Deep Thoughts
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CLASSICAL MUSIC: To tell you the truth, I try to go slow with exposing Zoe to classical music because I want her to develop a love for it and not a preconceived notion that it’s somehow boring or exclusively grown up music. In addition to the albums I mention below, I highly recommend you rent or purchase Disney’s Fantasia and fast-forward to the Mickey Mouse excerpt, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Sit with your child because it’s a little scary at first, but this one excerpt has done more to awaken Zoe to the joys of classical music than anything else. The rest of the film is almost as rewarding. It’s a marvel to me that Walt Disney invested the enormous effort and expense to create this extraordinary animated valentine to classical music. If you’re interested, please try some of these classical albums on your kids, especially the last one: Tchaikovsky, Ballet Suites -- The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty. My view may be influenced by the fact that I have two little girls, but I do love this melodic and thrilling music myself. Tchaikovsky’s gift for melody, rhythmic propulsion, and musical imagery always blows me away. Beethoven’s Fifth and Beethoven’s Sixth Symphonies -- Just incredible, gripping music. The 5th everyone knows, but Beethoven’s 6th, his Pastoral Symphony is beautiful, flowing music that is highly imagistic and very entertaining. You and your kids will enjoy this music for life. Domenico Scarlatti, Sonatas, Michael Pletnev (pianist) -- it’s hard to believe, but this composer of piano sonatas out-Mozarts Mozart. These short, focused, highly musical pieces are, in my opinion, the perfect examples of what music that affects what child psychologists have supposedly measured as The Mozart Effect. The album, a double CD, is insanely cheap ($6.97 at Amazon as of this writing!) and is one of my favorite classical piano albums, kids or no kids. SWING MUSIC: This insanely happy, almost cartoonish music is our breakfast music. Way back when I was single, I used to spend all of my money on CDs and there was a phase when I was buying up as many swing and big band reissues as I could lay my hands upon. Nowadays, at our house we do most of our listening on an iPod and one of our favorite playlists is “choice swing,” which is the cream of my old swing collection. If you own an iPod, and are so inclined, I highly recommend you make a playlist of the best songs of the following albums and start shuffling. The kids love this funny, snappy music and it makes breakfast a real event! Any Greatest Hits album from the following artists will get you some great swing music, but I do like the Swingsation series a whole lot.... Benny Goodman Tommy Dorsey Jimmie Lunceford Glenn Miller Artie Shaw Count Basie The following two collections require a bit of an investment but they constitute the two pillars of American Music through the swing era: Count Basie - Complete Decca Recordings Duke Ellington - Blanton-Webster Band My advice is, if you’re so inclined, is to pull all of your swing CDs into iTunes and sit for an hour and crudely make a yes/no choice as to which songs to include in your “choice swing” playlist and from that moment on you’ve got a super fun collection of rollicking music to accompany everything from birthday parties to family breakfasts. 50s ROCK AND ROLL: Did you ever notice that the great rock and roll songs of the 50s are almost all forms of nursery rhymes? 1-2-3 o’clock, 4 o’clock rock. Elvis singing about Hound Dogs and Teddy Bears. One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go cats go! I have no specific album recommendations, but Zoe and her friends really go for this era of music. The words are right up their alley and the music really moves. I’d start with any old 50s compilation and go from there. Greatest hits of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, and Little Richard is another place to look. For Zoe, I just bought some individual 50s songs from iTunes. Rock Around the Clock (Bill Haley and Comets), That’ll Be the Day, Everyday, Oh Boy (Buddy Holly), Hound Dog, Teddy Bear, All Shook Up (Elvis), Tutti Frutti, Long Tall Sally, Lucille (Little Richard), Ain’t That a Shame (Fats Domino), Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis), and Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins). I’ve got all of these songs transferred to my mp3-playing cellphone too for instant distraction and emergency entertainment. CHILDREN’S MUSIC: The trick here is to find albums that your kids will love but won’t drive you “Barney” after more than one play. Raffi - Baby Beluga and Singable Songs for the Very Young -- The guy’s just got it. He’s not world’s great singer, he doesn’t write most of the songs he sings, but he’s got a very authentic quality and a huge talent for captivating children. His albums are quite listenable for adults too, especially Baby Beluga. Gwendolyn and the Goodtime Gang - Debut Album and Get Up and Dance -- She got a cult following here in L.A. for good reason. Her songs are clever, helpful, and expertly written, she performs with a full rock band who really jam, and everything Gwendolyn does is an event. These two albums are my daughter’s favorites and her friends all agree. Highly Recommended. Parker Bent - I Am Your New Music Teacher and Charlie Davidson’s Tricycle Club -- Another L.A. local, Parker’s got a real talent