If you are unfamiliar with how Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is celebrated in Iran (many other countries celebrate in similar ways as well), the beginning of this video is an excellent description that you could share with elementary aged students to learn about the holiday:
One of the traditions that's not mentioned in this video, though, is Chaharshanbe Suri, which is the "Red Wednesday" fire festival celebrated the last Tuesday night before the new year. This read-aloud is a great way to introduce the tradition to kids in a relatable way if you have the time, and the video below gives a nice quick explanation of both the fire jumping and the spoon hitting traditions (which is very similar to trick or treating so elementary aged students always enjoy learning about it) of Chaharshanbe Suri:
The song I want to share today comes from this video, which demonstrates the song and explains a game and music lesson activities to go with it:
I wrote out the notation of the melody with a transliteration (pronunciation) of the lyrics below. As always I recommend listening to the native speaker in the video above to learn the proper pronunciation of the lyrics rather than reading them from the English letters below alone!
The lyrics are:
اسفند دونه دونه،چهارشنبه سوری مونده
آتش داریمیه خرمن،میپریم روش باهم
سرخیِ تو از من، زردیِ من از تو.
Which roughly translates to:
Esfand (the last month of the Persian calendar) is over, it's Chaharshanbeh Soori (Red Wednesday)
Let's jump over the fire together
My yellowness is yours, your redness is mine
The last line, which is sung twice at the end of the song, is the phrase that people say as they jump over the fire, meaning they are giving their pale, yellow, sickly skin of winter to the fire, and taking the red, healthy, rosy skin from the fire as spring begins.
This song is a perfect addition to my lessons on time signatures with 4th and 5th graders because of the interesting 5/8 time! First I had the students doing the clap/ pat pattern with the recording (I clipped just the part where she sings the song in my slides), then I introduced the holiday and fire jumping tradition and taught them the last repeated line and had them try to sing along while still doing the clap- pat pattern through the whole song. In the video the woman suggests having students play percussion instruments with the song and take turns jumping over a pretend fire, so I did something similar: I had half of the students either play a pattern on the djembe, playing the low bass tone in the center of the drum on the downbeat pat and the higher tone on the edge of the drum on the claps, or play steady eighth notes on a shaker. The other half of the class lined up in front of the plushy campfire I happen to have from doing campfire songs at the end of the school year (really you could use a red scarf, or anything small as the "fire"). While we sang the song, the students in line tried to jump on the claps and land on the pats. First I had them jump together in time with the beat while staying in place, then once they got it I had them take turns actually jumping over the fire plushy one at a time. We had to slow the song down but once they got it, it went really well and they loved trying to keep the jumping going through the whole song! Then I had them trade parts and do it again.
All the clapping, jumping, singing, and instrument playing in 5/8 really helped them internalize the pulse before I asked them to try to identify the time signature. Having the shaker playing eighth notes is definitely important for helping students figure out what the time signature is! It's the perfect way to get them to experience how the 5 eighth notes are often split into groups of 2 and 3.
You could certainly use this song for other concepts like same and different phrases, or do re mi fa solfege notes, and you could definitely add more pitched ostinati to create an ensemble piece with it as well, or even have students play the melody on xylophones or other barred instruments, but I think the clear pulse and simple melody, along with the fun movement game that even upper elementary students can get excited about, make this a perfect song to use to explore time signature/ meter, and it was an easy way to introduce students to a tradition from Iran that most had never heard of!
If you want to incorporate more simple songs from Iran in Farsi / Persian, this rain song is also perfect for spring (or really any time of year) and I used it primarily with my younger students. You can also find more songs from around the world and search by language or country/ region on this page, and see all my other lesson ideas for teaching meter (including tons more lessons to practice 5/4 time) in this post:
No comments :
Post a Comment