Listening journal assignment You are required to listen to African-American popular music performed by African-American artists and record information about this music in a Listening Journal. The Journal should be divided into two sections. The first must cover music up to and including 1969 and the second music between 1970 and 1990. The Journal may be hand written but it must be well presented. You may not submit the Journal in a 3-ring binder and our advice is to keep the presentation businesslike but you are free to get creative and decorative if you want. The Journal will consist of separate entries for each song you listen to. In these entries, you should write down your personal feeling about each song. There must be no duplicates entries [i.e. same song by the same artist] as these entries will result in mark deductions. There must be a table of content and the pages and songs must be numbered. The journal should explore a minimum of 150 songs and be at least 30 pages long. Entries should list factual data about each song, which may include, but is not limited to: artist name, song name, composer, release date, record label and chart peak position Your journal MUST have a proper Table of Contents. The Songs MUST be numbered. The Pages MUST be numbered. If you still submit a journal without these attributes you will receive the appropriate mark. must fulfill the minimum requirements of 150 songs. This means you cannot submit a journal with 149 songs. The marks plummet dramatically for journals that do not meet the minimum requirements set out in the syllabus. Ditto for the minimum 30 page requirement. WRITE UP: DO NOT DESCRIBE SOUNDS, INSTRUMENTS, LYRICS OR RANDOM FACTS. TS. This is the most important component of the journal. Make sure your write-ups are personal and interesting. To avoid repetitive banality make entries over a long period and don’t be afraid to get personal. Keep facts and figures [i.e. anything that is public knowledge] out of the write up portion. We don’t need to read that the singer was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi and moved to Chicago in 1936. This is not going to be rewarded. List data [songname, artist, release date, label, etc] about each song entry but keep this date outside of the ‘write-up’ portion. Ideally, it can be placed directly above each journal entry. My suggestion is to tabulate this data in some appealing way. Your write up should contain personal information and reactions to the music. Anything that can be found on the internet does not belong in your write up portion. Spread around the material among different genres and artist. If you really love Ray Charles and decide to put in 30 songs from him in your journal, you are making a mistake. Devoting 20% of your journal entries to one artist is not a demonstration of hard, diligent work. Try to cover many artists and many styles. Even if you hate Blues, you should include some Blues artists.
