Listen To This: "Jumping Through Hoops" - The Bright Siders (feat. Zara Bode & Gabe Witcher) (World Premiere!)

Way more than a decade ago, I noted how kids music — at least a lot of the new music produced in the 21st century — hadn’t really taken emotional intelligence as a theme. Several years later, at least some such songs had been written, but it wasn’t a list that you could put on Spotify and listen to for days on end.

I’m sure that list is out of date at this point, but there’s always room for more music that’s tuneful and meets kids where they are, emotionally.

So I’m excited that the venerable Smithsonian Folkways label — who’s long included music in service of kids as part of their catalog — is releasing the debut album from the new duo The Bright Siders. The band consists of singer-singer Kristin Andreassen (charter member of “Crayola Doesn’t Make a Color For Your Eyes” Fan Club here) and Brooklyn-based child psychiatrist Kari Groff, MD.

Their album, A Mind of Your Own, is released next week, on January 21, and it’s a whole album inspired, as they put it in the liner notes, “from our shared desire to connect with children through music, and to spark meaningful conversations between adults and children about growing up and all the emotions that go with it.”

On the track I’m world-premiering today, “Jumping Through Hoops,” the duo turns over singing duties to Zara Bode and Gabe Witcher, two of many artists Andreassen and Groff bring on board for the project. Groff says that the song is a tribute to all those New York City kids who do so much to handle the intensity of a big, hot crowded city and is “intended to inspire all children to have courage and perseverance, especially during tough times.” The song itself is a loping bit of positivity with a sweet bit of fiddle.

Times are tough at the moment — perhaps you need this, too.

Anyway, I’m happy to world-premiere this track — you can find it in all the usual places.

Andreassen and Groff in front of a colorful building (Credit: Jefry Andres Wright)

Smithsonian Folkways · The Bright Siders - Jumping Through Hoops (feat Zara Bode and Gabe Witcher)

Photo credit: Jefry Andres Wright

Looking Forward by Looking Back (Dan Zanes' "Lead Belly, Baby!")

When most people think about Smithsonian Folkways' kids' artists, I'd guess that the first names that come to mind are Ella Jenkins and Pete Seeger, with probably Woody Guthrie close behind. But if I were to make that trio a quartet, I'd add Lead Belly to that list. Lead Belly (born Huddie William Ledbetter in 1889) was a master of the 12-string guitar, and starting in the mid-1930s until his death in 1949, he recorded for a wide variety of labels.

His outsized influence on blues music generally masks the fact that he only recorded one album specifically for kids for Folkways, and that was an album released more than a decade after his death. But in 1999, Smithsonian Folkways released Lead Belly Sings for Children, a collection of songs Lead Belly specifically recorded for kids in the 1940s along with other tracks that fit right in. The liner notes describe it as "essential listening for all ages," and in this case, the hype fits.

Nearly three quarters of a century after Lead Belly started recording for Folkways founder Moses Asch, Dan Zanes has joined in. As part of the typically detailed and lovingly-produced liner notes to the album, Zanes writes of being seven years old and discovering a Lead Belly record in the basement of his local library just as he was getting interested in the guitar. In Zanes' telling, Lead Belly's music played no small role in Zanes' path toward becoming a musician. In other words, this is a labor of love.

Now much of Zanes' all-ages musical path has felt like it came out of love and not any sort of calculated attempt at super-stardom, but this album does feel to me just slightly more personal, as if going back to one of his first inspirations helped Zanes tap into his own inspiration. In time-honored folk tradition, Zanes adds his own voice and approach. “Bring Me a Little Water, Sylvie” is given a slightly more uptempo, lilting feel. Zanes has always been willing to make a space for hip-hop on his albums, but he's opened up a lot more room for it now. There are many reasons that might be appropriate, but probably the most appropriate is that the arrangements breathe new life into these tracks. The original Lead Belly recordings, after all, were primarily the man and his guitar -- they sound great, but there can be a certain monotony to those tracks. But the arrangements here are wide open: in addition to the music store's worth of instruments -- concertina, saxophone, cowbell, mandolin -- five of the tracks feature guest raps.

