African and Caribbean Music
A learning resource inspired by the themes and content of Roots, Rhythms and Records, a temporary exhibition at Hackney Museum (October 2018-March 2019)
Part of
African and Caribbean History and Heritage in Hackney
A series of learning resources created by staff at Hackney Museum
Available at: www.hackney.gov.uk/museum-teaching-resources
Notes for teachers: how to use this resource
This resource has been designed with KS2 classes in mind, but there are many elements that could be adapted for other learners including KS1, ESOL, young people and community learning groups. It is a cross-curricular resource that has clear links to the National Curriculum for history, literacy and music.
This resource is designed to be presented to your learners as a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation. There are additional notes for teachers throughout in the “speaker notes” section of the slides. Songs in the slides can be played as embedded clips if you’re using Google Sheets. If you’re using PowerPoint, you will need to click on pictures to open up a YouTube link.
We have combined research from the exhibition with suggestions for possible related activities, based on Hackney-specific stories relating to this topic.
Please feel free to edit and adapt this resource as necessary for your learners. Please do not remove any picture credits, where these have been included. If credits are not included, pictures have been reproduced under Creative Commons license.
Notes for teachers: definitions of genres (part 1)
Classical is a very general term which normally refers to the standard music of countries in the Western world. It is music that has been composed and written down in music notation so that other musicians can play it. The symphony orchestra is the most common group of instruments for the playing of classical music. It has four families of instruments: the string instruments, the woodwind instruments, the brass instruments and percussion instruments.
Spiritual is a very broad term and can apply to lots of music from across the world. It is music usually connected with a specific religion or belief system. Gospel music is the music most often associated with Christians of African or Caribbean heritage. Gospel music uses a drum kit, keyboards, guitars, brass instruments and very powerful singing to praise God. It started off in churches in America but is now popular all over the world.
Calypso can be played by big orchestras of steel drums (tuned metal oil drums) or by bands with drum kits, percussion, guitars, keyboards and brass instruments. It is usually played at a medium tempo and has a very specific rhythm which combines a bass drum hit on each beat of the bar, with a snare drum hit in between each bass drum beat.
Jazz uses drum kits, pianos, guitars, brass instruments and sometimes other instruments like marimbas and vibraphones to make its sounds. There are lots of different types of Jazz: some types are very structured with set patterns and melodies, others are very free. Improvisation is an important part of Jazz music.
Notes for teachers: definitions of genres (part 1)
Ska is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combines elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat.
Reggae music can be quite slow (75-120bpm) and the bass usually leads the music. Keyboards, guitars and brass instruments provide the melodies and there is usually a drum kit that plays the main bass drum on the third beat of each bar. Reggae music has a special swing to it and can be quite hard to play.
Hip hop uses a combination of synthesisers and samples from existing music to make beats, normally for people to rap over. It is usually quite slow and often uses a combination of kick (low) drums and snare (high) drums for its rhythm.
Drum & Bass uses samples and synthesisers for rhythms and melodies. It is about twice as fast as Reggae and also usually has a big bassline (low pitched sounds). Drum & Bass grew out of hip hop and reggae and so its beats can sound similar to hip hop beats, but played much faster.
Contents
We can teach the history of African and Caribbean presence in Hackney through music and song. This pack is arranged by genre and also chronologically, giving an overview of how music has evolved and changed alongside the key historical moments in African and Caribbean local and international history (including pre-enslavement, enslavement & resistance, Windrush).
Key words...slides 4-5
Classical ...slides 6-13
Religious/spiritual ...slides 14-18
Calypso (+ records) ...slides 19-33
Jazz ...slides 34-37
Reggae, including Lovers Rock (+ a bit of Hip Hop) ...slides 38-49
Drum and bass ...slides 50-57
Defining key words
Musician | |
Genre | |
Tempo | |
Compose | |
Pitch | |
Melody | |
Defining key words
Dynamics |
Genre |
Tempo |
Compose |
Melody |
Pitch |
The speed at which music is played |
Changes in the volume of a piece of music |
The verb we use to describe making music (I paint a picture, I write a story, I ? a piece of music) |
How high or low a note sounds |
A style or category |
The tune (the part of the music that you might sing along to) |
Classical
Playing for King Henry VIII
What kind of historical evidence is this? Do you think it is part of something bigger?
Created 1511 - in the public domain
What can you see in this section of the picture? Which instrument are the musicians playing?
This is a small section of a very big (60 foot!) painting called the Westminster Tournament Roll, which was painted in 1511. It shows a celebration that the Tudor king Henry VIII (1491-1547) had after his son was born.
