Welp, it's another winning video from Minnesota band The Bazillions. Their latest effort with eg design is for "Water Cycle" off the band's latest effort, the fine album On the Bright Side. Appropriately enough for a song all about the movement of H! 2! O! throughout our atmosphere and geography, it uses watercolor images. It's lovely.
The Bazillions - "Water Cycle" [Vimeo]
Laurie Berkner, photo by Jayme Thornton
In my Intro to Kindie series, I've focused thus far on people who've had the opportunity to listen to thousands (if not tens of thousands) of kids music songs to try to select the twenty or so songs that would serve as a good introduction to kids music for the 21st century listener.
That's meant that my respondents thus far (and in the future) have not been musicians, but radio folks and others who've made it their job or hobby to listen to 250 or more albums per year.
But there are a handful of musicians I'm planning to feature here, musicians whose appreciation of the history and modern context of kids music rivals (or supersedes) that of folks like me.
Laurie Berkner's Favorite Classic Kids' Songs album cover
So I'm tickled pink to have kids music superstar Laurie Berkner be the first musician to offer her own list of twenty songs to introduce to the kids' music newbie. Berkner's on a roll at the momeny -- just this week, for example, Simon & Schuster announced that they'd be publishing three picture books in 2017 and 2018 -- but most importantly for the purposes of this particular exercise, her latest album, Laurie Berkner's Favorite Classic Kids' Songs, is set for release next week. It's a 2-CD, 57-track (!) set that features 51 traditional children's songs plus six "bonus" tracks of Berkner's own songs that could easily join those traditional songs.
I love all these lists, and Berkner's is no exception, with a wonderful introduction kicking things off.
For me, the songs that really represent an artist or a genre are the ones that move me. They might make my body move, move me to laughter or move me to tears, but they affect me deeply in some way. All of the songs that I've chosen as an introduction to kids' music have some element that I think is moving, as well as being representative of the ever-expanding world of kids' music. Some of these songs are for very young children, some are for kids already in school, some are more for the parents, but to me most of them have a lovely sense of something joyful or beautiful, and often it's from the child's perspective.
It goes without saying that there are now so many wonderful musicians making great music for families that it would have been impossible to put them all on this list. Instead I just tried to include a sampling of music more recently written along with music that has stood the test of time. "Sammy" by Hap Palmer is an exquisitely written song that made me cry as a kid, with a message that I still appreciate as an adult. "I am a Paleontologist" is only one amazing song of many by They Might Be Giants. I happen to think this one is genius in the way it combines content that is truly of interest to kids with a super catchy chorus and a sound that hints enough at crunchy guitar rock to tickle parents.
Brady Rymer's "Jump Up (It's a Good Day)" is a song that really moves me to jump and just makes me feel happy every time I hear it. I only included one song from a musical because I think that music is easier to discover without much research, but I think that many amazing kids' songs come from that genre (I could do an entire list made up of songs exclusively performed by Julie Andrews). I also couldn't help myself, but as a bonus 21st track, I included Paul Simon's "St. Judy's Comet" because even though he didn't put it on a kids' album, Simon wrote it for his own son. I sang it to my daughter for years, and I think it's one of those songs that takes on deep meaning only once you become a parent.
Here are my 20 (OK, 21) bits of kids' music pleasure, in no particular order. Enjoy!
"Jump Up (It's a Good Day)" - Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could
"Roller Coaster" - Kira Willey
"Pop Fly"- Justin Roberts
"Spoonful of Sugar" - from Mary Poppins
"I am a Paleontologist" - They Might Be Giants (with Danny Weinkauf)
"Family Time" - Ziggy Marley
"Daddy-O" - Frances England
"Sammy" - Hap Palmer
"Glad To Have A Friend Like You" - Free To Be You And Me/Marlo Thomas and Friends
"Go Down Emmanuel Road" - Dan Zanes
"Good Morning My Love" - Vered
"The Garden Song" - Arlo Guthrie
"Upside Down" - Jack Johnson
"John The Rabbit" - Elizabeth Mitchell
"All These Shapes" - The Pop-Ups
"Music Everywhere" - The Dirty Sock Funtime Band
"Fly Birdy Fly" - Choo Choo Soul
"Walking With Spring" - The Okee Dokee Brothers
"The Marvelous Toy" - Tom Paxton
"Suppertime" - The Verve Pipe
"St. Judy's Comet" - Paul Simon
Photo credit: Jayme Thornton
Mr. Steve, the Music Man
Mr. Steve, the Music Man
I have been a longtime fan of Steve Lee, the Nashville-by-way-of-Arkansas musician -- his 2006 album What Did You Today, Stephen Scott Lee? was an out-of-left-field day-in-the-life slice of occasional pop perfection whose shiny brilliance blinded me and completely overwhelmed whatever resistance I usually have to songs that have messages.