As with most music Zanes releases, this album features a couple dozen guest artists. Some are famous -- hey, there’s Billy Bragg on “Rock Island Line!”… Is that really Chuck D offering up a verse on “Skip To My Lou?" to name but a couple such appearances. But just as important to the overall feel are the guest turns by the musicians we’re probably less familiar with, like Jendog Lonewolf’s rap on “Julie Ann Johnson," while Memphis Jelks, invited onto “Skip To My Lou” by Chuck D., just about steals the show from the elder statesman.

If there’s anything I miss from the album, it’s the voices of kids. Folkways albums for kids have always had lots of participation by kids -- Lead Belly Sings for Children is no exception, as it includes a number of tracks featuring Lead Belly singing to and with kids. In contrast, aside from “More Yet,” there’s no chorus of kids on Zanes’ album. (“Little Goose” makes an appearance on the intro to “Polly Wee” along with Father Goose, but that’s not really what I mean.)

After a series of themed albums that were musically satisfactory but less than fully… party-filled, Lead Belly, Baby! most closely replicates the freewheeling spirit of his early DZAF albums, the ones that propelled him into kids music stardom. While in many ways this album will sound familiar to those fans of those albums (nearly twenty years old at this point), Dan Zanes is also walking some different musical paths than he was twenty (or thirty or forty) years ago. If looking back to one of his earliest musical idols helps kick off another series of musical explorations into the future, then by all means bring it on. Highly recommended.

Listen To This: "Skip To My Lou" - Dan Zanes feat. Chuck D & Memphis Jelks

If the sound of Dan Zanes singing "Skip To My Lou" with Chuck D and Memphis Jelks throwing in some (new) lyrics doesn't put a smile on your face (and whet your appetite for Lead Belly, Baby!, Zanes' upcoming Smithsonian Folkways album featuring his takes on the family-friendly music the blues musician recorded for the label decades ago), then... listen again. Really good stuff, reminiscent of Zanes' best work. Lead Belly, Baby! is out August 25.

Dan Zanes feat. Chuck D & Memphis Jelks - "Skip To My Lou" [YouTube]

Ella's Kids (Reviews of Ella Jenkins, Jazzy Ash, and Shine and the Moonbeams)

I've been thinking some about white guys with guitars.

I've got nothing against white guys with guitars -- I'm a white guy with a guitar (OK, ukulele), and as I think about my own favorite music, much of it is made by, you guessed it, white guys with guitars. But there are a lot of white guys with guitars making music for kids.

I don't want to speculate on exactly why this is, but it can't be to the advantage of kids music that the lists of artists making kids music on a national level looks -- and, in terms of the musical styles of those artists, sounds -- way less diverse than, say, the Billboard charts, which might feature Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, or Rihanna (not to mention Pitbull or Drake or whomever) near the top. I'm fully in favor of exposing kids to a wide variety of musical artists and musical genres, and right now that's not as easy as a parent might hope.

It's a little strange, especially because the very first kids music star was (and is) an African-American woman: Ella Jenkins. In 1957, she released Call-and-Response Rhythmic Group Singing on Folkways Records, and over the next 60 years, she's released more than 30 albums on Folkways, then Smithsonian Folkways. (Her 1966 album You Sing a Song and I'll Sing a Song is Smithsonian Folkways' best-selling album of all time, from any genre.) And while Jenkins is not one to toot her own horn or make a big deal out of her politics (this is an hour-long interview from a decade ago where she does neither), but it's not hard to review Jenkins' discography and think that she, too, would want to see many different types of kids' musicians making themselves visible.

Jenkins recently released Camp Songs, her first album of new music in six years, and with the recent release of albums from a couple younger artists who've taken inspiration from Ella in different ways, I thought it was a good time to take a look at all three of these albums, all of them definitely recommended.

Camp Songs is labeled as being by Ella Jenkins and Friends, and that "and Friends" appendage is definitely important. It's probably too much to expect an artist who just turned 93 years old to be up for leading a bunch of kids in song with nothing but a guitar and her voice. Indeed, as Tony Seeger noted in an interview, "her voice was not as strong as she had hoped when the time came to record." But she was definitely the animating spirit behind the album. And in some ways, Jenkins receding somewhat to the background allows for a fuller musical experience. It's not just Jenkins and a guitar, there are many more jumping in to share their voices.

