Course Syllabus

MUSC 1030 Intro to Jazz and American Pop

Course Description

This course is a general music appreciation class designed to empower music listeners by giving them an understanding of American jazz and popular music. Students will develop analytical and listening skills that help them to identify and be able to seek and write about about jazz and popular music styles. This course fulfills the General Education requirement for Fine Arts.

Justification

The study of American vernacular music is common in higher education across the United States. Most schools in Utah offer this course or something similar. This course has been articulated with the Utah State Office of Education and is taught as a concurrent enrollment course.

General Education Outcomes

1. A student who completes the GE curriculum will have a fundamental knowledge of human cultures and the natural world, with particular emphasis on American institutions, the social and behavioral sciences, the physical and life sciences, the humanities, the fine arts and personal wellness.  Students who complete this course will demonstrate an understanding of the connection between American vernacular music and American institutions, and cultures. This outcome will be assessed through comprehensive essay examinations.
2. A student who completes the GE curriculum can read, retrieve, evaluate, interpret, and deliver information using a variety of traditional and electronic media. Students will demonstrate fluency in this outcome through weekly writing assignments, comprehensive take home essay examinations, and listening quizzes.
3. A student who completes the GE curriculum can reason analytically, critically, and creatively about nature, culture, facts, values, ethics, and civic policy. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the cultural political, artistic and economic variables driving the evolution of American vernacular music. This outcome will be assessed through Comprehensive written and listening examinations.

General Education Knowledge Area Outcomes

1. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the creative process as it applies to jazz and American popular music through answers given to essay based examinations. For example, students will able to articulate the process whereby a jazz musician improvises over bebop changes, or the formulas used by tin Pan Alley songwriters to increase the odds that their songs would become hits. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the creative process as it applies to jazz and American popular music through answers given to essay based examinations. For example, students will able to articulate the process whereby a jazz musician improvises over bebop changes, or the formulas used by tin Pan Alley songwriters to increase the odds that their songs would become hits.
2. Provide an informed synopsis of the performing and/or visual arts in the contexts of culture and history through reading and interpreting pertinent information using a variety of traditional and electronic media. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the intersections between American popular music and American culture and history through their answers to essay based examinations and through weekly writing assignments. For example, students will be able to connect the diaspora of jazz and blues with the politics of the Great Migration.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of the conceptual and elemental principles fundamental to the creation of various forms of artistic expression. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the elements of music and their application to the creation of American popular music through their answers to listening examinations.
4. Exhibit an ability to critically analyze artistic works using appropriate techniques, vocabulary, and methodologies. Students will demonstrate an ability to analyze selected works via answers to listening examinations.

Student Learning Outcomes

1. Students will be able to define and demonstrate recognition of the basic musical elements of jazz and popular music
2. Students will be able to identify, by sound, the different genres of music studied in the course, and have the musical vocabulary necessary to describe the sounds they are hearing.
3. Students will be able to identify major jazz and popular music performers and describe their contributions to the development of American music.
4. Students will be able to identify and understand major cultural "mileposts" in American history, and the impact that these events had on American music.

Course Content

Musical vocabulary. Introduction to American popular music.Popular music of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Social dance and jazz. Starr & Waterman.The golden age of Tin Pan Alley. Starr & Waterman.Race records and hillbilly music in the 1920s and 30s. Jazz in the swing era. Starr & Waterman, pp. 157-198Postwar jazz: 1950s-1960s.Postwar pop: 1946-1954. Starr & Waterman.The beginnings of rock and roll, 1954-1959.American pop and the British Invasion. Country, Soul, Urban Folk, & Folk-Rock in the 1960s. The 1970s, Rock, Disco, and the Popular Mainstream. Progressive Country, Reggae, Punk and New Wave, Funk, & Rap. The 1980s.1990s.