Make music an everyday habit with these books
Music relaxes, inspires and excites. These new children’s music CDs are lovely, wacky and fun. Prices vary due to sales outlets and digital downloads versus CD options. All are available on iTunes and Amazon, but I always try to promote smaller vendors, and independent sellers and stores.
“Camp Songs with Ella Jenkins & Friends” from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
The venerable Ella Jenkins has always wanted to record camp songs for children, and she does so here with a group of kids, teachers and parents from the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. Though many camp songs are classics, such as a rousing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” Jenkins adds in some selections from African-American spirituals, European folk songs and Jewish summer camp ditties. “Everybody Loves Saturday Night” includes lines from a dozen languages, and the album’s final five minutes, including songs “Sloop John B.” and “Goodnight Irene,” are sequenced to sound like a campfire singalong.
Jenkins, who turns 93 years old in August, is everywhere on the CD, from singing to playing harmonica to reflecting about camp to engaging with the children. Though she takes the lead on “Sipping Cider Through a Straw,” this zesty collection is music with and by children. The twenty-five songs are silly, fun, wild, thoughtful and satisfying, just like summertime should be. “Swing Set” from Jazzy Ash.
Jazzy Ash’s fourth family album celebrates time-tested tunes passed down by AfricanAmerican children, adults and musicians from the early 19th century to the jazz era. Interspersed with percussive playground rhymes, the tracks, from “Coming Around the Mountain” to “Sister Kate” to “When the Saints Go Marching In” to the lesser-known “Head and Shoulders, Baby,” were largely carried along by little girls on playgrounds and are still sassy and worthy. There is lots of soul, heart and strength in these 14 jazzy tunes, and Jazzy Ash’s clear, invigorating voice carries them along with tons of fun and conviction.
Ash and her talented band, the Leaping Lizards, will tour with “Swing Set,” from Washington, D.C., to New York City to Los Angeles. Videos will follow on the Jazzy Ash website.
“Born in the Deep Woods” by Red Yarn; Red Yarn Productions.
The folksy, bluesy Andy Furgeson, aka Red Yarn, aims to reinvigorate folk music for a younger generation and has so far done so swimmingly with this final in his Deep Woods trilogy of albums. With six original songs and six traditional, Furgeson sings his heart out, and his harmonies with his wife, Jessie EllerIsaacs, are lilting and lovely.
Red Yarn’s family band is soulful and genuine and refreshingly original, a true “kindie” star. Songs include “Birdies’ Ball,” “Rabbit in a Log” and “Crawdad.” This album is perfect for camping or outdoor fun.