ESOL workshop with Jennifer Cruz MArulanda – week 5

Last Saturday, April 30th, our class met at the Museum. It was a very exciting day because our students were introduced to the Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk exhibition. As we entered, our students were immediately greeted by a Ramones’ classic tune being played in the background, this certainly created an upbeat ambiance. One of our students noticed the Ramones were natives of Forest Hills, Queens. This was a great way to start our multilingual exploration of many key objects—representing the Ramones—which were drawn from over fifty private and public collections around the world.  First and foremost our students were curious to know where the Ramones’ Spanish-sounding names originated from! This question incited a great discussion about inspiration; the students learned the Ramones were inspired by Paul McCartney’s alias, Paul Ramon, during his Silver Beetles days. In general, the Beatles were a great source of inspiration for the four Ramones and this really encouraged them to adopt McCartney’s former pseudonym. Towards the end down Punk Rock’s memory lane it had become palpable to the class that the Ramones were not only the founding fathers of Punk but had also greatly influenced the visual culture of their time—they were contributors to graphic art, fine art, fashion, caricatures and films. Additionally, we learned about the Ramones’ art director, graphic designer Arturo Vega, a Mexican immigrant from Chihuahua who migrated to New York City at the age of 23. He is the credited with bringing the group great commercial success.

During our class time we discussed how the Ramones were regarded at rebels because they did not conform to the typical trends most rock bands followed at the time. Their music was minimalist and most of their songs were creative outlets—product of certain frustrations. This led us to study the lyrics of “I wanna be sedated”, one of their most popular hit songs. Most importantly, this song was composed out of dissatisfaction during their first trip across the pond—since there was nothing for them to explore outside their hotel room. The song allowed us to learn new vocabulary while also navigating idiosyncratic American expressions like “I wanna” vs. “I want to”. To culminate our class we reviewed all the exhibits we have studied during the past weeks; then our students were asked to name some of the art techniques used for these to be realized. Our final questions was: “What is more important for an artist to have: technique or inspiration?” This opened up an interesting discussion in which many said: “Without inspiration you have nothing”, while others said: “You can have great ideas but they are meaningless unless you know how to execute them”. Therefore, our final group conclusion is that technique and inspiration complement each other—they were born to be intertwined.

IMG_5081 IMG_5082 IMG_5083 IMG_5085 IMG_5086 IMG_5087 IMG_5088 IMG_5089 IMG_5090 IMG_5091 IMG_5092 IMG_5093 IMG_5094 IMG_5095 IMG_5096 IMG_5097 IMG_5098

Leave a Reply