What do we know about this trumpeter?
Although it can be difficult to identify people pictured in historical records, historians believe that the person pictured here is John Blanke, a man of African heritage.
He played the trumpet at the courts of both Henry VII and Henry VIII and is the first person of African descent in Britain for whom we have both an image and a historical record.
He must have been a very good trumpeter to have played for Henry VIII!
Created 1511 - in the public domain
What kind of music do you think John Blanke would have played on his trumpet?
Listen to some examples of the different types of bands that trumpets can be a part of (click images below to play songs via YouTube):
Can you hear the trumpets in each of these pieces of music? How are the trumpets being used differently in each of these pieces? What other instruments can you identify?
Of the three examples, which do you think would be most similar to the kind of music that John Blanke would have played for Henry VIII over 500 years ago? Do you know which genre each of the examples are from?
From YouTube
From YouTube
From YouTube
Genre | Instruments | Tempo | Pitch | Dynamics | How does it make you feel? | |
Classical | | | | | | |
Jazz | | | | | | |
Ska | | | | | | |
Religious | | | | | | |
Jazz | | | | | | |
Calypso | | | | | | |
Reggae | | | | | | |
Lovers Rock | | | | | | |
Hip Hop | | | | | | |
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, of British and Sierra Leonean descent, was born in London in 1875.
As a child, he learnt to play the violin, but he later switched to composing music.
What is composing? What are the differences between composing and playing music?
© Library of Congress
Click the image to listen to one of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s compositions.
It is called the Song of Hiawatha.
How does it make you feel?
How do you think he felt when he wrote it?
From YouTube
Religious/Spiritual
Can we still make music if we don’t have lots of instruments?
Click the video to play a piece of music.
What do you notice about the music? How would you describe it?
In 1871, six years after the abolition of slavery, the Fisk Jubilee Singers formed at a historically African-American private university in Tennessee, USA. They toured the world, raising funds for their university.
How is it similar or different to the classical, ska and jazz music that we listened to previously?
How many different instruments can you hear?
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From YouTube
Click image to play song
The song that the Fisk Jubilee Singers are performing in the video is called Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. It was originally sung by enslaved people.
Singing songs would have been an important way for enslaved people working on the plantations to communicate secretly with each other to plan escape, to pray, to express emotions such as pain, anger and frustration, and to feel a sense of solidarity with one another.
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Fisk Jubilee Singers, 1872 © Library of Congress
In 1873, the Fisk Jubilee singers visited Hackney and performed at Hackney Downs Chapel.
Use the recording you have listened to and the print-outs (see next slide) to imagine that you have attended the Fisk Jubilee Singers concert at Hackney Downs Chapel. Write a letter to a friend or a newspaper article describing your experience.
Try to include as many music key words as you can,
for example:
Musician
Genre
Tempo
Pitch
Melody
Compose
Advert in the Hackney Gazette, 11th June, 1873
Courtesy of Hackney Archives
Calypso
In the public domain
Click image to play song
From YouTube
What is calypso music?
Which of the following features does London is the Place for Me have?
Which instruments can you hear?
How would you describe the lyrics? Which lines from the lyrics did you find particularly memorable?
A fast tempo | A slow tempo | A downbeat melody | An upbeat melody | Chorus | Verses |
Trumpets | Piano | Guitar | Recorder | Drums | Saxophone |
London is the Place for Me…
This song was written by Aldywn Roberts, who used the stage name Lord Kitchener. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Lord Kitchener had an interest in music from a young age.
He wrote this song to celebrate his new life in London, performing it for television crews when he arrived in 1948. He was one of hundreds of thousands of people from the Caribbean who moved to Britain after World War II. Some people travelled because they thought Britain could offer a new, better life, while others were directly responding to recruitment campaigns by the British government and companies like London Transport, who needed people to do important jobs to help rebuild Britain after World War II.
Lord Kitchener was among the first people to arrive in this period. You may have heard of the boat that he travelled on….
“The day I arrived it was raining and the leaves were all on the ground and I thought ‘if this is England it looks dull and dark!’ The houses were all close together, ugly with chimneys like factories. I was frightened… We all thought England would be exciting; we all wanted to come. But when I did arrive it was a horrible shock.”
Eleanora Royer
“I came from Guyana in 1960. My husband was already here in Hackney in one room. He showed me the room and I asked him ‘Where is the rest of the house?’ I had left behind a whole house to come to England and live in one room.”
Daphne McAllister
“When I started to look for work I phoned a guy who said ‘We have a vacancy but I gather from your voice that you are a West Indian’ and I said ‘Yes’ and he said ‘It’s a small firm and we don’t really take West Indians’. I just couldn’t believe it but I admire him anyway because he was honest to tell me.”