As you'd suspect by the title, there are many camp favorites on the album -- "Kumbaya, "Down by the Riverside," "Michael Row the Boat Ashore," to name but three. It's led in many places by Tony and Kate Seeger, brother and sister, who have lots of experience leading a group of singing kids (read more about that here). There are also musicians from Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music (including Erin Flynn!) who lead some other songs and a children's chorus. Ella sings a bit, plays harmonica on a few songs, and generally blesses the entire affair. If Ella isn't exactly front-and-center, I have no doubt that she's very pleased with the playful and communitarian nature of the end result.

Before heading into the next couple reviews, a brief shout-out to Robbi Kumalo, who performs music for kids as Robbi K, and is, as best I can recall, the only African-American woman aside from Ella with any national visibility whose main role was making music for kids in the 2000s (and before). If you like the sounds of Ella and the next two artists and want more in that vein, I'd recommend check Robbi out.

Ashli Christoval has taken the sounds of New Orleans heritage via her mother and crafted a career making music for kids as Jazzy Ash. She has spoken about her debt to Ella Jenkins -- seeing Jenkins make an appearance on Mister Rogers:

That moment was very monumental for me. I knew that I wanted to be part of the artist community that used art to preserve the wonderful the stories of culture.

On Swing Set, her fourth album, she comes the closest yet to seamlessly blending the African-American musical heritage, particularly jazz, with the singing together and movement work that Jenkins pioneered on record. It kicks off with a swinging (pun unintended) version of "Li'l Liza Jane," which features an ebullient group call-and-response. (Much more Preservation Hall Jazz Band than Elizabeth Mitchell -- to say that I like it as much as Mitchell's version is high praise from me.)

The word I kept writing down as I took notes on the album was "joyful." This is, friends, the most joyful album of the year. From Uncle Devin's hand-clapping on "Hambone" to Jazzy's insertion of "Fried! Froglegs!" as something Grandma's going to enjoy in "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain" to her giving her band a kick in the pants in the slow intro to "When the Saints Go Marching In" ("Too slow, let's put a little swing into it!") -- there's so much happiness here. It very much honors the stories of Christoval's culture, and in songs like "Miss Mary Mack" and the brief call-and-response interludes with a children's chorus, it honors Jenkins' legacy. It's also a blast -- it's every bit as fun as that cover art above suggests.

Another artist who is walking in Ella's path, but a less-appreciated one, is Shawana Kemp. Kemp is best-known in the kids music world as Shine in Shine and the Moonbeams. On their 2013 self-titled debut album, Kemp's voice was the star, a voice that could literally stun listeners.

Kemp is back after far too long of an absence with Shooting Stars, an album released this spring that I'm hoping gets a little more notice.

The music of Shine and the Moonbeams has always been fairly complex -- jazz, R&B, and a fair share of funk. It's not an approach Jenkins has ever been much interested in. The reason I say that Kemp is also in walking in Ella's path is that the music of Shine and the Moonbeams is emphatically child-centered emotionally. It's amazing to watch Jenkins with kids, because even though she's not a parent, Jenkins is so present. It's clear that the kids are her most important audience, and she doesn't care about getting cool points from the adults in the audience. (She just wants them singing along.) And while performance-wise Kemp knows how to leave an impression on the entire room, when it comes to songwriting, the kids most definitely come first. "Shooting Star," which leads off the album, is a glorious song about everyone having their own talent. "Peekaboo Baby" is blues for the very youngest kid, and "Tough Love" is a funk rocker that explains exactly why the parent is not going to go easy on her kid.

Those songs are mixed into a set that also features some reggae ("Ace Boon Coon"), late '70s (?) funk ("Tell Me Why"), and the empathetic vocal soul of "Any Body Other Than Me." And to have songs like "Soul Food Holiday" and "These Shoes" (a straight-forward jazz song whose lyrics encourage self-acceptance, especially of body image) that speak most directly to an African-American audience on a mainstream kids music release is awesome to hear.

I know I've combined these three albums into a single review for convenience and to make some overarching points, but I'd hate to see these albums get pigeonholed for a certain audience. I'd much rather that these albums be the inspiration for future albums, for Ashli's and Shawana's kids... and Ella's grandkids.

Interview: Ella Jenkins and Tony Seeger on Camp Songs

Ella Jenkins needs no introduction, and I have to believe the Venn diagram would show the overlap between "readers of this website" and "people who don't know Ella Jenkins" to be very slim indeed, but in case you reside in that area, Jenkins is a living legend in kids music, leading multiple generations in song, encouraging tolerance and togetherness will little more than her voice, a guitar or ukulele, and good humor.

