The legendary body of work collected during the life and career of Alan Lomax is about to reach a whole new generation. The Alan Lomax Archives have announced an exciting content partnership with "Little" Steven Van Zandt's TeachRock and Rock and Roll Forever Foundation.
Under the new partnership, The Association For Cultural Equity in conjunction with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress will provide content to TeachRock to be utilized in creating lesson plans and other teaching resources.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">All of Smith and Gladden's recordings are available via <a href="https://t.co/AD2U4J50CO">https://t.co/AD2U4J50CO</a>, along with the entirety of the audio and photographs collected on the Southern Journey. <a href="https://t.co/oQNgTPt2xo">pic.twitter.com/oQNgTPt2xo</a></p>— Alan Lomax Archive (@CulturalEquity) <a href="https://twitter.com/CulturalEquity/status/1166045086569943040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Working directly with teachers and schools TeachRock incorporates music into core curriculum by distributing lesson plans and other educational materials.Van Zandt, who is best known for his role as longtime guitarist with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, is an ardent supporter of music education. Perhaps the Boss describes the program best.
“[Little Steven’s] TeachRock program brings an essential curriculum of music and culture into school and makes it available at no cost to educators,” Springsteen said as he inducted Van Zandt into the New Jersey Hall of Fame last year. “In a time of cutbacks in arts funding, Steve’s programs are keeping kids engaged in the arts, and in school — this is his greatest legacy.”
Van Zandt's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation also offers teachers and school administrators workshops to introduce the concept of arts integration for culturally responsive pedagogy using their TeachRock curriculum. Wasting no time in their new partnership, the first four lesson plans developed from the Lomax Archive's resources are already available, and more are in development.
For more information about TeachRock, visit the organization's website.
