About Songs of the Silk Road

Songs of the Silk Road helps African American children learn world history through the song forms, instruments, folktales and inventions that traveled along the historic, transcontinental Silk Road. Special emphasis is placed on the often overlooked African involvement in and contributions to the Silk Road from countries like Egypt, the Mali Empire, the Ethiopian Kingdom of Aksum and Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe. Students learn instrument traditions, folk tales and hands on crafts from these African countries, as well as from China, India, Iraq, Iran and Israel. In addition to song learning and instrumental music, students engage in activities like paper making, indigo fabric arts, rug weaving and much more. The Songs of the Silk Road Curriculum builds in African American students a rich historical foundation that helps them to understand later events like the transatlantic European slave trade, slave castles that spread along the coast of West Africa, the gold standard and the plantation economies established in the “New World,” that directly involved and depended the enslavement and ingenuity of Africans.
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This curriculum will be available for the 2022-2023 school year.
Each Ethnomusicology in Action Curriculum includes detailed teacher’s guides, step by step lesson plans, sheet music, printed and online children’s books with narration, online videos, downloadable music recordings, accompaniment tracks for performances and scholarly background readings for educators.