She's been recording with Smithsonian Folkways for sixty years (not a typo), and earlier this summer she celebrated her 93rd birthday and released her latest album with them, Camp Songs with Ella Jenkins and Friends. It's a collection of songs that might sound familiar to anyone who's spent time at a sleepaway camp of any sort, or even just a day camp. She partnered with kids and musicians from Chicago's venerable Old Town School of Folk Music and with Tony Seeger and Kate Seeger.

The Seegers are siblings -- their parents ran Camp Killooleet in Vermont, and Kate runs it today along with her husband. (Here's an article about the camp.) Pete Seeger was their uncle, so they have some experience making music with living legends. And Tony Seeger is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Ethnomusicology at UCLA and the Director and Curator emeritus at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. All in all, a pretty good match for Ella.

I asked Ella a couple questions about the album, then reached out to Tony for more details.

When I asked Ella why it's important for kids to sing together, she responded with the importance of "sharing, leadership, [and] working together." She said these "are all tools for a happy life."

As for favorite memories of the recording session(s) for this album, she agreed that "it was a wonderful project." Ella noted that "many, many people helped create this recording [and] it was all memorable."

Tony went into more details about camp singing memories and recording the album -- and if you want more insights, I recommend reading the liner notes (available at the Folkways album page link above).

Tony Seeger holding copies of Ella Jenkins Camp Songs CDs

Zooglobble: What are your favorite memories of camp singing growing up?

Tony Seeger: For Kate and me our favorite memory is of our parents singing and leading songs at campfires and other camp events. They met as counselors at a summer camp and went on to run Camp Killooleet in Vermont for nearly 50 years. They loved to sing in harmony on such standards as “Summertime” and “Birth of the Blues.” My father taught his younger brother, Pete Seeger, to sing in harmony on long trips in the car. My father also led singalongs like “Jacob’s Ladder” with the campers. Kate and I learned to play instruments at Killooleet and began to accompany our parents when we were in our teens. We have been singing at Camp Killooleet, where Kate Seeger is now the co-director with her husband Dean Spencer, for most of our lives.

What do you appreciate about camp songs now as an adult?

Camp songs can create a community feeling in a group of insecure campers who may be homesick or don’t know each other very well. We find campers are always delighted to be asked to sing along rather than sitting still and listening. They are then equal participants and we are creating the performance together. Over 14 million children and adults attend summer camps each year, and the music they enjoy together often creates an enduring bond and stimulates fond memories of the time they spent together.

If you could only sing three camp songs to get a group singing together, what would they be?

For me, they would be a call-and-response song like “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” (which is on this CD), a gesture song like “The Court of King Caractacus” (which is on the CD), and a multipart song from Africa like “Bayeza” (not on this CD, though we tried it out).

What are your favorite memories of the recording session(s) for this album?

Ella has a delightful sense of humor which made the long hours in the studio much more fun. She regaled us with stories about singing at summer camps, only one story of which is on the CD (at the start of track 12, “Hill Was Steep and Tall”). She reminisced about learning camp songs from her brother and how to play the harmonica from her uncle. After the studio sessions with the children ended and they were getting ready to leave, Ella spent hours talking with them and their parents. Her enjoyment of the children, her unexpected skills on the harmonica, and her enthusiasm for the project are all warm memories. She asked me and Kate to accompany her on songs we didn’t know beforehand. Even when I didn’t sing “The Damper Song” very well, she rewarded me with a “That’s good!”—as she has done for generations of children and adults singing along with her.

How did you think about Ella’s role in the album?

Ella had proposed recording an album of camp songs years ago, but she and I were always too busy until the opportunity came to record one in a studio in Chicago with a group of musicians and children from the Old Town School of Folk Music. She sent Kate and me a list of songs for the album, and we proposed some rounds and songs for older campers, which she approved. She has been recording for Folkways for 60 years, so her voice was not as strong as she had hoped when the time came to record. So she sang on a few songs, played the harmonica on some, and led the children singing on a few more. Even though many musicians participated in the album, it was her spirit, her musicianship, her generosity, and her enthusiasm for having the children sing along that made this project what it is.We just helped her make it happen.

Why is it important for kids to sing together?

