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Exploring The Blues

Teacher Resource: https://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom.html

Blues music is a wide and varied genre, with roots in both urban and rural areas. Have students read the article about Blues in the PlayGuide for some brief background. Break students into groups and have each group select a style of Blues or a musician upon which to focus. As a group, the students should research their assigned style or artist and create one of the following: a playlist complete with curated commentary, liner notes for an album, a blog post or review of an album, or short video in a style of their choice.

Share students’ learning through a Tribute to the Blues in class. If you’re feeling creative, you could set your classroom up as a Blues club and allow students to share food and fellowship along with the music. This special day could also be paired with exploration and sharing of Blues style poetry outlined below.

Character Analysis

Post-WWII Life for Black Veterans

1. What are your dreams? What are you willing to do to achieve those dreams?

2. When in your life have you experienced injustice or witnessed injustice? How does that injustice reflect on society?

3. Is it important to you or to people in your family to leave a legacy for future generations? What would you want your legacy to be?

4. What music do you like? How do you engage with music in your life? What meaning does music have for you?

5. What values are important to you in your relationship with others? How should someone treat you for you to be willing to connect with them? What is absolutely unacceptable or a “dealbreaker?”

Blues In Poetry

Blues is not only a genre of music, but also a form that poets such as Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Sterling A. Brown used. The Smithsonian Institute has a fantastic teacher resource regarding Blues (and Ballad) forms in poetry. There is a website with sample Blues poems, lesson plans, and additional information about the poetic genre that is derived from the music that is central to Seven Guitars https://folkways.si.edu/poetry-ballad-blues-stanzas/music/article/smithsonian

Exploring Your Legacy

For several characters in Seven Guitars, leaving a legacy is an important life goal. In this activity, students will explore their own legacies through creative writing.

Give students several options for writing about themselves far into the future. They should write from a third person perspective, thinking about what they will leave behind some day for others. Students may write their legacy pieces in the following styles: an epitaph or an obituary (this may be difficult for some students, so be sure to give them options not connected to mortality), a future magazine article, a retirement speech from a colleague, a letter from a future child or grandchild, etc. If students or you would prefer, you can have students share their legacy project as a podcast or video instead of a written assignment. Encourage students to share their writing or tribute with each other in small groups or with the entire class.

Seven Characters For Seven Guitars

The title of Seven Guitars has multiple levels of meaning, including the seven characters in the play. Break students into seven groups, one for each character (see listing in the playbill or PlayGuide). Groups should do the following:

1. Draw a guitar outline on a large sheet of paper (you could also just use chart paper if you don’t want to add the drawing element).

2. As students work together, they should fill their guitar or paper with as many details and insights about their character as possible. Information does not just need to be written - students can also include images, symbols, or other things that they think represent their character.

3. After completing their guitars or charts, have students place them around the walls of the room.

4. Students should circulate around the room in a gallery walk, reflecting on what they see by adding post-it notes around each character page.

5. Students should use the following starters for their reflections:

• I like . . .

• I notice . . .

• I wonder . . .

As an alternative, you may have each group present their character guitars to the class and have students reflect aloud as a group.

Injustices And Action

In the play, the issues of injustice in policing and in the music industry come to the forefront. Have students read the short articles in the PlayGuide about these issues. Lead a discussion with students about one or both of these topics, encouraging them to utilize specific examples over sweeping generalizations (if you’d like to have students do specific research, this would be a great pre-discussion activity).

Some questions that might help get students talking:

• Where do we see injustice in our community, city, country, world? Can you think of specific instances or examples?

• What is the impact of these injustices? What is lost?

• How can we combat these injustices?

After students have done some reading and research, have them develop a plan for advocating for equity within one of these issues. Students may work in groups to come up with a plan or can develop their own ideas.

Some ideas to get them started: letter writing/postcard campaign, protest or in-person advocacy, educating others in the community, creating groups to continue the advocacy, etc. As students develop their plans, they should implement them as much as they are able.

POST-WWII LIFE FOR BLACK VETERANS

While Seven Guitars does not directly or exhaustively address World War II, the post-war world was very different from the one Black American soldiers had left to serve, but in the racism and unequal treatment it was often very much the same.

Have students look at some of the following resources to introduce this topic: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134756262/half-american-matthew-delmont-black-wwii https://www.npr.org/2022/10/20/1129753937/the-gi-bill-left-behind-black-world-war-ii-vets-now-theres-amove-to-fix-that https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/summer-1946-saw-black-wwii-vets-fight-freedomhome-180978538/ https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits

After students gain a better understanding of the issue, have them reflect on how these truths may have impacted the characters in the play. Lead a discussion about how the men in the play are treated by law enforcement and other white people (as they explain in their stories). Reflecting specifically on the character of Hedley may be an interesting tact as he has very specific and direct ideas about the racial dynamics between Black people and white systems of oppression.