3rd Grade - Michigan Music

Third grade students have been learning about Michigan folk songs in music class. We learned about the form, tonality, meter, style, and background of three different historical songs from Michigan, and learned how to sing them as well. Later, we learned about a Michigan-born composer, Andrew David Perkins, who used Michigan folk songs to compose a piece of music for concert band called "Tuebor Suite" (we focused on the first movement). Here is information about the piece from Mr. Perkins:

The official Flag, Coat of Arms, and Great Seal of the state of Michigan were designed by Lewis Cass, Michigan's second territorial governor. The iconography was patterned after the seal of the Hudson Bay Fur Company and was adopted in 1835. In the center, the Latin "TUEBOR," meaning, "I will defend," refers to Michigan's frontier position, surrounded by the Great Lakes on every coast, and bordering Canada to the north and east.

In 1938, a young folk music collector named Alan Lomax came from Washington, DC to record Michigan’s folk music traditions for the Archive of American Folk-Song at the Library of Congress. Lomax was particularly interested in the trove of ballads remembered by aging lumberjacks and Great Lakes sailors. In ten weeks, he recorded more than 120 performers from Detroit to the western Upper Peninsula. These recordings, along with the 1950’s recordings of Duane Starcher (recorded for WMUK Radio at Western Michigan University) were rich source material for this project. TUEBOR is a three-movement suite honoring the rich agricultural, maritime, and lumbering history of the state, incorporating the melodies of numerous Michigan folk-tunes in the tradition of Grainger, Holst, Vaughan-Williams, and Copland.

Movement 1. “THE PROMISED LAND” is a march based on the melodies of “Michigan-I-A,” and several versions of “Michigan-I-O.” The lyrics of these tunes contain many appeals to Yankee farmers and laborers to come to Michigan and settle or work. Many promises are made by the singer, ensuring that with hard work, everything put in the ground would grow like “Jack’s bean.” Fortunes are waiting to be made in the logging camps of Michigan’s dense forests by the strong, brave souls who venture far from “ma & pop.”

After studying the first movement of Tuebor Suite, students learned to move to the music with a parachute to outline the form and showcase each section. Please enjoy videos of each third grade class below!