That Eric Alper

 Smithsonian Folkways has announced the launch of the Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathways, an innovative new teaching tool designed to illuminate lesser-known corners of music history using the sounds and resources available in the label’s iconic catalog. The Music Pathways are a free resource available to educators, parents, and the general public, contiguous with Folkways’ mission of making the sounds of the world broadly accessible and increasing understanding among people and cultures. Two Pathways are available now: Estoy Aqui: Music of the Chicano Movement and Cajun and Zydeco Music: Flavors of Southwest Louisiana, with a third covering women in the blues forthcoming. The Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathways offer step-by-step guides through both the music and the history of the people who made it, offering moments for listening, reflection, hands-on activities, and storytelling for teachers and learners in all subjects.

The Music Pathways are a first-of-their-kind lesson-plan resource that meets national academic standards in a variety of subjects, such as Common Core, National Standards for Music Education, and more. The Pathways present music within many contexts, allowing students to discover how music connects to historical moments and why it sounds as it does. Lesson plans are situated like nesting dolls inside larger inquiries of study, allowing students, educators, and parents to move between different topics within each Pathway easily and logically. Music Pathways are currently available for students in grades 6-8, with Pathways for additional age groups to be launched.

Extensive resources from across the Smithsonian are utilized throughout the Music Pathways. Audio, liner notes, and artwork that comprise many releases on Smithsonian Folkways (and other collections, such as Arhoolie Records) are positioned adjacent to photographs, video, scholarship, and other media from nearly every museum and unit of the Institution. Learners are able to see, hear, and directly engage with primary resources that illustrate the vibrancy of the cultures and relevance of the histories being explored. These comprehensive, ready-made resources are able to be immediately implemented in classroom and hybrid learning environments, providing educators with vetted, engaging deep dives that cover multiple perspectives on the histories being uncovered. Each Music Pathway, in its entirety, contains 12-18 hours of rich, thematic, multidisciplinary content that is customizable based on the needs of individual teachers and students in a variety of learning contexts. Music, history, and other humanities teachers alike will find lesson plans that will make for easy curricular integration and standards fulfillment.

While the Music Pathways were designed with national education standards in mind, they are also perfect for independent and lifelong learners, as well as anyone interested in learning more about the histories behind their favorite LPs released by Smithsonian Folkways. They are excellent supplemental resources for parents who wish to introduce their children to music and culture from around the world.

As a leader in resources for music educators for over 30 years, Smithsonian Folkways now charts a new direction for educational projects at the label. In 2024, Folkways received an internal grant through the Smithsonian’s Together We Thrive initiative to support an in-house curriculum specialist overseeing educational offerings like the Music Pathways. “We are thrilled that Dr. Jennifer Mellizo, a music educator and respected researcher with over 22 years of teaching experience in K-12 classrooms, joins us as our first full-time educator at the label,” said Folkways Director and Curator Maureen Loughran. “The Smithsonian’s commitment to education at Folkways encourages us to further develop deep contextual resources, like Music Pathways, and explore new projects dedicated to teachers and students from all parts of the world.” Under Mellizo’s supervision, a third Music Pathway on women and the blues will be released later in 2025.

Estoy Aquí: Music of the Chicano Movement: 

Estoy Aquí: Music of the Chicano Movement explores Smithsonian Folkways Recordings’ large collection of songs and genres that emerged as symbols of cultural identity and pride during the Chicano movement of the 1960s-1970s. During this important time in American history, people in Mexican American and ally communities bravely advocated for equal rights and called for social change. As activists and leaders like César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Reies López Tijerina, and Corky Gonzales fought for fair wages, safe working conditions, land rights, educational opportunities, and political representation, musicians documented history as it was happening––they expressed struggles, energized political messages, and lifted the spirits of strikers, marchers, and protestors.

This Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathway celebrates the Chicano/a community’s important contributions to the American story. As you immerse yourself in the sounds of mariachi, dance to the infectious beat of conjunto, engage with the complex rhythms of son jarocho, and sing protest songs that became anthems during the Chicano movement, you will gain a deeper understanding of how history can shape both the present and the future.

Cajun and Zydeco Music: Flavors of Southwest Louisiana: 

Through displacement and hardship, both Cajuns (descendants of what is today known as Nova Scotia) and Creoles (people from a combination of Caribbean, West African, Native American, Spanish, and Portuguese descent) ended up making their homes along the banks of the Mississippi River in a place called “Acadiana.” Their exchange of French-language music and diverse cultural traditions created what we now think of as “Cajun” and “zydeco” music. A true musical melting pot, the unique sounds and styles of Cajun and zydeco continue to influence each other and the vibrant music culture of southwest Louisiana. When people with different ancestries combine similar instrumentation, lyrical themes, language, and rhythms into one pot, the result is a true musical gumbo!

Drawing heavily from seminal audio recordings in the Arhoolie Records collection, which Smithsonian Folkways acquired in 2016, Cajun and Zydeco Music: Flavors of Southwest Louisiana explores the diverse roots and stylistic developments of these music genres and celebrates the “laissez les bons temps rouler”  (let the good times roll) ethos that is alive and well in this region today.

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the “National Museum of Sound,” makes available close to 60,000 tracks in physical and digital format as the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian, with a reach of 80 million people per year. A division of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the non-profit label is dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among people through the documentation, preservation, production and dissemination of sound. Its mission is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document “people’s music” from around the world. For more information about Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, visit folkways.si.edu.