It's been a looooong time for the follow-up, but Steve Lee, who in the kids music world now bills himself as Mr. Steve, the Music Man, is ready. This Friday sees the official release of Earth Party!, the brand-new album from Lee, and I, for one, am very happy about that. I reviewed Earth Party earlier this year, and here's a selection of adjectives I used about the album that encourages greater consideration of environmental needs: "earth-friendly," "rousing," and "joyful." It's brief, but it shows every bit of the brilliance the 2006 album did.
So, I'm very happy to premiere "Trees Are the Hair of the Earth," a track that, as I noted in that review, "packs wordplay, a plea against deforestation, and a plaintive melody into less than 4 minutes of pop goodness." Lee is joined by Street Corner Symphony, Gabe Dixon, Jason Eskridge, and Alyssa Bonagura. Stream it below, and if you can't wait 'til the official release date, you can pick it up on iTunes here. Enjoy!
Jim Cosgrove and Tom Brantman from Mighty Mo Productions
Jim Cosgrove and Tom Brantman from Mighty Mo Productions
Jim Cosgrove is best-known in the kids music world as, well, Jim Cosgrove, but that's often written as Jim "Mr. Stinky Feet" Cosgrove. For more than 15 years, he's been making music for families in the Kansas City area and nationally. He's clearly a well-organized man, because not only does he make music, he also helped get the well-respected Jiggle Jam kids music festival off the ground, and occasionally writes for the hometown newspaper. (And he does all that while working a full-time job.)
Under the old adage, if you want something to get done, find a busy person, it's not terribly surprising to me that he's got another job under his belt, and that's as "Chief Groove Officer" (their description, not mine) for Mighty Mo Productions, a new record label focused on introducing kindie music -- quality, independently-produced music for kids and families -- and their artists to a broader audience. Their tagline? "Real People. Real Music." The first album from the label, the Smiles Ahead compilation, will be released October 16.
I chatted with Cosgrove and his label partner ("Corporate Guy") Tom Brantman by phone a couple weeks ago. I talked with them about the label's start, its initial efforts, and its goals for the future.
Zooglobble: What are your earliest music memories?
Tom Brantman: My grandfather and father were big band musicians, both drummers. I remember seeing Maynard Ferguson in concert with that big, high trumpet sound, with the cheeks out, and everybody dancing.
Jim Cosgrove: Yeah, my father as well. He was not a performing musician, but he sang all the time around the house... He'd sing "Mack the Knife" and the Mills Brothers. I also remember several albums of music by the Singing Nuns.
I'm not familiar with them...
Jim: There were several types, actually, all like that.
Sort of sounds like the Irish Tenors and their variations... So how did Mighty Mo Productions come about?
Jim: I've been beating the drum about doing something with kids music [more broadly than my music] for years, and eventually I pitched the idea of a label to Create Space, a local business incubator. So we're funded for the moment by Create Space.
Mighty Mo Productions logo
What's your goal with the label?
Jim: I've been a part of this community for about 17 years. Jeni, my wife -- we'd go to events like KindieFest and KindieCOMM and year after year we'd come out of the conferences asking, "what's next?" Everybody's working so hard, with their heads down. And there are folks like you, Kathy O'Connell, Mindy Thomas at Sirius/XM helping to get the word out to lift all boats. But we asked, "how do we cross-pollinate this music?" We didn't want stuff like Disney or Kidz Bop, music that focused on characters or regurgitated pop songs, but for independent artists there's no organizational fabric. When we talked to artists, everybody we talked to said, "we're in."
We started with a compilation [Smiles Ahead] with the theme of being happy or upbeat. We're introducing some new songs -- I was talking with Brian Vander Ark, and they ended up writing a new song. Chris Ballew [aka Casper Babypants], he's got a song not yet released. Catherine Hollyer -- a new kids music artist who goes by the name Katydid -- we said, how about we introduce you using this record.
Tom: For me, I was most interested in two things [in this scene]: 1) there is some amazingly awesome music for kids to find -- I have friends asking me for that [all the time], and 2) the acceptability of the artists. There's much more interaction with the artists. So we want to put families in front of the artists so they can enjoy the music together. I think that's what makes us different.
Jim: That's what that "Real People. Real Music." tagline is all about -- not about cartoons, not about music from film. We want families to get to know them as people, to find out, "Who are you?"
Smiles Ahead from Mighty Mo Productions album cover
What are the commonality of artists on the label?
Jim: We reached out to artists we had a relationship with. There is a lot of great music on both a large and small scale, so it was difficult to pick just 13 artists. We really liked some artists, but the song wasn't quite there [in terms of fit with the album theme] -- we wanted a variety of styles, but not a huge broad swipe.
