This is the best educational resource I've found for the blues. Read the intro. page linked above, then feel free to explore any parts of the website to learn more. Click on "Lesson Plans" to find a long list of blues resources organized by topics. This PBS website is designed for K-12 education, but I've even referenced it for grad school classes. There are a lot of good videos. audio clips, written essays, etc. throughout the website. 

Read the introduction linked in the title above, then click "Launch Map" to access a map of the US with more information about different styles of blues music. The blues was born in the Mississippi Delta, then evolved into different styles as it traveled across the US. 

In this course, we will sometimes reference a digital textbook (e-reader) created by Prof. Marc Thorman for MUSC 3101. This week, explore the section linked at the right ("African Traditions in Early African-American Genres") and the one linked at the end of the e-reader page ("Evolution and Hybridization of African America  Music"). Learn about early African American music traditions such as spirituals and work songs, as well as more modern ones like rock and hip-hop. Listen to the music examples included in the text as you explore.

This e-reader is essentially a textbook version of some of the other topics included earlier in this lesson. You're welcome to explore this in addition to OR instead of the other topics in the lesson. 

Music scholar and banjo player Jake Blount walks us through a timeline of music in the US and the banjo's role, origins, and importance for Black identity in the US. Blount is a respectable scholar in the field and I'm sharing this video because it provides a lot of useful information  in a succinct way, but please still also listen to Rhiannon Giddens' perspective and words. As an African American woman who has broken through this ceiling of white male banjo players - and the banjo's association with "white people music" - her perspective is extremely valuable. This video is meant to be an accompaniment to her perspective in the National Geographic podcast. 

If you didn't choose the interview with Rhiannon as your choice for the longer lesson material, I urge you to listen to the 7 minutes focused on her perspective on the banjo, from 5:13-12:32. There is also an amazing poem about the banjo by spoken-word poet Alyea Pierce that you can hear in the first 5 minutes of the episode. 

Personal note: I volunteer at a lot of American folk music/bluegrass festivals. I like that music and those festivals, but as someone who studies this music, it's always a bit jarring to look out on a sea of white people playing and listening to these styles of music that developed because of enslaved people who came to the US through the transatlantic slave trade. The demographics at theses festivals - in the audience and on stage - are so often just...white. This is why perspectives like Rhiannon's are so important. The banjo is an instrument that has so much history and importance for Black identity in the US, yet it is still overshadowed. By learning about this music and history, you're helping to highlight that history rather than shadow it. 

Someone from my ethnomusicology grad school program shared this link with me. It's an extensive list of the timeline, styles, and important figures in gospel music history in the US.

When deciding what topics to add for these quests, I asked my friends about things they wished they'd learned in college outside of class subjects. One topic they mentioned was student discounts/benefits; there just never seemed to be time to research everything we could do with our IDs . So...here's an opportunity to make a collective list of resources together and get points for class at the same time. 

Anyone can add to the document below. I've been using this document for a few semesters, so it already has many ideas. Add one idea to this list, or add an emoji or comment to someone else's idea. Feel free to add new categories, or organize the current contributions into more specific categories, just don't delete anything. Then fill out the weekly Google Form as usual (since I use this form every week, some of the questions might not quite relate to this week's quest. Just write n/a). 

USEFUL THINGS: Since this document has ideas from many semesters' students, it would be AMAZING if anyone could help categorize them, combine anything that mentions the same discount, or make a note if any of the recommendations aren't valid anymore. If organization/categorization is your jam, please feel free to do that, even in place of adding anything new. Thanks! 

Two steps:

1. Click here to add to student discount document.  Then...

2. Click here to submit Quest Google Form.