This lesson considers New York City and the cross currents that run between the worlds of music-making and the arts in a broad sense, particularly the visual and literary arts

In this lesson, students investigate a collection of musical performances, television interviews, and movie trailers, discussing how black artists of the 1970s, including James Brown, George Clinton, and Curtis Mayfield, addressed black audiences through the music and aesthetics of Funk, casting a light on all that the Civil Rights movement could not do for a racially divided America.

Disco's roots were multiple. It had connections to R&B and Funk, but it was also born out of the urban gay culture in New York City. But no matter its roots, it quickly moved into the mainstream with a string of best-selling hits by artists from Donna Summer to the Village People. The phenomenally successful 1977 film Saturday Night Fever took Disco's commercial popularity to surprising heights. The film's soundtrack produced numerous  Top 10 hits and the album sold over 15 million copies.

In this lesson, students will compare and contrast some of the musical and visual elements of Stadium Rock with those of Punk Rock. They will investigate how Punk grew out of the particular musical and social context of Britain in the 1970s. They will then put their knowledge to work in small groups by creating album covers for a fictitious 1970s Punk Rock band.

This lesson looks at the "cleansing" effect of Punk and at New Wave on music. Selecting the Ramones and the Patti Smith Group as case studies, it will explore what Punk brought that influenced the groups associated with the New Wave. The lesson will hinge around an ABC-produced 20/20 episode on New Wave, aired in 1979. As a summary activity, students will have a chance to compare the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" with New Wave group Devo's interpretation of the same song, a comparison which will reveal many among the New Wave's common attributes.

The documents for this activity are drawn from those that might be typically found on an advanced placement history test, supplemented by materials featured in Teachrock lessons. As such, this activity may be used as a means to prepare students for an advanced placement test, or as an assessment tool at the end of a Cold War unit. A variety of approaches are provided that allow teachers to use the documents to engage their students in the classroom.

In its early years, Grunge was largely a localized phenomenon, emerging out of the club scene in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle had been deeply affected by the economic recession of the early 1990s, when unemployment was at a high and Starbucks did not yet have the ubiquitous presence it does today. Grunge, with its dour visuals and indifferent lyrics, seemed to encapsulate the grey and depressed mood of the region at the time. As the 90s progressed, the commercial success of groups such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam catapulted the Grunge sound into a national spotlight for which its creators and adherents were largely unprepared.

In this lesson, students will examine raw documentary footage, demographic charts, television news stories, and song lyrics to connect the sounds of early Hip Hop to the substandard living conditions in American inner cities in the late 1970s, particularly the Bronx in New York City. Students will compose their own verses to Grandmaster Flash's "The Message," to be followed up with a research-driven writing assignment to further explore the urban environment depicted in the landmark song.

Gangsta Rap grew in part out of the social and political climate on the West Coast, where cities such as Compton, California, became engulfed in gang violence fueled by the crack cocaine epidemic. Longstanding tensions between the African-American community and the police came to a head in the Rodney King case and the announcement of its verdict. Gangsta rappers began to write explicitly about inner city violence. Songs were marked by a liberal use of profanity and images of the gun-toting toughs who lived amidst the brutality of the inner city. Gangsta Rap often overlapped with the East Coast-based "Mafioso Rap," whose practicioners cultivated personas of high-living, power-wielding gangsters who drove fancy cars, drank champagne, and sported intimidating weapons all while promoting a strong sense of kinship. Fiction seemed to become fact when rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. were victims of unsolved, highly public murders. Soon enough, a countermovement some called "Conscious Hip Hop€" began to emerge, primarily on the East Coast. Many fans saw it as an answer to the often violent and controversial lyrics common in Gangsta Rap. Though in many ways responding to the same conditions to which Gangsta Rap reacted, this subgenre sought to inspire positivity through its lyrics, much like some of the earliest Hip Hop music. Lyrics were intended to challenge and inspire while also questioning the social and political status quo.

