2015-16 Curriculum Introduction Foreword

Foreword

Welcome to Musical Explorers!

This curriculum is designed to connect students in grades K–2 to the diverse musical community of the Georgia and South Carolina Lowcountry as they develop listening, singing, and composing skills. The 2015-16 curriculum features artists who live in the Lowcountry and throughout the Southeast. 2015-16 also features Yacouba Sissoko, a Carnegie Hall exchange artist. Yacouba will be performing for both Savannah’s and New York City’s Musical Explorers. Each semester culminates in an interactive concert featuring musicians from a wide variety of musical styles and from different cities and towns across the Southeast United States. The 2015-16 curriculum also explores musical opposites as found in each artist’s music.

Musical Explorers combines skills-based and creative activities, and can be integrated into general and music classrooms. To facilitate planning, this Teacher Guide contains vocal exercises, lesson plans, activity timings, background information about musical styles and artists, and Student Guide pages. Any scripted suggestions appear in italics. In addition, the companion audio CD provides concert repertoire selections and learning tracks. All of this material is also available on our website at savannahmusicfestival.org/musicalexplorers.

Students will not only be listening to, but also performing songs with the artists during each concert. In addition, the introduction lessons provide resources for helping students develop healthy, age-appropriate vocal technique through warm-up exercises. Teachers are encouraged to use these warm-ups at the beginning of each lesson, and to practice the repertoire regularly so that students can have the fullest concert experience possible.

We hope you enjoy the journey!

 

Exploration 

How does music help bring our community together?

 

Key Objectives

Musical Explorers are students and teachers who look for the answers to this question as they:

  • meet singers whose music represents different musical styles and cultural communities
  • sing and move to the artists’ songs
  • make connections between the artists’ music, their communities, and their cultures of origin
  • explore musical opposites that create the unique sound of each artist’s music