For a literature class i need a song that somehow relates to american literature. any ideas?!???!?

Question

It's for extra credit and i could REALLY use the points. thankyou thankyou thankyou for helping.

Answer 1

The "Star Spangled Banner" the U.S.' unofficial National Anthem was actually a poem (piece of literature) before it became a song.

On another note (sorry for the pun) many of Edgar Allan Poe's works were borrowed from for use in music by anyone from classical composers Claude Debussey and Sergei Rachmaninoff to Iron Maiden and Britney Spears.

Answer 2

Theres an album by Sting called "...Nothing Like the Sun"

there are a handful of songs on it that have poetry/literature...

Its called "Sister Moon"

Shakespeare ..."..My mistress' eyes/ are nothing like the sun
And a hunger for her/ explains everything I've done
To howl at the moon/the whole night thru

And I really don't care if I do...
I'd go out of my mind but for you...

On the same album is a song called "Rock Steady"

which is a song about Noah's Ark:

"saw an ad in the newspaper/ that caught my eye
said to my baby this sounds like a ticket for you and i..

it said 'volunteers wanted for a very special trip...to commune with
Mother Nature on a big wooden ship'...

Took a taxi to the river/ in case any places were free
there was an old guy with a beard and every kind of
creature as far as the eye could see.. ..

This old guy was the boss he said ' I won't tell you no lie..
but there is more to this journey than is apparent to the eye..'

He said he heard God's message on the radio/
it was gonna rain FOREVER
and he told him to go

"I'll protect you all don't worry / I'll be a Father to you all
but take two of every animal, no matter how small"

Look at all the other Sting albums...he was an English Teacher...so a lot of his songs are inspired that way

Answer 3

WOW! Did you catch me at a good time? I have just the song for you.

"This Land is Your Land" by: Woody Guthrie (I don't know if you have ever heard of Woody Guthrie, if not, he is considered one of the greatest American Poets ever)

Many people don't know this, but Woody Guthrie wrote this song as an angry song in response to Irving Berlin's song "God Bless America," which was an angry war time song. Actually, "This Land is Your Land," was originally titled, "God Blessed America for Me." "This Land is Your Land" was proposed to be the United States national anthem. However, as you well know, "The Star-Spangled Banner won out.

Below, I have listed the lyrics for you. However, before you skip to the lyrics, I want you to know that I am just not blowing smoke. I have 2 bachelor degrees and a master's degree in business administration. If you really need the extra credit points, take my direction; add to it; and cash in on your points.

There is no single force that is more influential on American literature than the political and socio-economic environment at the time in which the literature was created. Thus, this song relates to American literature just as well as any song ever written.

If your instructor disagrees, he or she is not educated well enough to instruct your class, and I would be more than happy to debate him or her.



THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie



As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Good Luck! Holla if you need me!

Answer 4

Well, you could say The Clash's "Spanish Bombs" relates to the Spanish Civil War, which is the focus of the American writer Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls."

Answer 5

How about For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica? They took the title of the song from Ernest Hemingway's famous novel.

"The song is about a section of the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, where five republican soldiers of the Spanish Civil War attempt to escape the fascists with their stolen horses and are killed by enemy aircraft on a hill on which they were surrounded." -from Wikipedia

Answer 6

Would a song with the title "renaissance" have anything to do with american literature? The title--not really the lyrics. Its by Mat Kearney

Answer 7

Pink Floyd "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2"

Answer 8

charles Ives--Concord sonata. these is an instrumental piece and its movements are all based on famous american writers. its a tough piece of music to listen to tho--its an aquired taste. but it definitely links music to american literature. listen to it and see what you think.

Answer 9

Native American
Literature: song:

Appreciating songs as songs when they come to us as printed words on a page is a perilous undertaking. Before getting too much involved with any of the print collections listed here, it would be a good idea to seek out some of the fine sound recordings of American Indian song widely available. Indian House Records, P. 0. Box 462, Taos, New Mexico 87571; Folkways Records, 43 West 61st Street, New York, New York 10023; and Canyon Records, 4143 North Sixteenth Street, Phoenix, Arizona 85016 all publish catalogues with rich native American listings. The Archive of Folk Song, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 specializes in early historic recordings. They are in the midst of a project designed to prepare materials from their archives so that they may be used by Indian people. Color videotapes of native American songs being performed and discussed by performers in their home communities are available from the Division of Media and Instructional Services, University of Arizona, Tucson. Among the programs available are "By This Song I Walk: Navajo Songs," "Seyewailo: The Flower World: Yaqui Deer Songs," and "Songs of My Hunter Heart: Laguna Songs and Poems."



Most collections of "American Indian poetry," that is, the words of American Indian songs, derive from the work of ethnologists and folklorists published in inaccessible journals and series. Serious students should look at some of these collections. The work of Frances Densmore is a good place to begin. Papago Music, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 90 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1929) is one of nearly two dozen such collections Ms. Densmore gathered from various tribes. Washington Matthews' The Night Chant (New York: The American Museum of Natural History, 1902) gives an authoritative account of the complex song cycles of the Navajo Night Chant. Matthews' translations have been used in countless literary works in recent years, most notably in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968). A new edition of the Night Chant songs with helpful annotation is given in John Bierhorst's Four Masterworks of American Indian Literature (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974). Herbert J. Spinden's Songs of the Tewa (New York: Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts, 1933) is a moving collection of song texts with a helpful interpretive essay. Ruth Underhill's Singing for Power: the Song Magic of the Papago Indians of Southern Arizona (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1938) contains poetic translations along with enough commentary to give readers a real appreciation of the place of songs and song making in Papago life.

Out of the many anthologies of American Indian song/poems two stand out. Natalie Burlin Curtis' The Indians' Book (1907; rpt. New York: Dover, 1968) contains songs Curtis recorded herself from tribes throughout the country. It is unique among other anthologies for the inclusion of musical notation for each song. A. Grove Day's The Sky Clears: Poetry of the American Indians (1951; rpt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964) includes both song texts and commentary on them organized by area: Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, and so on. The highly imaginative "workings" of New York poet Jerome Rothenberg found in his Shaking the Pumpkin and elsewhere are billed as "traditional poetry of the Indian North Americas." They are emphatically not; and, if it is American Indian expression readers seek, they should avoid Rothenberg and his many imitators. See William Bevis' evaluation of Rothenberg and other poet/"translators" in "American Indian Verse Translations," College English, 35 (1974), pp. 693-703. Another good evaluation of translations of song/poems is Dell Hymes' "Some North Pacific Coast Poems: a Problem in Anthropological Philology," American Anthropologist, 67 (1965), pp. 316-341, an essay of wider interest than its title suggests, Paula Gunn Allen's essay "The Sacred Hoop" in A. Chapman's Literature of the American Indians (New York: New American Library, 1975), pp. 111-135, provides very useful perspectives for readers new to native American literature.