In this lesson, students use the lyrics to "Something Like This" as an opportunity to learn the stories of Achilles, Hercules, Wonder Woman and Superman. Students will explore similarities between these gods and superheroes, finally considering why mortals still need superhumans, thousands of years later.

In this lesson, students will explore these questions, comparing Lana Del Rey's "Young and Beautiful" with chapters 1-7 of The Great Gatsby to form their own characterization of Daisy. Students will view the music video for "Young and Beautiful" and analyze advertisements and headlines from 1918-1922 to consider the potential influence of cultural values and gender expectations on women like Daisy. Finally, using excerpts from the novel, the song, and the advertisements, students will work in groups to create an identity chart for Daisy.

In this lesson, students will consider the many kinds of communities that exist, and reflect on their own special ties to a community they are a part of. After watching the video for "Sunday Candy," and hearing the poetry of Chicago-based Kevin Coval, students will hold their own poetry slam featuring poems about community.

In this lesson, students will discuss how the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance and Locke's New Negro were exemplified by the poetry of Langston Hughes. Specifically, they will examine how Hughes incorporated the vernacular tradition of the Blues in his work, and identify the literary techniques Hughes employs to make his poetry so vivid.

This lesson explores several of the recording mediums used throughout the early 20th century. Along the way, students learn how sound waves travel, how the human brain converts those waves to recognizable sound and how inventors learned to capture them on wax, magnetic tape, and finally as digital information. From there, this lesson then investigates the creative impulses and scientific developments that turned multitrack recording from a dream to a reality. Students also get hands-on experience using the Soundbreaking Mixing Board TechTool, which allows them to be sound engineers, playing with "the mix" of a multitrack studio.

This lesson investigates how electrifying the guitar was a contributing factor to the emergence of a sound that came to define Rock and Roll and, to a large extent, mid-20th century American popular culture. Featuring content from the PBS Soundbreaking episode, "Going Electric," which includes the guitar playing of luminaries Charlie Christian, Pete Townsend, Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix, this lesson examines the spirit of curiosity, adaptation and invention that characterized the early 1950s and in the 1960s led to the guitar's emergence as a versatile and attractive instrument for musicians and as the quintessential Rock and Roll icon.

This lesson introduces students to the Telharmonium, the Theremin, the Moog and the component on which all of their sound syntheses are formed: the sound wave. Students learn what a sound wave is, how it travels and how our bodies convert it into intelligible sound. Using the Soundbreaking Sound Wave TechTool, students learn to recognize four basic waveform shapes by sound and sight. This lesson also explores the role the synthesizer played in relation to people's perceptions of technology and culture in the 1970s, 80s and beyond.

This lesson explores the technology of "records" and what it meant to the people who consumed them. Students will learn how a record works and why a needle on a disc can record and play back music. Moreover, students will investigate how these technological changes had far reaching effects, even in the domestic setting. Finally, this lesson follows the 45 rpm and LP record through the airwaves of both AM and FM radio, using excerpts of broadcasts by the pioneering DJs Alan Freed and Tom Donahue and investigating how the possibilities and limitations of each medium and their respective places on the radio dial provide a framework for historical analysis.

In this lesson, the music and visuals of the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach is used to introduce students to the issue of plastic waste. Students are asked to calculate the percentage of plastic that goes unrecycled internationally, and illustrate a model of polyethylene to better understand why the molecular makeup of plastic creates both benefits and drawbacks. Finally, they evaluate various projects that are currently being undertaken to curb plastic waste, and develop their own similar program or project that they could employ on a local level.

In this lesson, students explore band logos as examples of graphic design, and consider how logos derive meaning through association with the bands they symbolize. Guided by a handout that introduces Five Principles of Effective Logo Design, students study images of band logos and analyze their effectiveness. Armed with a new sense of what might make logos effective, students then design logos for their own fictitious, or real, bands.

In this lesson, students begin by examining the ways their sense of identity might be affected by social pressures associated with different spaces. By watching clips from RUMBLE, students then discover how musicians Robbie Robertson, Stevie Salas, and Taboo have negotiated their Native identities, and compare these musician's journeys with those of earlier Native Americans.