Student Lesson: Voices of the Dustbowl

(Note: not classroom tested)

• to learn about songs, photos and interviews collected by New Deal era folklorists;
• to gain an appreciation of the reality of the Dust Bowl and migrant life;
• to hear some of the music and speech that Steinbeck would have heard while researching The Grapes of Wrath; and
• to learn about the purposes and accomplishments of the FSA.

Resources Used:

• Voices from the Dust-Bowl, 1940-1941, a collection of song recordings, interviews and photos documenting life in migrant labor camps run by the FSA.
  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html
• Thematic chapter from The Grapes of Wrath.
• Folk Song Summary Sheet

Assignment Components:

Begin by using the section entitled "The Migrant Experience," found on the collection's home page. You are to:

1. Read why migrant workers moved to California, and identify who Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin were.
2. Select one of the folk song collectors (Todd or Sonkin), and read about why he wanted to record migrant workers’ folk songs.
3. Browse the set of folk song titles available from the collection’s home page, and look for songs:
   • about ethnic origins;
   • about the depression;
   • that are uplifting or dancible; and
   • that have puzzling lyrics.

4. Listen to several songs (or if audio is unavailable, read the lyrics).
5. Complete a Folk Song Summary Sheet.

Part Two: Match a series of folk songs with one of the thematic chapters in The Grapes of Wrath. (40 points; 20 for images, 20 for poem)

You will be working with one or two other people to complete an audio study of the topic of the thematic chapter assigned to you. Think of this visual project as a way of creating an audio "scrapbook" of your particular thematic chapter. The photos and the poetry should help us understand the theme (Steinbeck's point) for this particular chapter.

To complete this portion, you will need to:

1. Search Voices from the Dust-Bowl, 1940-1941, by keyword or song title, for songs that relate to the theme of your thematic chapter (you could search under dust, camp, cotton, California, etc.)
2. Select and save the best five songs that you can find to illustrate the topic and the message of your chapter. (Note that if you cannot play the audio of the songs, you may still access many songs through the lyrics.)
3. When you are certain you have the exact five songs you want to use, copy and save the titles and singers of the songs (plus lyrics, where available) to a word processing file.
4. Create a ‘found poem’ using text from the lyrics of the songs that summarizes how migrants felt about the aspect of their experience featured in your chapter. In your poem use language from the chapter, if you want.

 

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