VENEZUELA

Lesson 5

Teaching Artist: Juan Manuel Trujillo, Hery Paz
Two puppets presenting the flag of Venezuela.

SUMMARY

This is the fifth lesson from the Alegría Musical Course. Students will visit Venezuela with puppets Pepe and Tito to learn about the traditions of joropo and Afro-Venezuelan music. Then students will perform a song using call and response.

OBJECTIVE

  • Summarize important information about the culture, history, and geography of Venezuela.

  • Identify connections between Venezuelan and African musical traditions.

  • Perform a song using call and response.

MATERIALS

EXPLORE

  1. Display Google Slides: Venezuela. Distribute the Alegría Musical: Latin American Stories Travel Diary. Allow students a moment to personalize the diary. Tell students they will use the diary as they travel through Latin America with puppets Pepe and Tito, drawing and recording important facts about another culture. 

  2. Show the All About Venezuela video. Ask students to remember key geographical and cultural elements discussed in the video. Ask: Where is the country located on a map? Is there a national sport? Does the Venezuelan Flag look similar to other flags of Latin American countries? How many strings are on the instrument called the cuatro? Does the cuatro look like another musical instrument you have seen before? What does the name of the instrument mean in languages other than English, like Spanish or Italian? 

  3. Allow time for students to draw and write in their diary, recalling information they learned from the video.

LEARN

  1. Introduce students to Afro-Venezuelan Music. Explain that Afro-Venezuelan music includes elements of both African and Latin American musical traditions. These two musical styles have been combined for nearly five hundred years, which creates a unique kind of Venezuelan music. While instruments such as the cuatro are descendents from a Latin American family of instruments, drums like the tambor de mina y curbata, tambor cumaco; quitiplás, and culoepuya are descendents from an African family of instruments. 

  2. Afro-Venezuelan Music (and many other kinds of Latin American music) often includes a musical technique called call and response. Explain that while students are most likely familiar with call and response as a teacher’s method to gain their attention (for example, “1, 2, 3, eyes on me,” “1, 2, eyes on you”), call and response is also very common in African music. One person or group will sing the call, and another person or group will sing the response. Tell students that they will learn to say the words to a song from Ghana, a country in Africa, that uses call and response.

  3. Using the Kye Kye Kule Lyrics, ask students to say each line of the lyrics by repeating after you. Note: “Kaka shilanga” is a rhyming derivative of “Kofi sa langa.” Teachers may consider substituting “Kaka shilanga” for “Lala shilanga” as the word association to “caca” in Spanish means “poop.” Show Kye Kye Kule performed by students and ask students to observe the call and response in action, and how the song is passed between the two groups on stage. 

  4. Once students show success with the lyrics and understand call and response, use the Kye Kye Kule Backing Track to perform the song as a class. Divide the class into two choruses or groups, and ask each chorus to take turns at performing either the call or the response.

  5. Listen to Afro-Venezuelan Music and encourage students to listen for the call and response effect in the music.

PERFORM+SHARE

  1. Create a one minute video performing “Kye Kye Kule.” Share the video at the S’Cool Sounds Padlet.

  2. Tell students to get their diary ready for the next lesson, which is a visit to Colombia.