Browse Items (23 total)

Spirituals are a Christian genre intimately tied to the southern's history with slavery. According to legend, Harriet Tubman used this song to instruct slaves on how to avoid detection when escaping slave owners and/or bounty hunters. Though the year…

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was written by a Canadian - with assistance from his Arkansas-born bandmate, Levon Helm - who spent an extended period of time in the U.S. South. The song depicts the story of a poor white Southerner and former…

While the topics of race and the civil rights movement were both key aspects of the region's history and what many perceived as part of the South's identity, the 1970s saw the rise of idea of the South as a home for "traditional values" and one that…

“Strange Fruit” describes the picturesque agricultural landscape of the South and contrasts this beauty and bounty with the horrific violence - lynchings in particular - that occurred in that setting.

The song could be used as an example of the loose narrative and supernatural references and/or folk beliefs often found in the blues genre. Though the song lacks a linear narrative, the collection of somewhat unrelated vignettes which included…

This rap provides a space for expression about various topics such as race, the Confederates' legacy, amongst other things amidst the generally, more conservative South. The key characteristics of the subgenres of Southern Rap and "Dirty South Rap"…

This song could be used to introduce students to the gradual shift away from the pastoral way of rural southern life that once dominated the region and the New Deal. The south had traditionally been more agrarian than the north and the songwriter Bob…

"Ode to Billie Joe" is an account of how each of the members of a Mississippi family take the news of Billie Joe McAllister's suicide. A number of ambiguous details in the narrative, which emphasizes loss and was released in 1967, lend itself to a…

This song can be used to introduce students to the influence that Appalachian music had on modern country music. Many early country songs were based on British ballads and were combined with musical influences from African-American musical traditions…

Written in direct response to the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama Church bombing which killed 4 African American girls, this song can be used to instruct students on the shifting attitudes surrounding the conversation on race relations and the Civil Rights…