Video: "Txoria Txori" - Sonia De Los Santos

This song from Sonia De Los Santos, "Txoria Txori," is a wistful ballad about setting free a caged bird off her fine 2015 album Mi Viaje: De Nuevo León To The New York Island (one of my ten great Spanish-language kids music albums).  All else being equal, I'm probably less inclined to feature a video for a ballad than a rip-roarin' pop tune, even for a ballad I like, but exceptions can always be made, and so for this video I will.

Even though the album from which the lullaby is taken is primarily in Spanish (and English), "Txoria Txori" is actually sung in the Basque language of Euskera.  For the video, De Los Santos traveled to Spain and was filmed walking around Bilbao and other parts of Basque Country.  There are some truly lovely surroundings De Los Santos and her bandmates find herself in -- the whole thing could easily be part of a travel campaign.  Worth it for the voice and the glimpse into another part of the world.

Sonia De Los Santos - "Txoria Txori" [YouTube]

Weekly Summary (2/17/14 - 2/23/14)

Monday Morning Smile: Candela y Los Supremos - "El Desalojo del Piojo"

I've featured the work of Candela y Los Supremos here on the site before, but I will be honest that it is hard for me to get past the language barrier -- singing in nothing but Spanish (or perhaps Portugese) makes it difficult for me to properly evaluate.

The music is infectious pop, though, so I'm gonna post this video, the leadoff single from the band's brand new album Animaladas (out tomorrow, Oct. 16, in Spain, and a week later worldwide, I believe).  It's for the song, "El Desalojo del Piojo," which roughly translates to "The Eviction of the Louse."  That translation makes the constant hair-mussing of 7-year-old Candela make a lot more sense.

If you want to listen to more, PlayGround has you covered.

Candela y Los Supremos - "El Desalojo del Piojo" [YouTube]

Kids Music from Spain: Minimúsica

Minimusica_Transport.jpgSpanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of kids' music, I'm always excited to find that the North American kids music scene is making waves elsewhere in the world. So when the South American parenting site Emma & Rob mentioned this site a while back, I tooled around their site to see what music I could find. What I found was Minimúsica. Minimúsica is a Spanish educational project headquartered in the Catalonian capital of Barcelona. The project releases records, hosts concerts, and generally spreads the word about music for kids. It's associated with the Spanish record label Sones, distributor of artists such as Mujeres and Dirty Beaches, so you're pretty sure it's got an indie tilt. And once you hear a track like "Autocar" ["Coach"] from the band Me & the Bees, you know it's got an indie tilt. Me & the Bees - "Autocar" [YouTube] The track -- about getting ready to get on a bus for a six-hour ride to Pamplona -- is from the Els Transports album, Minimúsica's second collection of kid-friendly tunes. It is, as you might guess even if you don't speak Catalan, all about transportation, featuring songs about trains, bikes, rockets, planes, running shoes, and dreamboats (OK, that last one's a bit of a stretch perhaps). In the tradition of the For the Kids series and many other compilations, the collection features music from bands who spend most of their time playing for audiences with drivers' licenses. There's more where that came from...