am laying out, naturally the overarching question was, “Why?” “What’s the point?” or my favorite, “I don’t care about classical music. That shit all sounds the same – Boh-ring.” When told that the content would relate to Hip Hop all of a sudden there seemed to be a bit more interest. Naturally skeptical, the kids were interested in how we would relate jazz to contemporary hip-hop using multimedia. Placing media links along a timeline could be a simple solution useful to illustrate the historical trajectory we are presenting. It is 2009. Most Internet users, and certainly young Internet users care to see a rich multimedia presentation including links, music, images and video.

Environment
The environment this site will most likely be consumed in is in the school/classroom and perhaps to a lesser extent at home as well. Users will need a fairly fast Internet connection (DSL) to access the multimedia portions without waiting for long periods for files to load. Most computers nowadays come equipped with some sort of media player so students will not have to download any new applications. Headphones would be suggested if they are in a crowded classroom or library environment. Being a unit of a larger curriculum we expect there to be a fair amount of guidance from an instructor. However, I would design the site so that is also easy to navigate and understand as a stand-alone product.

Resources and Limitations
As a fan of Jazz and music in general I have an extensive personal collection of media, which can be utilized for this project. My vinyl record collection will be utilized to create MP3 audio files of landmark recordings, which best exemplify the hard bop era. Images of album covers, key players (musicians and producers) perhaps even some liner notes will make their way onto the site. Text will be derived from liner notes, books and some online resources such as Allmusic.com Since the kids involved would gravitate toward the contemporary music I plan to use short, low quality clips just long enough to illustrate the point and short enough to not give them a free download.

General Solution
I plan to present information and media, which illustrates the history and appreciation of a forgotten era of American music whose conceptual products have resonated through history and are active and relevant to this day. We will present music concepts such as the back or break beat, syncopation and collective improvisation and their relation to American cultural values such as rugged individuality and freedom of speech. We will strive to present historical and contemporary contexts to bring these abstractions to life for today’s teenager. To use a timely example, lets look at Quincy Jones. Mr. Jones began his career as a performer while playing trumpet for the orchestras of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie is heralded as one of the inventors of bebop, the precursor to hard bop. Mr. Jones, decades later, would become a record producer and work with a young singer/dancer named Michael Jackson. Their work on the records Off the Wall and Thriller would take the world by storm and change the paradigm of popular music forever. These are the threads of American culture we will attempt to sew. I will be using mostly a blue color palette in honor of both seminal jazz record label Blue Note records and of course, Blues, the mother of American music. While this verbose explanation seems like a big bite to chew, I will do it in a simple five page site;
Page 1 – Intro, background, context (what qualities make something uniquely American)
Pages 2-4 – The meat of the site; Timeline and multimedia presentation (concepts, music, musicians)
Page 5 – transitions to contemporary culture (as illustrated in the example above)