When students walk into their classes, they walk into parts of their teachers’ minds. It is rare to see a classroom at Coppell High School that is not customized to its teacher’s interests.
Such is the classroom of English teacher Sean Smith, adorned with all things Americana: a genre of media, more popularly music, that represents the history, culture and identity of the United States, often with a sense of nostalgia.
Not just his classroom, but Smith himself expresses his love for this genre of music, one of the ways being introducing the Literature and Music class to CHS.
“The thing about Americana is that it all revolves around the poetry that is involved in the song, and you don’t have to be a super talented musician. If you can paint a picture with your words, you can definitely embody Americana, even if it’s not perfect,” Smith said.
While the name of the genre portrays American themes, possibly in an all-positive manner, Smith emphasized that Americana should not be confused with blind patriotism, but rather appreciated for its honesty about American life.
“If it is going to be cultural involving America, then we are also going to talk about the good,” Smith said. “There are some beautiful, wonderful things about this country, but then it is also going to talk about the bad and there are plenty of things that we wish we could undo or things that we are working towards getting better at. And so that is the honesty about it, that is the honesty of Americana.”
The roots of Americana are mostly studied by those who enjoy it most. In this case, Smith described Americana as a living musical tradition, with deep roots that connect many artists.
“When I was in eighth grade, I really started taking a deep dive into the music of the 60s, and that is when I discovered Bob Dylan, and I fell in love with his music, especially his early works, and from Dylan would go into all sorts of things,” Smith said.
Smith said Americana goes beyond a specific category, and how it is not confined to one.
“With Americana you branch into country with Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson and then into folk with Neil Young, and they take each kind of melody and then blend that together and that is what I would call Americana,” Smith said.
Around CHS, Smith can usually be seen engaging and catching up with people around him and trying to help his students who move from different places feel like this new place can absolutely be their home, and many of his students also found belonging connecting them to Smith with music.
“He’s always engaging with us and helping us communicate with people and talking to us about music, he’s passionate about it and some of the work we had last year in his class also had to do with the poetry in music” senior Rohma Faisal said. “He even sang us a song about the Great Gatsby that he wrote himself and played the guitar with it, and the lyrics were poetic” Faisal said.
For Smith, Americana is about connection and honesty.
“Quit focusing on the voice, focus on what they have to say,” Smith said.
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