Sonia Lau
Lyrics:
One day when the glory comes
It will be ours, it will be ours
Oh one day when the war is won
We will be sure, we will be sure
Oh glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)
Hands to the Heavens, no man, no weapon
Formed against, yes glory is destined
Every day women and men become legends
Sins that go against our skin become blessings
The movement is a rhythm to us
Freedom is like religion to us
Justice is juxtapositionin’ us
Justice for all just ain’t specific enough
One son died, his spirit is revisitin’ us
Truant livin’ livin’ in us, resistance is us
That’s why Rosa sat on the bus
That’s why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up
When it go down we woman and man up
They say, “Stay down”, and we stand up
Shots, we on the ground, the camera panned up
King pointed to the mountain top and we ran up
One day when the glory comes
It will be ours, it will be ours
Oh one day when the war is won
We will be sure, we will be sure
Oh glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)
Now the war is not over, victory isn’t won
And we’ll fight on to the finish, then when it’s all done
We’ll cry glory, oh glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)
We’ll cry glory, oh glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)
Selma’s now for every man, woman and child
Even Jesus got his crown in front of a crowd
They marched with the torch, we gon’ run with it now
Never look back, we done gone hundreds of miles
From dark roads he rose, to become a hero
Facin’ the league of justice, his power was the people
Enemy is lethal, a king became regal
Saw the face of Jim Crow under a bald eagle
The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful
We sing, our music is the cuts that we bleed through
Somewhere in the dream we had an epiphany
Now we right the wrongs in history
No one can win the war individually
It takes the wisdom of the elders and young people’s energy
Welcome to the story we call victory
The comin’ of the Lord, my eyes have seen the glory
One day when the glory comes
It will be ours, it will be ours
Oh one day when the war is won
We will be sure, we will be sure
Oh glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)
Oh glory (Glory, glory)
Hey (Glory, glory)
When the war is won, when it’s all said and done
We’ll cry glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)
Memo:
In order to use this piece of music to teach a class, there are several aspects that we can take into account. It is easy to take teaching music into a format of using it to teach English and a form of art for students to analyze. However, we can use hip hop as a resource to teach about social studies specifically being able to use hip hop as real life accounts that people include their experiences. The main goal of using this song to teach is to show students real historical events, people’s counterstories, and accurate representations of historical events rather than what we typically get in textbooks.
In order to connect it to social studies, a key part of this song choice are the lyrics and the part that ‘Glory’ has a huge significance is because that song is a song used in a movie called Selma which is a film about the Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches in 1965. The main person who helped get this march all together was done by James Bevel. The March was led by Martin Luther King Jr, John Lewis, and Hosea Williams. Beyond understanding the historical significance of the song and The March, I would task the students with going over lyrics together as a while and pick out what they feel is key or important in the song. Not only is the March the main historical key that inspired the song, but other historical events and important people such as Rosa Parks and Jim Crow as other examples.
As Stovall said “Instead of proposing a script for effective teaching, the following tenets provide the necessary space for facilitators and students to build a productive environment centered”, having several tenets that can be used to teach rather than just a singular script can use different methods to teach students similar concepts in more relevant ways.Stovall’s article “Critical Race Theory, Praxis, and the Creation of Productive Space” speaks about different methods of educating students, specifically one that sticks out are their counterstories. Although hip hop and lyrics aren’t as typical as regular stories, hip hop and songs are a form of counterstories as they come from people’s experiences which is where they get their lyrics from. The key tenet that this class assignment links to is “b) Students apprenticed in a learning community rather than taught in an isolated and unrelated way and “(e) Teachers and students engage in a collective struggle against the status quo.”.
Another author that we analyzed in class was James A. Banks’s “Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform”, Banks discusses how within the United States that there is a big range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. The key as to why using lyrics is a more positive way of expressing people’s counterstories. Bank says “A mainstream-centric curriculum also denies mainstream U.S. students the opportunity to view their culture from the perspectives of other cultures and groups.” It allows us to understand that we need a bigger variation in curriculum and a wider diversity and representation for more students to learn about themselves.
Works Cited
James A. Banks & Cherry McGee Banks. (n.d.). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Selma to montgomery: 50 years later. (n.d.). The White House. Retrieved 16 March 2023, from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/324821
Stovall, D. (2006). We can relate: Hip-hop culture, critical pedagogy, and the secondary classroom. Urban Education, 41(6), 585–602. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085906292513