Repertoire Project Piece 1: Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder

I think that a group of young men would love this piece because it brings up an important part of American history, includes vivid imagery, and it calls for unique percussion and nontraditional choral sound. This piece would be appropriate for a big TTBB high school choir, or maybe even all of the tenors and basses in a middle school and high school program with the middle school choirs taking their own lines. The range is a bit low for the tenors at the beginning of the piece, but the melody could be turned into a bass section feature or even a solo. The low basses have a very low part, but it could be taken up the octave. The texture gets thicker as the piece goes on, offering more specific ranges that could be suited better for singers. Many musical ideas can be taught, such as tuning open chords, finding an appropriate vocal tone for this style of music as well as stylistic nuances, singing a unison line, working toward an overall crescendo-shape to the piece, and function of each part in the thicker textures. The text is filled with imagery as aforementioned, and also can start a discussion about the chain gang spirituals.