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Geography/History Lessons
Mapping the Beat: A History and Geography through Music Curriculum
Country: America's Music (Early Influences and Instruments)
Flutes, Natural Resources and Native American Cultures on the Plains
The Global Origins of Atlantic Slavery and the African Diaspora
Surfing Safari: California Surf Music and the Rise of Suburban Youth Culture
CLICK ON THE ARTICLES BELOW to learn more about the history and development of the Mapping the Beat curriculum.
(PDF) Tracing Cultural Migration through Music: An Inquiry Approach to Enhancing Global Understanding
Mapping the Beat: A History and Geography through Music Curriculum integrates geography, history and arts instruction into a single body of lesson plans. At the heart of this program are three concepts—environment, identity, and movement—taken from the standards outlined in Geography for Life, the national geography standards. These themes were selected for their significance to the study of both music and geography. Elementary and secondary students consider how the physical character of a region shapes the music and how, in turn, the music shapes the cultural character of that same region. They investigate the origins of various musical genres and place them in a larger cultural context. Visual and performing arts are viewed as a record of cultural migration, a product of the geographic environment and a cornerstone of personal and group identity.
The Mapping the Beat curriculum has been implemented in K-12 classrooms by the ArtsBridge America national network, with support from the UCI Center for Learning in the Arts, Sciences, and Sustainability, by the following university ArtsBridge programs: Appalachian State University; Lawrence University; Michigan State University; Oklahoma State University; University of Delaware, University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of California, San Diego. This project was made possible by a grant from the National Geographic Education Foundation.