It’s Time to Crank Out Some Tunes: Teaching American History With Music

By engaging students with more than just words on a page, music brings history to life

Children can delve into the history of America through its musical heritage. (Biba Kayewich)

Whatever schools our children are attending, the resources for teaching and learning U.S. history have never been more abundant.

Even if not used as the main text, Wilfred McClay’s excellent “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story” makes a great addition to any classroom. It now comes with a student workbook, a teacher’s guide, and a two-volume version for younger students. Likewise, public libraries are true treasure troves of histories and biographies for students of all ages, books that enhance textbooks in bringing alive people and events from bygone days.

Literature offers another avenue for exploring the United States’ past. As that storyteller of the Old West Louis L’Amour once said, “For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”

Writers such as Kenneth Roberts, father-and-son team Michael and Jeff Shaara, Esther Forbes, and many others breathe life into the dust of history through their vividly written fiction. Younger students can find similar pleasure and instruction in novels such as the “Dear America” series or the works of Avi and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And if the kids are tired of paper and print? All across our country are museums, battlefields, historic homes, and other sites awaiting their visit. This hands-on approach is a great way to enter into the past. Consider as well the many films available today, from the animated Liberty Kids series to documentaries and classic movies, all recounting American history.

And then there’s music.

Start Them Young

Ballads, sea shanties, pioneer and cowboy songs, spirituals, jazz, classical, country, rock, pop—the musical heritage of the United States runs as deep as the Grand Canyon.

And many of these songs are either straight out of U.S. history or are about that history and can enrich the lessons and lives of the young.

We can begin unpacking this American song bag even before the kids enter a formal classroom, teaching toddlers simple pieces such as “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” or “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” In kindergarten and elementary school, we can add more sophisticated songs along with their historical background.

My own children were exposed early on to “Wee Sing America,” a book and CD that included 53 pieces, most of them songs, such as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The Marine Corps Hymn,” and “Goober Peas,” but also snippets from the American past such as “The Preamble to the Constitution” and quotes from Patrick Henry and Abraham Lincoln. To this day, they can repeat many of these songs, albeit with lots of laughter.

So search online for the music, add some context and background, and the kids will be diving into history.

And the Band Plays On

Students from the upper elementary grades through high school have even more options. Studying the American Revolution? Poke around online and in no time at all you’ll be hearing and reading about the songs of that period. Your student is reading about the Roaring ‘20s? Turn on some jazz of that era and listen to the music that made the ’20s roar. From there, move to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” and you’ll have an inkling of the pain felt during the Great Depression.

Let’s consider in a little more detail a specific period of time—the Civil War—and the lessons we can learn from its music. Of all the wars in U.S. history, this one produced the most memorable songs. Here are the pyrotechnic words and tunes that roused the spirits of soldiers and civilians on both sides of that conflict: the North’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” for example, and “Dixie” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” for the South. Here, we find the tender laments of that bloody war, such as “All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight,” and the satirical jabs, such as “The Invalid Corps.” Some songs describe events (e.g., “Marching Through Georgia”), and others tell of the soldier’s life in the field (e.g., “Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground”). Even “Taps” was a product of these musically rich years.

Play such songs, and you’ll fire up the imaginations of your students.

Rearview Mirror Music

So far, we’ve considered music native to the era in which it was produced, but some songs written long after the events they describe can also give us a ticket to the past.

The post-World War II years saw an abundance of films and television shows, particularly Westerns, that reflected pride and interest in the United States’ past, and music proved no exception. Like the movies, for instance, songs about the Old West became popular. Marty Robbins’s “El Paso” became a huge hit and was part of an album titled “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs.” The Sons of the Pioneers, with their songs of the West, rocketed to popularity at this time and continue to make music today. Robbie Robertson’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” are just two more examples of music composed in that era that can be used with profit when teaching history.

The songwriter most renowned at that time for his songs about the past was Johnny Horton. Best known for “The Battle of New Orleans,” which many young people recognize even today, Horton also offered other pieces celebrating U.S. history, songs such as “Comanche,” “Jim Bridger,” “North to Alaska,” and “Johnny Reb.” These and more can profit the history student.

Some Tips to Keep in Mind

Though Horton made “The Battle of New Orleans” a hit, it was a schoolteacher, Jimmy Driftwood, who wrote the words and first put them to music. He did so for his U.S. history classes. He understood that the young connect to music differently from how they do to a textbook, and from this song, his students could learn the date and location of the battle, the commander of the U.S. forces, and the backwoods spirit of the men fighting under Andrew Jackson.

Driftwood’s teaching techniques should inspire us all. Here are a few suggestions to make that adventure in song profitable.

Once we’ve introduced a song, we might ask students to learn about the composer and to ask questions. Why did the Pennsylvania-born Stephen Foster write so many songs about the South, which he visited only once? What led George M. Cohan to compose such patriotic hits as “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy”? How did his songs mesh with the mood of Americans at the time they were written?

Next, we can draw out the history behind the song. If we investigate the folk ballad “Tom Dooley,” a major hit by the Kingston Trio, we discover that this story of a hanging was set in the hills of North Carolina during the chaos left by the Civil War. Horton’s “North to Alaska” centers on the gold rush in that remote place more than a hundred years ago. Further investigation then yields the name of the man who first discovered that gold and for whom the state’s capital is named. These facts and ideas will come naturally to the students as they research the songs.

Finally, more than any other art, music captures and brings to life the emotions of a time in our history. In listening to traditional spirituals, for example, beautiful and sorrowful songs such as “Go Down, Moses” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” we enter into the world of slavery and suffering. We hear their pain in the lyrics and the music.

Though it might be fun and educational for students or teachers to follow Driftwood’s example and write their own songs about some person or event in American history, that’s not necessary. The songs are there. All we have to do is use them.