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What is needed, in short, is a focus on the three Rs which form the material essence of Rap: rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric. Thus, in the following essay, I will attempt to demonstrate that Rap is a contemporary form of the ages-old tradition of folk-poetry and that it.
- Special Considerations
- Bit About Rap Music
- Strategies
- Materials List
- Week One: Rap as Spoken Word PoetryWhat is Poetry?
- Week Two: Some Basic Technical Aspects of Poetry
- Skeltonic
- Free Verse
- Lyric Poetry
- Cento
- Elegy
- Week Six: The Power of Words-Battle Rapping
- Week Seven: Finding your Voice and Getting Your Message out-The Last Poets
- Week Eight: Crafting and Performing Your Poetry- Slam Poetry
- Assessment
A Bit about Rap Music Unit Correlation with District Performance Standards Strategies Materials List Classroom Activities (8-week curriculum) Week One: Rap as Spoken Word Poetry-What is Poetry? Week Two: Some Basic Technical Aspects of Poetry Weeks Three and Four: Rap’s Poetic Relatives-Learning to Use Other Poetic Forms Week Five: Hip Hop Party-Ge...
When I began my research for this unit, I looked for the ways in which poetry helped to produce rap, but surprisingly, I found that most people feel that rap does not have direct roots in formal poetic forms and movements. However, most sources do acknowledge rap as a new poetic form (for example, see Handbook of Poetic Forms). While rap music did ...
This unit is designed to be delivered over an eight-week period. The unit is broken down into eight weekly sections (each week consisting of five 45-minute periods). The fifth day (Friday) of each week is designed to be a fun day that is a culmination of what students have learned during the previous days’ lessons. Students will keep a journal that...
In order to instruct this curriculum unit, you must have access to the following items: Blackboard or easel to write on Computer with Internet access Computer or boom box that can play CDs Copies of the poems, rap songs, and videos specified in the unit (of course, you should feel free to substitute or add your own music and poetic resources) Hando...
Days 1-4: Introduce the unit: Tell students they will be studying the ways in which rap music is a modern poetic form; In what ways it is indeed poetry, and how rap relates to other forms of poetry. They will be learning about the roots of rap music, and beginning a daily journal about the songs and poems we study. Ask if anyone knows the history o...
Here we learn some basics about poetry, so we can use these ideas to analyze and understand the ways in which rap is poetic. Days 1-5: Give students a handout with a glossary of poetic terms. I have included a glossary at the end of this unit which is excerpted from Susan Santovasi’s Yale Teachers Institute unit entitled: “The Poetry We Sing: A Wom...
A skeltonic is a poetic form composed of short lines (of about 3-6 words). Each line rhymes with the next and the rhymes are continued as long as the poet wants. The pace is fast and this type of poetry is sometimes called tumbling verse. Many rap songs have this tumbling verse feeling, though the lines are often more than six words. In the followi...
In this form, the poet is free to create his or her own rules to follow. This allows the poet to create the form of their poem to best match their intentions. One of the most renowned free verse poems is “Song of Myself” by Walk Whitman: “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,/And the pismire is equally perfect, and...
Lyric is a poetic form named after the lyre, an ancient Greek musical instrument. As the Greek poets recited poems, they used the lyre to accompany their words. Lyric poems express emotion. Basically all rap songs are composed in this way, emphasizing a beat behind and assisting the music. Have students write a lyric poem (with musical accompanimen...
Cento comes from the Latin word meaning “patchwork.” The cento is a poem made entirely of pieces from poems by other authors, with footnotes that credit the original authors. Many rap songs “sample” music and lines from other musical pieces, as well as from newspaper headlines, advertisements, etc. For example, Jay-Z says in his song “Takeover”: “T...
This is one of the most ancient forms of poetry. It expresses the sadness of death. The form has more to do with the content than with any specific structure. There is a good deal of rap content that has to do with death. For example, a number of elegy-type songs have been written about the deaths of Biggie and Tupac Shakur, who were murdered. Here...
Days 1-4: In “Looking for Richard,” his documentary about Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” Al Pacino talks about how hard it is to understand Shakespeare’s lines. “They’re like poetry. It’s hard to grab hold of some rap slang, too. It’s hard to get hold of it until your ear gets tuned. You have to tune up.” Anthony DeCurtis says in The Vibe History of ...
How can students use rap poetry to become griots for their times? Days 1-4: Watch “The Last Poets” documentary (may take a day and a half). Though rap’s beginnings are debatable, many people agree that it began with The Last Poets, who wrote rhymes played to drums and percussion to drive home social and political points. After The Last Poets, early...
Days 1-4: Watch the film Slam Nation (please be sure to watch this film before showing it to students. You may want to edit. There are parts of the film that have swearing, the use of the word “nigger” and one quick shot of a woman lifting up her shirt). (You might also want to show the slam poetry performance at the end of the film Slam , though y...
Students will be graded on the following: Daily participation grade Homework assignments will be graded; especially those that are due on Fridays Weekly grade for showing that they made daily entries in their journals Participation in Friday performances and activities Other grades as deemed appropriate
Working With English: Medieval and Modern Language, Literature and Drama 6 (2010): pp. 14-44 basic plot is as follows: a monkey, lion and elephant are in the jungle.
Rap is not simply a type of spoken poetry, but a relation in the family tree of Black artistic expression. Rap can therefore take inspiration and borrow from preceding spoken word works and styles, while standing independently as an individual member of the family.
- Alice Price-Styles
- 2015
The anthology’s purpose is threefold: (1) to distill, convey, and preserve rap’s poetic tradition within the context of African American oral culture and the Western poetic heritage; (2) to...
Feb 15, 2022 · Rap Lyrics as Literature. UCLA scholars teach hip-hop as the most popular form of American contemporary poetry. If you’ve dismissed rap as being just the expletive-laced, nonsensical vernacular of the downtrodden and angry, then it’s way past time for you to listen more closely.
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Written or freestyled, rap has a poetic structure that can be reproduced, a deliberate form an MC creates for each rhyme that differentiates it, if only in small ways, from every other rhyme ever conceived. Like all poetry, rap is defined by the art of the line.
