Duke Ellington Centennial Celebration

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Sample Lesson for "Koko" by Duke Ellington
By Luvenia George
Program Coordinator of the Duke Ellington Youth Project
Smithsonian Institution

OBJECTIVES

Students will identify the following techniques used in Koko.

Call and response, in which a soloist plays or sings a phrase and a group of singers or players answers.

Riff, a short phrase repeated over changing harmonies.

Use of the plunger mute to produce the "wah-wah" or "jungle" sound for which Ellington's band was famous.

Use of low tones in the reed section.

Use of the double bass as a solo instrument.

MATERIALS

Recording of Koko from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, CD, 1987 (CBS RC 033 P5T-19477), or any recording available

Audio playback equipment

Keyboard

Chalkboard

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

Students have been taught the elements of music: melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, and timbre.

Students can identify instruments of the band and orchestra by sight and sound.

PROCEDURE

Give students the following historical background:

African slaves brought with them to the New World a way of making music wherein rhythm was the dominant element. The complex incorporation of call-and-response patterns, syncopated off-the-beat accents, and improvisations are characteristics of West African music heard in the early spirituals, work songs, and secular songs of slaves in this country. These characteristics, along with more sophisticated techniques, were incorporated later into ragtime, blues, and jazz to create a new American music that influenced the world.

Duke Ellington, drawing on these traditions, dedicated his composition Koko to the memory of the Congo Square drum ceremonies in New Orleans. From around 1786, African American slaves would assemble in a large area called Place Congo on Sundays and church holy days to sing, dance, and play instruments. The dancing was done in large circles, or "rings," accompanied by instruments such as drums made from logs, banjos made from gourds, and rattles made from animal jawbones. By about midafternoon, the dancing would become more and more frenzied. As the day wore on, some participants would fall from exhaustion, and others would take their places. Finally, at about 9:00 p.m., a gun would sound, signaling the end of the revelry.¹ This tradition lasted in New Orleans until about 1835.² "Ring dancing" is closely related to dance forms indigenous to West Africa, where most of the slaves in the United States originated.

Introduce students to riffs.

Play the rhythm pattern (shown below) of the riff theme from Koko on the keyboard. This rhythm pattern is played by the baritone saxophone in the introduction to Koko and serves as a call:

Play the riff theme (shown below) on the keyboard. This serves as the main call in Koko and is the riff that students should listen for in the body of the composition. This call is played by a soloist and answered by the ensemble, or vice versa:

Introduce students to call and response. Sing your name in an easy pattern and ask students to sing their names back to you. Then have individual students try singing their names, nicknames, or imagined names, using your melody or ones they make up. Clap a rhythmic pattern and have students clap the same pattern back to you, or have them clap a different one. Invite individuals to give a "call" while the class responds.

Play Koko and have students raise hands or mark on a piece of paper each time they hear the riff rhythm pattern or the riff theme. Ask: "Did you hear the drums of Place Congo? Where? Could you feel the music building in intensity, like the dancing at the Place Congo? Could you dance to Koko? Why or why not? What else did you hear?"

Let students listen to Koko again to confirm their answers. Encourage them to listen closely for variations in the riff theme, tone colors, and dynamics. Ask them to write down their observations.

For subsequent listenings, write the following (in full or abbreviated form) on the board as a listening guide for the students:

Introduction: Harry Carney's baritone saxophone plays a call-the-riff rhythm pattern. Three trombones respond in parallel thirds.

A. Juan Tirol's valve trombone plays the riff theme. The saxophones respond, and Ellington accents at the piano.

B. The band plays the riff theme. "Tricky" Sam Nanton responds with a plunger mute on his trombone to make the "wah-wah" sound unique to the Ellington band.

C. The saxophones play a slight variation in the riff theme, and Ellington responds with a piano solo.

C1. The trumpets play the riff theme, and the saxophones respond.

D. Jimmy Blanton improvises a solo on the double bass (a solo performance on this instrument was new at that time). The ensemble responds with a variation in the riff theme with rising intensity.

A2. The saxophones play the riff theme in unison, and the ensemble adds texture and dense harmonies as the intensity rises.

Finale: The introduction is repeated with the bass clarinet and drums sounding out the riff rhythm pattern.

Coda: This four-measure ending draws the composition to a close.

NOTES

Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997).

Deana J. Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977).

This sample lesson is excerpted from the article "Duke Ellington, The Man and His Music," by Luvenia George, in the May 1999 issue of Music Educators Journal.


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