Category: Music

Ziryab: the Refugee Who Was an Instant Sensation

2/22/2023

Sarah Towle
Putting the Story back in History

Do you ever stop to think how your everyday life has been shaped by people from the past? Well, if you play the guitar, brush your teeth, or eat dessert after a meal, you owe a debt of gratitude to a Muslim musician who lived twelve hundred years ago.

Abul-Hasan, a commoner born in Baghdad around 789 A.D., had a gift for song that so pleased the ruling caliph he gave him the name “Ziryab,” meaning “Blackbird." Ziryab’s natural musical talent made other musicians jealous, however. So, when the caliph died in 813, they exiled the "Blackbird," sending him to wander the Islamic world for a decade. He performed wherever he went and picked up customs from the people he met.

Ziryab eventually found his way to Al-Andalus (today’s Andalusia, Spain). Its ruler loved music. In fact, he valued musicians above all other professionals. He welcomed the refugee. He offered him asylum. Ziryab was an instant sensation. He introduced his instrument, the Baghdadi oud, to his new neighbors. Then, adding an extra string to his oud, he ignited the evolution of the Spanish guitar.

He established the first-ever music conservatory in Córdoba, which gave rise to the genre of Andalusian classical music--musiqa al-ala—that is still a popular in Morocco today.

But Ziryab's influence didn't stop with music. He transformed Córdoban society as well. He taught locals how to make deodorant and toothpaste. He instructed women in how to shape eyebrows, cut their hair into bangs, remove unwanted body hair. He inspired men to shorten their hair, as well, and to shave daily. And instead of piling his food onto platters, as was then the custom, Ziryab ate his meals atop a clean tablecloth and in three distinct courses: a soup, a main dish, and a dessert.

So each time you sit down to a three-course dinner, strum your six-string guitar, brush your teeth, or tidy your hair, you are following in the footsteps of a Muslim musician who lived 1,200 years ago.

While he had a talent for music, Ziryab’s innovations covered many fields, including the art of makeup and fashionable clothing. He promoted the idea that certain clothing should be reserved for certain times of the year in order to reflect the colors of the seasons.

In music, Ziryab was the first to introduce the lute (Al-U'd) to Spain and Europe in general. He is credited with the addition of the fifth bass string to it which later paved the way for the development of the guitar. He also established the first conservatory in the world that included the teaching of harmony and composition.

Sarah Towle is an award-winning digital storyteller of immersive tales for educational tourism. With her latest project for secondary school students—the History Hero BLAST—she puts the Story back in History, bringing a fictional flair to factual tales of inspirational figures from around the world and throughout time. A blog and future podcast, the HHBLAST welcomes the participation of published and aspiring authors, including young writers. Click here to find out more Ziryab and other History Heroes and about how to bring the HHBLAST—and Sarah—to your school!

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Food Chain Poems

2/15/2023

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Stephen Swinburne
Lifelong Naturalist

When I take a big bite into a hamburger, I am taking part in a food chain. When energy moves from one living organism (hamburger) to the next (me), scientists call this path or chain the Food Chain. Every living thing needs food. Food provides energy for plants and animals to live.

            Food chains begin with plants using sunlight, water and nutrients to make energy in a process called photosynthesis. There are lots of different kinds of food chains— some simple, some complex. An example of a simple food chain is when a rabbit eats grass and then a fox eats the rabbit. I think food chains are so interesting, I’ve written some poems about them.

A Shark is the Sun

Shark eats tuna,
Tuna eats mackerel,
Mackerel eats sardine,
Sardine eats zooplankton,
Zooplankton eats phytoplankton,
Phytoplankton eats sun.
So...shark eats sun.

            In every food chain there are producers, consumers and decomposers. Plants make their own food so they are producers. Animals are consumers because they consume plants or animals. Decomposers have the final say as they break down and decompose plants or animals and release nutrients back to the earth. Animals can be herbivores (plant eater), carnivores (meat eater) or omnivores (plant and meat eater). What are you?

Why Can’t I Be On The Top?

I don’t like the bottom,
I want to be at the top.
I’m tired of being crushed and stomped
and chewed into slop.
Why can’t I be the tiger
with claws as sharp as shears,
With a roar as loud as thunder
To threaten trembling ears?
Who designed this food chain?
Is there a chance I can opt out?
At least I’m not a plankton
Floating all about.

