Sacred Spirit Music Analysis

The next stimulus we used was a piece of music from the CD Sacred Spirit. Our class split into two groups: the Sioux people in the village and the American Soldiers in their barracks. The Sioux people were happy and joyful as the previous evening they had been celebrating killing the buffalo, whilst the soldiers were preparing to massacre them. Each of us had our own personality, for example I was a reluctant devout Christian soldier, Sam was eager to kill the Sioux, James was the Sioux chief and Molly B was a Sioux who was washing clothes. We devised this piece with the help of Mrs Allsopp.

The piece started with the soldiers in the barracks and a normal day in the Sioux village. Throughout the piece, we used slow motion (moving slower than

When we were in the barracks, we used various levels, such as kneeling, sitting and standing to capture the feel of what it was like in the barracks. We also used facial expressions to show our character; one person who was particularly good at this was Patrice, who played a Sioux picking fruit. She used her facial expressions to show she was enjoying the sun and the day, and later to show her fear. Laura also used facial expressions- she remained stony-faced to hide her nerves about the battle. After saluting, soldiers walked up onto one of the blocks and once again readied their guns. All of this was in slow motion. At that point, Molly B spotted us and began alerting the other Sioux, this time at normal speed. The soldiers ran towards them, pointing our guns, and then froze. At this part, we used levels, for example, Laura stood on the blocks whilst I bent my knees slightly, still remaining tall, and Sam knelt down. This made it seem more effective. One by one, we acted out the deaths of both the Sioux and the soldiers,

We decided to hot seat Owen, a soldier who had been writing to his fiancée, and ask him questions to extend our understanding of his feelings. We asked him things about how it felt to be away from his fiancée – horrible and he missed her very much – and why he decided to join the army – to continue his father’s legacy and make him proud. This helped us recognize his character’s feelings and motives better than we would have had we not hot seated him. We also used thought tracking to see what the characters were thinking at certain points. An example of this would be just before the soldiers were about to attack, we paused it and Miss asked us to say out loud what we believed our character would be thinking at that moment in time. My character had the Lord’s Prayer running though his head, as since he was a Christian who was very against murdering other humans, he would want God to help him through it; at the same time, Chloe’s character was terrified but knew that he had to do it. Additionally, after the battle, Laura’s character was wondering whether the battle was worth losing the life of one of the soldiers and another getting injured, whilst Molly D, the last remaining Sioux (excluding the baby) was wondering what would happen now as the rest of the Sioux were