ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following websites offer useful resources when presenting Brazilian culture.
The Smithsonian Folkways website has multiple resources that help teachers introduce students to multiple cultures from around the world. The website contains mp3s, music score, and ready to download lesson plans. A few of those can be found in the section bellow.
This website can be helpful in understanding Brazil's history and how the country came to be. As in any historical investigation, it is important to look for more than one source, however, this one has a good step by step layout of the facts.
Although it doesn't present a lot of the cultural context of many of the songs, this article presents 23 "must hear" Brazilian songs. Although they are all from what we would describe as a popular genre they all sound very different. A list like this might be good to illustrate how diverse Brazilian music is even inside of one genre.
LESSON PLANS
Here you can find lesson plans from already existing online resources:
In this lesson plan designed by Jessica Blackwood, the Samba and Carimbo rhythms are presented in a step by step introduction that includes dance, movement and singing.Â
https://folkways.si.edu/danca-movement-brazil/samba/music/tools-for-teaching/smithsonian
In this lesson plan designed by Hiromi Takasu, the Embolada rhythm is e presented thoughtfully in a lesson that presents conscious listening, body percussion, and improvisation.Â
https://folkways.si.edu/ritmo-embolada-introduction-brazilian-rhythm/ballad-sonnet-folklore/music/tools-for-teaching/smithsonian
Even though this is not a lesson plan, the website has important information about what is capoeira and how it came to be. This would be a good resource to immerse children in the Capoeira traditions both because it provides historical background and because it contains the audio from Capoeira sessions, that is rare to find. When presenting a unit on Capoeira, make sure to contextualize it historically and don't take the music apart from the martial art and its reason for existing. Capoeira is music, but it is also survival and resistance.