Stanley Dormer
Mona Baptiste
Mona Baptiste (b. 1928) was another Trinidadian passenger onboard the Windrush. Like Lord Kitchener, she was a performer. She went on to be one of the performers on an ITV music show called Oh Boy!, which was filmed at the Hackney Empire.
© Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo
My heart, she feel so sad...
What differences are there between Lord Kitchener’s style of calypso and Mona Baptiste’s?
What similarities are there?
Calypso Blues was originally written by another musician, Nat King Cole. Why do you think Mona Baptiste chose to cover this song? What do the lyrics suggest about how she felt about moving to Britain? Why do you think she might have felt like this?
Mystery object
What is this mystery object? What does it do?
87cm
41cm
113cm
These photos are part of a collection of images taken between 1952 and 1978 by RA Gibson’s studio in Clapton, east London. If you recognise any of the people or places in this photo Hackney Archives would love to hear from you. If you believe that this image should not be made public please contact Hackney Archives.
Email: Archives@Hackney.gov.uk Telephone: 020 8356 8925
Photo references, left to right: R2822_02, R2822_04 and R2822_05
Mystery object: revealed!
The mystery object is a radiogram.
The word radiogram is a portmanteau (a word that blends the sounds and combines the meanings of two other words, for example banoffee=banana and toffee!). Which words do you think radiogram could be blending?
The word radiogram blends radio and gramophone, so a radiogram is a radio and a record player.
This Blue Spot radiogram was considered the best by the Caribbean community who moved to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. The radio and record player provided entertainment in the home, away from the racism and discrimination often encountered in public bars and clubs. This model has a radio and record player with integrated drinks cabinet beneath for entertaining. It was capable of receiving radio signals from as far away as the Caribbean.
Do you have an object in your home that entertains the whole family?
The importance of music
“We were in a time where, you know, the “No Blacks. No Irish, No Dogs” so we couldn’t just go in anywhere. And there wasn’t so many people that would hire their venues to us (not that we could afford it). So a lot of our dances and our blues were in our own homes”
Ngozi Fulani, Hackney resident and founder of Sistah Space
Record shops
In the 1950s and 1960s, if you wanted to buy music, you’d go to a record shop. This is where you bought records to play on your gramophone. You might have bought a record by a musician you’d heard on the radio, or who a friend had recommended.
Visiting a record shop was a very social experience. Customers would often become friends with each other or the owner, bonding over a shared love of music.
How does this compare to how we buy music today?
How many record shops do you think there were in Hackney?
Image courtesy of Hackney Archives © unknown
Courtesy of Hackney Museum
Jazz
Courtesy of Louis Beckett
Harry Beckett was born in Barbados in 1935. He learned to play the trumpet in a Salvation Army band.
In 1954, he moved to Britain and played the trumpet in many different groups.
His home in Stoke Newington was visited by a number of famous jazz musicians.
His Caribbean roots influenced his musical compositions and created a new sound for jazz music in Britain.
From YouTube
Click the image to play an extract from one of Harry Beckett’s songs (you probably won’t have time to listen to the whole thing! )
Compare this example of jazz music to the previous examples of calypso music.
Is it faster or slower?
Does it have more or less of a melody?
Does it have verses and choruses?
One key word is often associated jazz… can you solve this anagram to find out what the word is?
P M R I I V O S E
Improvise (verb)
Definition:
To improvise music is to invent it while you are performing it.
Which of these idioms describe improvising:
Unlike classical music, where musicians have to play certains notes at a certain time for it to sound “right”, jazz musicians have more freedom to play what sounds and feels right to them.
Reggae
What do we already know about Reggae?
Do you know where in the world Reggae comes from?
Can you name any artists or songs from this genre?
What do we already know about Reggae?
Do you know where in the world Reggae comes from?
Can you name any artists or songs from this genre?
Definition:
A musical style that developed in Jamaica in the 1950s and 1960s.
It includes elements of RnB, Jazz and Calypso.
It often has “off-beat” rhythms. Its tempo is slower than Ska.
Listen to clips from these three songs.
Which one is not a reggae song?
From YouTube
From YouTube
From YouTube
Reggae
Hip Hop
Reggae
The first reggae song is called Amigo by Black Slate. Like many other famous reggae bands, at some point in their career, they recorded songs at the Easy Street Recording Studio in Bethnal Green. The other reggae song is by Stushie, who grew up in Hackney, won the title of Miss Reggae Gold in Jamaica in 2018, and is preparing for her first European tour!
