New Orleans: The jazz funeral

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (New Orleans jazz mini-series, episode 212) is a short documentary about the jazz funeral, a New Orleans tradition. It opens on a funeral where a brass band walks in front of the family and friends, playing very slow, sad music, and explains that a brass band has trumpets, trombones, a tuba and drums and often plays in the street. On the way to the cemetery, the band plays hymns, slow religious songs, and the music helps people to share their sadness. Then the episode looks closer at the way back: after the goodbye at the cemetery, the band plays fast, happy music, like When the Saints Go Marching In, and people dance in the street, because for many families a funeral is also a celebration of the person's life. The family and the band are the first line; the people who join in behind them, dancing, waving handkerchiefs and carrying colourful umbrellas, are the second line, and anyone can join. The tradition began in the 1800s: many Black workers could not pay for a funeral on their own, so they started clubs, and every member paid a little money each month so that the club could pay for the funeral and the band. Today these clubs also organise second line parades on Sundays, with no funeral at all.

The narration is in the present simple, with passives (is called a jazz funeral, are called the second line) and the past simple for the history (The tradition began in the 1800s, they started clubs); no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (hymn, brass band, first line). The closing question (Why do you think the music changes on the way back?) opens a short class discussion about how people remember someone they have lost.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three photos (a brass band in dark uniforms walking down a street, clarinets, a trumpet and a tuba walking slowly among the tombs, the band's tubas and the colourful umbrellas of the second line on the way back), the key words and the 10 questions. The folder also holds a one-page pupil sheet with the 10 questions and a teacher sheet with the answer key. Learners should know the present simple and the past simple of common verbs. The script explains its new words as it goes (brass band, jazz funeral, hymn, first line, second line). The subject is a funeral, told as a celebration of life; check that no pupil is going through a recent loss before you play it.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-languages-and-communication ("Langages") and c4-encountering-others ("Rencontres avec d'autres cultures"), Cycle 4 (3e). The episode targets CEFR level B1-.