Social Awareness & Change Through Music
A project by Adam Kosempel, Kit Trowbridge, Stacey Scimeca, and Katie Moran in Detroit Connections: Change by Design
The first part of this workshop is designed to illustrate that music serves a greater purpose than strictly entertainment. A song can become an anthem for change, inspire hope, and give people a voice. We’ve seen this many times throughout history; for example, John Lennon’s “Imagine” became an anthem for peace and Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changing” described the tumultuous changes occurring in his generation. Socially conscious music has the ability to galvanize people to action.
The second part is designed to draw a link between the poetic devices learned in English class and the various rhyme schemes and poetic devices employed in many modern day hip-hop songs. This helps the students explore unfamiliar or forgotten literary devices through familiar songs that they can relate to and enjoy.
The third and final part of this workshop is designed to combine the lessons learned from the first two parts by having the students write their own hip-hop “bars,” or lines of poetry. The students will incorporate both socially conscious themes important to them and poetic devices/rhyme schemes into their poems or songs, which they will then share aloud to the class.