The hip-hop song is called Rough in Hackney and is performed by Overlord X, who was born in Hackney and is considered to be one of the first major British hip hop artists.
From YouTube
From YouTube
From YouTube
“Slowly but surely we started to hear the first wave of rappers coming out of America. And also, we started to hear the first waves of the UK rappers, as well. And I wanted a piece of the pie. I wanted to be involved with it… so I thought “yeah, I wanna be a DJ, I wanna be a producer”. No rapping was in my head at the time. In Kingsmead [Estate], nobody was rapping. It was still very early days… but I was rapping for fun... I couldn’t find anybody that was rapping…. So I decided to just do it. And as soon as I started to rap, it inspired a few of my friends to start to rap.”
Overlord X on how he got into rapping
Courtesy of Hackney Museum
Turn it up
Sound Systems, like Reggae, were another concept brought from Jamaica to Britain by Caribbean migrants in the post-war era.
They were especially handmade to make the music sound as it should and were hired for parties and events. Sound Systems were a team effort, with different people selecting the records and operating the system. There was also a DJ, who had the microphone and would sing or rap with the music. Lyrics would often be about things that were happening in the community or the country at the time.
My music is better than yours...
Sounds Systems were also used in “clashes”. This was when more than one Sound System would be playing music in the same place (but not at the same time)! Each Sound System would have exclusive music and the one with the music that the crowd liked the most would win.
You could recreate this in school. The class work in teams to choose songs that they think the class will like. What will they say to introduce them? How will they link them together?
Whichever team gets the most votes wins!
“All the Sound Systems on a weekend used to hire up the [school] hall. That’s where the Sound Systems clashed… You literally had two Sound Systems, you had one Sound System in one corner set up, then you had like [another] in the other corner. And it was like – unlike today where it’s everyone on one set – who had the best Sound System. So one Sound would play [mimicking music] and play their Sound. The next one would play [mimicking music and sounds]. Wicked!”
Hackney resident, Paul Ryan reminisces about sound system clashes at Upton House School (now City Academy) in the 1980s/1990s
Lovers Rock
Hackney talent shows
Clubs were an important place to meet like-minded people and celebrate music.
The Four Aces Club in Hackney was a local treasure. The venue held a “Star Search” talent contest - one of the winners was 15-year-old Louisa Mark.
The music she made is of the “Lovers Rock” genre. This is a style of reggae noted for its romantic content.
Click to listen to a song by Louisa Mark, a cover of The Beatles All My Loving.
Then, play the original to the class.
How is Louisa’s version different?
What elements of Reggae do you notice?
How is it different from the other reggae songs we have looked at?
From YouTube
Drum & Bass
Click to listen to a song by Rudimental called Feel the Love.
How would you describe the tempo, the pitch and the melody?
Which instruments and other pieces of equipment can you hear?
What are the main differences between this drum and bass song and the other songs that we have listened to?
Drum and Bass evolved from another genre that we have learnt about, which do you think?
From YouTube
Made in Hackney
Rudimental are a world-famous, award winning drum and bass band but they haven’t forgotten where they came from! In an interview with Voice Online, they said….
“The characters you find walking down the street and the various cultures in the area are some of the best things about Hackney. I grew up next door to an Irish family but across the road was an African family and a few doors down, an Indian family and a Jamaican family. That is the kind of vibe you get in Hackney.”
“The way Hackney was looked upon in the past was always negative and therefore, that bred negativity in the area… Also, there is no tube station – this annoys me. But overall I have nothing bad to say about Hackney, it was a great place that made us who we are.”
Cool Learning
In 2007, just before they got famous, Kesi and Piers from Rudimental worked with primary schools at Hackney Museum!
They developed this Cool Learning CD with their friends Owandji and Giresse. Read some of their lyrics (on the next slide). What do you think was important to them?
Courtesy of Hackney Museum
Reading, listening, writing
Reading, listening, writing
Is important for a reason
It helps us understand things and show what we know
So keep it up, you never know how far you can go
Reading is knowledge and knowledge is reading
You don’t have to be smart to figure out the meaning
Reading is like food for our brains
The more you read, the more knowledge you gain
Read in class, read at home
Read with your friends and when you are alone
© Cool Learning 2007
What was important to Kesi and Piers was that their younger brothers and sisters tried their best in school and enjoyed learning.
People make music for lots of different reasons, but it’s always linked to what is important to them. Look back on some of the other people featured in this presentation. What was important to them?
What is important to you?
“Music in Hackney has always been bubbling. So much talent and to be fair, my whole class could have been superstars.”
Leon Rolle, Rudimental band member