Lyrics for Change
Music, spoken word, and visual representations (depictions) have the ability to bring together even the most polarizing opinions and groups, they also have the power to foster generational dehumanizing narratives and stereotypes with lasting impacts. Lyrics for Change is a hybrid course/workshop which promotes social change in representation through music, lyrics and visual arts by exploring the idea of Full Participation in Artistic Representation. Students will interrogate historical pieces of visual artwork and music to investigate culture as a determining factor in human rights. In this course, students engage in a weekly hands-on discussion-based workshop with guiding themes that deal with representation, the role of the arts, and social and political change.
Goals and Objectives:
Goals and Objectives:
- Introduce students to the historic relationships between dehumanizing language (lyrics) and iconic imagery and how different forms of representation have influenced America’s present visual culture.
- Enable students to see how cultural products such as works of Music and Visual art are linked to social and political networks.
- Give students a working vocabulary for discussing images and help them to better understand how visual forms produce meaning.
- Help students develop visual analysis skills.
- Enable students to develop dialogue skills that will be useful in all fields of music composing and subsequent visual creation.