for writing and singing highly entertaining teaching songs. World Class children’s music and easy on adult ears too. Dan Zanes - House Party and Family Dance -- I haven’t heard a Dan Zanes album that I didn’t think was excellent. His albums are a wonderful way to introduce your kids to bluegrass, folk, blues, and all forms of American music. His style is very intimate and personal, never condescending and his music is very pleasing to adults as well. Lisa Loeb and Elizabeth Mitchell - Catch the Moon -- These two performers were college roommates and they’ve reunited to make this charming kids album. The songs run the gamut of styles from American folk songs to Japanese and French language lullabies and back again and they do what is probably the best existing version of Dylan’s New Morning. Most excellent. We have the version that includes a charming board book, but that edition is now out of print. I’m sure you can find in used if you look on Ebay or even Amazon. Elizabeth Mitchell - You Are My Little Bird, You Are My Sunshine, and You are My Flower -- I love Elizabeth Mitchell. She’s been called the female Dan Zanes but I think that misses her strength which is that she makes beautiful albums. Highly crafted, beautifully recorded, but never anything short of intimate and thoroughly engaging. Like Dan Zanes, her song selection is a great feature of these albums too, delving deep into the American folksong genre. If you like female folksingers, try one of this trio of beautiful albums. OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS: I devoted an entire blog entry to the pop/rock/folk songs that make up “Zoe’s Faves” here. I’d advise showing your kids all of the music you personally love and see if there’s something about it they may love too. Zoe really took to The Beatles. Her favorite all-time song is Hello, Goodbye. She refers to Your Mother Should Know as “Mommy’s song,” Baby You’re a Rich Man as “Margo’s song” (her baby sister, probably because it says “Baby” in the title) and All You Need Is Love as “Gagi’s song” (her grandma -- how sweet is that?). All of these songs appear on a later Beatles album, Magical Mystery Tour, and they are a lot more musically advanced than the seemingly more kid-friendly I Want to Hold Your Hand, so -- you never know. Try stuff. Zoe lately is really into The Stones’ Jumping Jack Flash (cranked in the car) and her preferred music to play while she’s swinging in the backyard is wild, insane progressive rock like Frank Zappa and Jeff Beck. You just never know. Try stuff. Kids have a powerful imagination and a huge hunger for fun and a wide variety of music really supports both of those capacities. I wish everyone good luck building a music collection for their kids to grow on. I think music is so much more helpful to growing minds than movies, TV, or even storytelling, probably because it retains so much abstraction and allows the child to fill in all the images and ideas with their own minds. Plus it makes you wanna dance!http://www.amazon.com/Fantasia-Special-Anniversary-Leopold-Stokowski/dp/B00003CX9W/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1200891089&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Tchaikovsky-Ballet-Suites-Franz-Bartolomey/dp/B000001GJ1/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200886715&sr=1-8http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Symphonies-5-Ludwig-van/dp/B000001GPX/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200887307&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Symphonies-Pastorale-Ludwig-van/dp/B000002A7Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200888360&sr=1-2http://www.amazon.com/Mikhail-Pletnev-Domenico-Scarlatti-Keyboard/dp/B00005IA25http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Decca-Recordings-Count-Basie/dp/B000003N3G/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200894285&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Never-No-Lament-Blanton-Webster-Band/dp/B00008J2IX/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200894378&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Beluga-Raffi/dp/B0000003HD/ref=pd_bxgy_m_img_bhttp://www.amazon.com/Singable-Songs-Very-Young-Peanut-Butter/dp/B0000003H4/ref=m_art_pr_3http://cdbaby.com/cd/gwendolyn2http://cdbaby.com/cd/gwendolyn5http://cdbaby.com/cd/parkerbenthttp://cdbaby.com/cd/parkerbent2http://www.amazon.com/House-Party-Dan-Zanes/dp/B0000CC85Jhttp://www.amazon.com/Family-Dance-Dan-Zanes-Friends/dp/B00005TT6M/ref=pd_bxgy_m_img_bhttp://www.amazon.com/Catch-Moon-Lisa-Loeb/dp/B000L22WZ8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200934259&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-My-Little-Bird/dp/B000GKZN9M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200934427&sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Sunshine-Elizabeth-Mitchell/dp/B00007LB2W/ref=pd_bxgy_m_img_bhttp://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Flower-Elizabeth-Mitchell/dp/B000067VOO/ref=pd_rhf_f_i_cs_114443F9C-6BE1-4074-B018-3DE65C745DB7.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5shapeimage_1_link_6shapeimage_1_link_7shapeimage_1_link_8shapeimage_1_link_9shapeimage_1_link_10shapeimage_1_link_11shapeimage_1_link_12shapeimage_1_link_13shapeimage_1_link_14shapeimage_1_link_15shapeimage_1_link_16shapeimage_1_link_17shapeimage_1_link_18shapeimage_1_link_19
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Music Your Kids Will Dig and You’ll Like Too