   I hope you are happy with your place in the food chain. If not, you might want to sing along with the Food Chain Blues.

Food Chain Blues

Mama said be careful,
It’s a risky world outside,
Dangers lurking everywhere,
Hardly a place to hide.
She said some of us get eaten,
And some of us survive.
Count yourself quite lucky,
If you make it out alive.
We’re stuck in this cruel cycle,
Nature’s red teeth and claws.
You wanna do your best,
To stay clear of someone’s jaws.
I got the food chain blues
I got the food chain blues
Someone’s gonna eat me.
I got the food chain blues!

This is a simple version of the food chain, which can also be called a "web" especially for organisms that are omnivore

Omnivorous author and his wife, Heather.

For more of Steve's poems about creatures check out Ocean Soup. It even has its own web page here.

Steve Swinburne is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Swinburne, Stephen. "Food Chain Poems." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 8
Mar. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/Food-Chain-Poems.

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"We Shall Overcome": The Power of a Song

1/16/2023

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Amy Nathan
Stories that Surprise and Inspire

The song “We Shall Overcome” was an important part of the civil rights movement of the 1960's. It gave hope and courage to thousands of blacks and whites who protested peacefully against unfair treatment of African Americans. The song is easy to sing, but its words carry a powerful message. Here’s its main verse:

We shall overcome,

We shall overcome,

We shall overcome some day,

Oh, deep in my heart I do believe

We shall overcome some day.

      Often protestors faced hostile crowds, were arrested, or even beaten up when they took part in nonviolent demonstrations that called for all Americans—no matter their skin color—to have the same right to vote and be treated fairly in restaurants, stores, businesses, schools, buses, trains—and even amusement parks.

      Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a main leader of the civil rights movement, urged demonstrators not to fight back, no matter how badly they were treated. This song helped them do that. Holding hands and joining their voices in “We Shall Overcome” during demonstrations—or in jail—helped them feel they weren’t alone and that despite the danger, their efforts would lead to a better America.

      The protests did indeed lead to new laws being passed. The 1964 Civil Rights Law makes it illegal for any business that serves the public to discriminate against people because of race, religion, gender, or national origin. The 1965 Voting Rights Law outlaws rules that make it hard for blacks to vote.

      News about these nonviolent protestors—and their song—spread around the world. Before long, people protesting for fair treatment in other countries began singing “We Shall Overcome” in their own languages. It has been sung by demonstrators in such varied countries as India, Czechoslovakia, Romania, China, and Britain.

      While I was doing research for a book on civil rights, a man told me how the song helped him when he was surrounded by a hostile mob that hurled insults (and some rocks) during a 1963 demonstration at an amusement park that refused to let in blacks. When police arrived to arrest the protestors (not the stone thrower), the demonstrators held hands and sang the song as they walked through the mob to the police van. Their voices were shaky as they sang the verse “We are not afraid,” because they were very afraid, but the song gave them the courage to keep going.

Click here for source notes on this article.

Protesters at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, at which Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech.” Courtesy Library of Congress.

Amy Nathan is the author of Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round into the Civil Rights Movement, which tells the tale of the nearly ten years of protests that were needed to finally end segregation at an amusement park, placing the story of the park—and its merry-go-round—within the context of the civil rights movement as a whole. For more information on the book, click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Nathan, Amy. "'We Shall Overcome': The Power of a Song." Nonfiction Minute, iNK
Think Tank, 23 Feb. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
we-shal-overcome-the-power-of-a-song.

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How the Composer Handel Used His Music To Help British Orphans

12/14/2022

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Andrea Warren
Giving Voice to Children in History

One of the joys of research is uncovering the unexpected. Most recently this happened to me when I was writing Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London. Dickens was a patron of the London Foundling Hospital, a charitable home for orphans founded in 1741. (Foundlings were children whose parents were unknown, and hospital meant shelter back then.)

Researching the Foundling, I learned that a century before Dickens, German composer George Frederic Handel was one of its greatest benefactors. I thought this must be a mistake since he was German. Curious, I took a side journey into Handel’s life to find out.

    Brimming with musical talent, Handel moved to London at age 26 to find work and quickly became a popular composer and performer. He decided to stay, eventually becoming a British citizen. Londoners readily recognized him, for he was a great bear of a man who wore stylish clothes and an enormous wig. He spoke with a thick German accent, and when angry, his words tumbled together in German, Italian, and English. He never married or had children, but he had a big heart and readily assisted the needy and destitute, especially children. It’s been said that no other composer contributed so much to the relief of human suffering.

