Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Songs of the Civil War Era Rerun: Bonnie Blue Flag Medly

I've embarked on the first week of my 5th grade school visit tour de force! I'm planning to visit each fifth grade classroom in the district...three times each. Our first session, we'll start off with Songs of the Battlefield. Then we'll move on to songs from the home front and the cotton fields and learn how each of these musical forms fused together during the Civil War Era to form a new "American" style of music. Here's installment 3 of my Songs of the Civil War Era blog rerun:

Songs of the Civil War Era: Bonnie Blue Flag Medly (originally posted on November 25, 2009)

When I was putting together my recent Songs of the Civil War Era concert, there were some areas I already had pretty well under my belt. I've been singing the spirituals and popular songs of the time (like Oh Susanna and Gum Tree Canoe) for quite a while now.

But I wasn't as familiar with songs that were sung on the battlefield. It was very interesting to research these tunes and find out how they evolved. One fascinating example was "Bonnie Blue Flag," and you can hear the whole story by clicking on the player below (again, if you're in Facebook, you might have to go directly to my blog).

If you want to follow along at home (like one of my favorite childhood shows?), here are the images: Page 2, Pages 3 & 4, Page 5.


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