Tom: For me, [the genre] was so huge that if you do everything, it's a little messy. We look at it as we're building a body of work.
You mean, don't judge the label after one album -- do so after ten?
Jim: Yes. We're going to release albums, but also promote touring festivals. We want to create a national scene by connecting markets, but this -- releasing albums -- seemed like a logical place to start...
And a little background on Tom -- he was a touring rock drummer before he became a corporate guy.
Tom: When I had hair [laughs].
Jim: He owned a label in his early twenties...
There have been a number of attempts to create family music labels -- what do you bring to the table?
Jim: Whereas a lot of projects become about the artist, we felt like a lot of them could have been more about the music. That's our premise -- we love this music and want to help all boats rise.
Tom: [We focus on] acceptability to families. We're also actively working on distribution and getting CDs in lots of places. We're not ignoring digital, we're working on touring, getting [artists] in more markets. Video... we have plans working on all those parts.
Jim: The eagerness of and welcoming by artists is encouraging.
What's next?
Jim: We have another compilation coming out in January. It'll be a love-themed album, some of the same artists [as on Smiles Ahead], some new. We're always looking for new music. We're also working on retail placements -- we'll have a 30-market test with Hallmark Gold Crown stores.
Tom: We're really pursuing festivals in 2016. And we're working on doing on our own app.
I've always appreciated the low-key offbeat humor of New York duo Ratboy Jr. -- Timmy Sutton and Matty Senzatimore sing songs that would remind you of Roald Dahl or Shel Silverstein if they were both gentler and perhaps a little less sentimental.
So there's not much of a reason why I like "The Skunk and The Robot," a video off their latest album Hamster Dance except that it features, well, a skunk. And a robot. It's Ratboy Jr. in video form. (And if you don't like skunks or robots, there's always "Sponges," which features Timmy and Matty in puppet form.)
Ratboy Jr. - "The Skunk and The Robot" [YouTube]
The Amazing Keystone Big Band - Peter and the Wolf and Jazz! album cover
I wouldn't say that if there's one classical music piece you've heard, it's "Peter and the Wolf," because orchestral melodies are woven throughout modern life, even if you're only vaguely aware of it. But if there's one classical music piece you've heard because somebody was trying to teach your child (or you, when you were young) the concepts of symphonic orchestral music, it's "Peter and the Wolf."
Composed in 1936 by Sergei Prokofiev in Russia, the piece tells the story of the young (and brave) boy Peter, who along with his animal friends, outwits and captures a wolf intent on eating several of them. Prokofiev gives each character a primary instrument (strings, for example, for Peter) and a melody, and mixes and blends them both as different characters interact. There's a narrator providing some basic storytelling guideposts, though Prokofiev tells his musical tale so well, that once the story gets going, the words are, while not unnecessary, not bearing the weight of the story.
The piece is a classic, and there are literally dozens -- if not hundreds -- of versions recorded over the years. We've got at least a couple on our own shelves. And because it's a classic, there's really no need to have more than one or two versions unless you like the particular narrator.
Or unless the musicians have taken an entirely different approach, which is the case on Peter and the Wolf and Jazz!, a brand-new recording from France's The Amazing Keystone Big Band. The big band features 18 younger French jazz musicians, and this new version deftly blends Prokofiev's symphonic story with a big band sensibility. So instead of the string section (violins, violas, etc.), Peter's theme is represented by the band's rhythm section -- piano, bass, and guitar (which are, as the album's liner notes remind us, stringed instruments themselves). The wolf is represented by the trombones and tuba instead of the French horns, and so on -- instruments that are similar in tone, but not necessarily the same ones.
The melodies themselves are unchanged, but the band's arrangement brings in a wide variety of jazz styles -- stride piano, hip-hop, free jazz, blues, cool jazz, and the like. None of the stylistic shifts seem out of place -- rather, they feel appropriate to the story. The triumphant parade march at the end is a swing style which to my ears sounds something like a New Orleans second line band would play in their own parade.
As for the narrator, David Tennant, best known on these shores as one of the Doctor Whos, does a fine job telling the story. The wouldn't necessarily recommend the album just for his narration, but it's more than up to the task. The liner notes are excellent, featuring many pages of the narration and illustrations by Martin Jarrie along with explanations by the band of their arrangement choices. (The 54-minute album is appropriate for kids ages 3 through whatever, but you knew that already.)
Peter and the Wolf and Jazz! isn't the first attempt to rework Prokofiev's tale for a jazz audience, but as best I can tell, it's the first in a half-century. More importantly, it's taken that classic piece and made it sound fresh. As a jazz album, it's wonderful, and as a classical album, well, it's wonderful, too. Highly recommended.
Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review.
Zooglobble
Zooglobble helps you find kindie music -- news, videos, mp3s, reviews -- for your whole family.
DIY for the kindie world.