    He often helped charities by donating all proceeds from a concert. In 1749 when he learned that the Foundling did not have funds for its proposed chapel, he offered a concert to introduce his newest composition, Messiah. The packed audience was enthralled. A second concert quickly sold out, and the chapel was completed.

    Handel became a member of the Foundling’s Board of Governors and continued his financial assistance by personally directing Messiah in the chapel at least once a year, always to overflow crowds. When the king attended a performance, he stood for the “Hallelujah Chorus”--and audiences have been standing ever since. Because Handel knew people would pay to see it, he willed the Foundling an original copy of Messiah.

    I listen to Handel’s compositions differently now. It’s no longer mere music from the past; instead, it feels alive, created by a fascinating man with a charitable heart who helped provide for orphans. I attend Messiah whenever I can, and when we all stand for the “Hallelujah Chorus,” I smile to myself, feeling a strong connection to history, for I know exactly why we are doing it.

George Frideric Handel

HANDEL - Messiah (Johann Strauss Orchestra and Harlem Gospel Choir) from Joe Orgill plus joe.orgill.slcc on Vimeo.

As much as Andrea Warren loves writing, she also loves research. Getting distracted can pay off, because she's now writing a book on a subject she discovered while researching another book. To learn more about Handel and how he not only helped the poor but also inspired Charles Dickens, take a look at Warren's book "Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London." You'll learn more about it and about her other books at www.AndreaWarren.com .

Andrea is also a member of Authors on Call. Bring her into your classroom via interactive video conferencing. Here’s where you can learn more about her and her programs.

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Hard Crackers in Hard Times

11/3/2022

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Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

During the Civil War, soldiers loved to eat and to sing. One of their favorite songs was about food they hated: “Hardtack, Come Again No More!” It was a parody of composer Stephen Foster’s popular 1854 tune “Hard Times Come Again No More.”

Hardtack was a thick cracker that formed the men's basic ration. Nearly every soldier received nine or ten every day. Hardtack lived up to the “hard” part of its name. Soldiers often had trouble crunching the rock-like crackers and gave them nicknames such as “teeth dullers,” “sheet-iron crackers,” “jawbreakers,” and so on.

According to a popular joke, a soldier bit into a piece of hardtack.

“I found something soft!” he told his comrades.

“What is it?” they asked.

“A nail!” he replied.

To make hardtack easier to eat, soldiers often bashed the crackers with the butt end of their rifles. They scooped up the crumbs and mixed them with bacon grease and salt pork to make a kind of mush called skillygalee.

Hardtack had another nickname: “worm castles.” Worms frequently burrowed into the crackers. To get rid of those little wrigglers, soldiers dunked the crackers in hot coffee. The hardtack fell apart and the worms floated to the surface. Sometimes the men had contests to see whose hardtack had the most worms. Reportedly, the record was 32!

Not everyone threw the little creatures away, though. One soldier explained that “They eat better than they look, and are so much clear gain in the way of fresh meat.”

If hardtack had all these problems, why was it such an important part of the soldiers’ daily diet? First, it was easy and inexpensive to make. Every day 3 or 4 million crackers popped out of bakers’ ovens and were shipped to the armies in the field.

Second, hardtack hardly ever spoiled. In 1898, U.S. Navy sailors in the Spanish-American War chowed down on hardtack baked more than 30 years earlier during the Civil War.

Third, the crackers didn’t weigh very much. Soldiers could carry enough hardtack in their backpacks to eat for several days.

Soldiers joked that they could stitch together crackers to make a bulletproof vest, though it’s doubtful that anyone actually did. Maybe they should have. In 2010, college students performed an experiment by firing pistol shots into chunks of hardtack. They were astonished to find that the crackers stopped the bullets!

© Jim Whiting, 2014

Jim Whiting has written 250 nonfiction books. He's known as Washington State's most prolific children's book author.

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "Hard Crackers in Hard Times." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 12 Sept. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/hard-crackers-in-hard-times.

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Ziryab: the Refugee Who Was an Instant Sensation

Food Chain Poems

"We Shall Overcome": The Power of a Song

How the Composer Handel Used His Music To Help British Orphans

Hard Crackers in Hard Times

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