Song of the Month: Just From the Kitchen

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I’m back this week with this month’s Song of the Month! This month’s song is “Just From the Kitchen” a singing game from the Georgia Sea Islands.

For my first semester of grad school, one of the resources we were required to get was “Step It Down: Games, Plays, Songs & Stories from the Afro-American Heritage” by Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes. This resource is still one of my favorites and I find that I come back to it again and again!

Throughout both the book and the separate audio album, “Put Your Hand On Your Hip and Let Your Backbone Slip,” Bessie Jones shares various stories and information to give context to the songs and the culture. The book also includes song notations.

It’s important to be picky about the resources you utilize in your music classroom so that you can be sure you are only using high quality resources. Here are some things to look for when evaluating a resource for song material:

While “Step It Down” is a book and does not include recordings within it, the book used in conjunction with Bessie Jones’ audio recording, “Put Your Hand On Your Hip and Let Your Backbone Slip” is a perfect way to not only learn about the context of the songs, but to also learn how the songs should actually sound.

Remember, music is aural! We can’t learn songs from reading notation in a book. We must engage with the actual sound so that we can truly understand the spirit of the music.

In this case especially, there is just no way to notate the way Bessie Jones sings! You have to listen to her voice to feel her spirit and understand the way the music is to be sung.

Bessie Jones

Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Jones lived from 1902 to 1984 primarily in Georgia and in the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina. Coming from a musical family, she learned many songs from her parents, and especially her grandfather who was enslaved and taught Bessie about slavery and the “old ways.”

Bessie Jones was passionate about sharing music with people, especially children, and to preserve African-American history through music and dance.

Bessie Jones moved to her husband’s home on St. Simons Island where she joined the Georgia Sea Island Singers who were dedicated to the preservation of their unique Gullah culture. The group travelled extensively and were also recorded numerous times.

As the Sea Islands were relatively isolated and there were few white residents, the Black community was able to retain many of their African customs which we still see today that were brought to the area by the enslaved Africans who were forced to work on the plantations there. Their language, Gullah, is a Creole language with African roots and many features of African music appear in the music from the Sea Islands such as syncopated clapping, polyrhythms, and call and response.

I encourage you to learn more about The Sea Islands, Bessie Jones, the Georgia Sea Island Singers, and the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor!

Just From the Kitchen: A Children’s Singing Game

“Just From the Kitchen” is a children’s singing game performed with the children standing in a circle. In “Step It Down,” Bessie Jones refers to these kinds of games performed in a circle, as “ring plays.”

To play, the children stand in a circle, with a leader standing as a part of the circle. The leader calls out the name of a different child in each verse, and that child then skips across the circle with their arms outstretched as if they are flying to another open spot in the circle:

Leader: Just from the kitchen

Group: Shoo lie loo

Leader: With a hand full of biscuits

Group: Shoo lie loo

Leader: Oh (Miss Mary)

Group: Shoo lie loo

Leader: Fly away over yonder

Group: Shoo lie loo

Teaching Ideas for “Just From the Kitchen”

“Just From the Kitchen” is such a fun game to play with younger students! Singing games are great to encourage fun, community building, and cooperation skills alongside musicianship. Additionally, once the children know the song well, you can have them take turns as the leader to sing the lead part so there’s opportunities for solo singing here as well.

This song is fantastic for developing beginning part work skills. This song is a call and response, and especially great for young singers who are ready for a challenge.

In this song, while the text of the response is always the same “shoo lie loo,” the third time it is sung, the melody is actually different from the others! This gives an opportunity to discuss “melody” and “pitch.” Additionally, there are only three pitches in the responses (do, re, mi), so if your students are ready to derive the melody, they could do that as well.

And remember: Culturally Responsive Music classrooms utilize a robust and multifaceted approach to teaching music that moves beyond just facts and skills. It’s not good enough to just learn the singing game and derive the melody, remember to also bring in the full story of this piece when teaching this to your students:

• Learning about Bessie Jones
• Learning about the Sea Islands – where they are located on a map, historical information, current events
• Learn about the Gullah people – their history and current events (including slavery and issues surrounding land ownership)
• Learning about common shared characteristics between Gullah music and music from Africa (and why!)
• And more!

I also want to point out that an important part of sharing about music from Gullah culture is also providing context which means that we must talk about slavery if we’re going to share this music. I know this is an uncomfortable topic to broach for many music educators, but the reality is that to leave slavery out when teaching about Gullah music, we are leaving out a huge part of context for how the Gullah culture developed in the first place.

I encourage you to consider what is age appropriate for your students and to share the facts as you share the full picture of the music. Remember music=culture=people; we can’t divorce the music from the people from which it comes.

What other ideas do you have for “Just From the Kitchen” in your music classroom?

I would love to hear what other ideas you have for how you could teach “Just From the Kitchen” in your music classroom!

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Until next time,

Ashley

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