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Teaching artist Teagan Faran demonstrates how to create a two-sentence story full of emotion using the rhythm and music of the blues.

Vocabulary You Will Learn:

• Blues—A form of music begun by enslaved people of predominantly African descent in the southern United States as a way to share their feelings with loved ones.

Materials You Will Need:

• Nothing—just yourself!

How to Create Your Own Original Blues Song

1. First, create a “heartbeat,” or rhythm, to serve as the background for your blues song. You can create this by beating your fist on your chest, tapping your feet, snapping your fingers, or any other way you like! Just make sure that the rhythm you’ve created is slow and steady. 
2. Next, you’re going to create your two-sentence story. Think of something that happened in your day today and use this event, and how you felt about it, to write your story. Your story can rhyme, like Teagan’s does, but it doesn’t have to. 

3. Now, you’ll practice using repetition to emphasize the importance of your story. Use the heartbeat you created to tell your story again, this time repeating the first line before moving on to the second line. You can add some emphasis when you repeat the line, to show how important it is.
4. Finally, you’re ready to set your song to music. You can speak your story over the music that starts at around 7:15 in the video, or use a different blues track, if you have one. Remember to use your heartbeat to bring the rhythm into your body while you speak!

In this video, Teagan shows us how to use our bodies, and a story about something that happened during our day, to create the rhythm and lyrics for an original blues song. If you want to go even further, think about these questions: 

• At the end of the video, Teagan talks about how the music made her want to move to show how she felt during her story. Did you get the urge to move as well? How might you move your body to illustrate the emotions your story made you feel?
• Teagan also mentions that your song might change over time, depending on how the events in the story evolve. If you were to write a second part to your song, expanding more on the event you described or how it made you feel, how would that go?
• Can you experiment with adding your own music to the song, in addition to the rhythm you created? Maybe you can create percussion with some pencils on a surface, or by thwacking a rubber band? How does this change the sound of the song you created? 
• The blues are typically used to express feelings of sadness or melancholy. Is that how the music in the video made you feel, and did it affect what you wrote your song about? Why or why not?

Accessibility

Don’t forget that you can turn on “Closed Captioning” to view the YouTube video with English captions.

More about the Teaching Artist

Teagan Faran (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist dedicated to enacting social change through the arts. Based in New York City, Teagan combines her experiences with Argentine tango, North American jazz, and Western classical music to encourage exploration in the classroom. For more information, visit:. 

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Manager, Digital Education Resources

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Content Specialist, Digital Learning

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Gifts and grants to educational programs at the Kennedy Center are provided by The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Bank of America; Capital One; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Ednah Root Foundation; Harman Family Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; the Kimsey Endowment; The Kiplinger Foundation; Laird Norton Family Foundation; Lois and Richard England Family Foundation; Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather; The Markow Totevy Foundation; Dr. Gerald and Paula McNichols Foundation; The Morningstar Foundation; Myra and Leura Younker Endowment Fund; The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives;

Prince Charitable Trusts; Dr. Deborah Rose and Dr. Jan A. J. Stolwijk; Rosemary Kennedy Education Fund; The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates; The Victory Foundation; The Volgenau Foundation; Volkswagen Group of America; Jackie Washington; GRoW @ Annenberg and Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Family; Wells Fargo; and generous contributors to the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund and by a major gift to the fund from the late Carolyn E. Agger, widow of Abe Fortas. Additional support is provided by the National Committee for the Performing Arts..

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