Slavery Documents Education Initiative

Founded in 1992, Classroom Cantatas grew out of the Cantata Singers’ commitment to contemporary music. The 11-session in-school program for students in the Boston public schools strives to tap the twin powers of music: the power to explore issues and values through the creative process and the power to unite performers and audience during musical performance. The Cantata Singers work closely with music and classroom teachers to coordinate the program with the school curriculum. The students begin by writing poems related to their work in their other classes. Then the Classroom Cantata staff helps the students put their poems to music. The staff involves the students in lively discussions of rhyme, harmony, rhythm and social context as they have fun during the process.

This was how Session One of Classroom Cantatas began on October 19, 2001 in Yvonne Powell’s African American history class at the Jeremiah Burke High School. Drawn in, the juniors and seniors entered a discussion on the power of song, particularly in the face of injustice, exploring with Genithia other ways she might interpret "Motherless Child." This theme will continue as Suzanne, Daryl and Genithia bring in other composers’ and performer’s recordings of this song over the course of the twelve sessions. The students will spend time singing Spirituals, African American slave songs and civil rights songs, all the while discovering together the components of song-writing. They’ll also work in small groups to write their own cantata, to which T.J. Anderson will respond as they interact with him in a master class in February.

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