Write what music journalists typically call a feature or profile, a reporter’s story that has a fresh angle on its subject. Focus on how an understanding of context (social, cultural, historical and/or canonical) helps to deepen our appreciation of an artist/band or a piece of music (a song, a single, an album or a concert, etc.

For your third formal writing assignment in this course, write what music journalists typically call a feature or profile, a reporter’s story that has a fresh angle on its subject. To do this, focus on how an understanding of context (social, cultural, historical and/or canonical) helps to deepen our appreciation of an artist/band or a piece of music (a song, a single, an album or a concert, etc.). The essay should revolve around your own angle on the subject (your own thoughts, ideas and connections) and at least two sources that offer specific, unique information that needs to be cited. The final draft should be edited for clarity and effectiveness.

This writing assignment will become an essential part of the focus of the second half of the class. On discussion boards, tie your research to our topics, and share what you learn as you work to develop class presentations for the last week of class. Those presentations may take a number of forms, one of which could be simply sharing the paper with the class.

Next to the music review (essentially what you did with your analysis paper), this is the most common form of music writing. Our library music section is filled with books focused on providing context to music, and the music magazine (now, more often than not, the music website) has revolved around profile features which fulfill the description in the first paragraph. We will be looking at many examples in class. This is the dominant form of information available at the TeachRock.org site as well, and you should feel free to use that site for sources, inspiration and ideas.