Not all camp music is singalongs. Children also like to listen to each other sing solo, and to adults, But singing together can transform a group of campers into a cohesive and active group. Focusing on something together and sharing the experience of learning something new together helps create a community feeling. Moving together is fun, too. Ella Jenkins has been encouraging children to sing and to move during her whole career, and that works well at summer camps too.

Ella Jenkins (2nd from left), Tony Seeger (far right), and Smithsonian Folkways staffers Tony Harvin (far left) and Atesh Sonneborn (2nd from right) at 2017 Square Roots Festival

Photo credits: Bernadelle Richter (Ella), Lynn Orman (Tony), Tim Ferrin (group)

Review: !Come Bien! Eat Right! - José-Luis Orozco

José-Luis Orozco ¡Come Bien! Eat Right! album cover

It is easy to think of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings as the record label of Ella Jenkins, Pete Seeger, and many more who joined the label more than a half-century ago. But they've also signed up to release recordings from artists not even born when Ella and Pete first started recording -- hi, Elizabeth Mitchell, welcome, Sarah Lee Guthrie!

From that perspective, the fact that Los Angeles-based musician and educator José-Luis Orozco has joined the Folkways fold is both entirely fitting and novel. If you're not familiar with Orozco's work, then there's a good chance that you haven't been in a classroom with young kids, particularly a classroom with bilingual kids. Since 1971, Orozco has released 15 albums; his website's biography page says those albums (along with a DVD and 3 songbooks) have sold more than two million copies, and I believe it -- if you look at the iTunes and Amazon best-selling children's music lists, his albums, particularly De Colores and Other Latin American Folk Songs, are often found there. (That album is one of the very few kids' music albums that my wife, who's taught young kids and in classrooms with lots of bilingual speakers, introduced to me.)

Which brings us to !Come Bien! Eat Right!, Orozco's 16th album and his first distributed through Smithsonian Folkways. In one sense, it feels completely natural that a musician and educator of Orozco's standing should be part of a record label so committed to celebrating and spreading the folk music of the world here in the United States (and around the world). And in another sense, you're surprised that this grandfather isn't already part of that family and that it's taken all this time for the two to finally partner.

The album's theme, in case you haven't already guessed it from the title and album cover, is healthy eating. It features 38 songs, the first 19 in Spanish, followed by the same 19 songs in English translation. So, for example, the album leads off with "Damos gracias," a simple blessing sung in Spanish and accompanied only by percussion from producer and well-known Latin musician Quetzal Flores -- and then you can fast-forward nineteen tracks to track #20, "Thanksgiving," and listen to the same song (and arrangement) sung in English.

On Orozco moves through the meal -- fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains. Musically, the accompaniment is generally simple, but I think it shines best when it features other Los Angeles musicians, such as Gabriel Tenorio on the quinto sonero on "La comida en mi plato/The Food on My Plate" or Tylana Enomoto on violin on "Verduras/Veggies," one of my favorite tracks. There's some call and response on the album featuring a couple of kids, and, of course, "De Colores" makes an appearance, nimbly reworked into a song called "Sabroses colors/Tasty Colors," all about eating fruits and vegetables with healthy colors. And -- yay! -- "Chocolate," a classic traditional song that's always fun to sing along with.

You might think that this album is "educational," and... it totally is. I don't speak much Spanish, and so I could listen to the Spanish language tracks and enjoy them, but when I switched to the English-language versions, some of them seemed very... educational and lacking some of the vibrancy I felt on the Spanish-language track. Now that's OK, but if you -- or your kid -- are expecting something freewheeling, this album isn't that. There are definitely songs you could pull out and place onto a broader playlist, but as something to listen to 62 minutes straight without an explicit expectation that your family will learn more about healthy eating or learning a different language, it's not designed for that.

The album will be most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. I feel almost contractually obligated (note: I'm not) to mention that the album packaging and liner notes are lovely -- in this particular case all the notes are produced in Spanish on one side, and English on the other. The lovely illustrations are by Elisa Kleven.

Orozco's music has been heard by literally millions of kids, and his new association with Folkways is not the culmination of a career, but just another feather in the cap of a much-beloved and well-respected musician and educator. It wouldn't be the first choice of mine for an introduction to Spanish-language music, but for educators seeking to broaden their Spanish-language collections or looking for something bilingual to address issues of eating and nutrition, there's a bounty here. And the rest of us can certainly find a number of tracks to nibble on. Recommended.

Note: I received a copy of this album for possible review.