Students in Frau Concannon’s German 2 class had the opportunity to participate in a songwriting workshop with Antje Duvekot recently. The class worked with the singer-songwriter over Zoom during their first meeting on June 2.
Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Duvekot is a writer, vocalist, and guitarist based in Somerville, Massachusetts. She holds three top songwriting awards, including the Kerrville New Folk Competition’s Best New Folk Award, Boston Music Award for Outstanding Folk Act, and Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
The students worked in groups to create lyrics for a song about food, their current unit in German 2. They come up with some expressive metaphors such as “Erdbeeren sind rot wie ein Feuerwehrauto” (“Strawberries are the color of fire trucks”) and “Eis ist wie ein Regentag” (“Ice cream is like a rainy day”) which Duvekot complimented as imaginative and original. Principal Heather McKillop visited the class to engage with students as they worked on creating lyrics in a foreign language.
Three verses of the new song were nearly complete at the end of their first meeting. The second session on June 8 will finalize the song that Duvekot will record in her studio.
The activity was sponsored by the The Goethe Institut of Boston which serves as the German Culture Center for New England. Its mission is to engage in the fields of cultural education related to German-speaking countries.
