Bunchland

Beth Blenz-Clucas blogs about music for kids that grownups will love too

When the “First Lady of Children’s Music” sings, people don’t just listen, they participate. With her simple call-and-response approach, Ella Jenkins can bring a crowd of children and adults to their feet, singing and dancing together. Many of the recordings over her 50-year career feature African American spirituals, including “Wade in the Water” from her 1960 album African American Folk Rhythms. The song, straight out of Exodus, once provided a coded message to slaves traveling via the Underground Railroad. Today, anyone singing it along with Ella can feel the song’s power.

Now well into her 80s, Ella continues to inspire and delight children and educators. One of the original artists on the Folkways label, Ella will soon release a new recording, A Life of Song.

Ella began making and recording children’s music when the civil rights movement was new. Her work continues to honor the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate today. The “We Shall Overcome” speech sounds as fresh and true in January 2011 as it did in March 1968. He retrieved the mighty refrain from an old gospel-turned-folk song. Pete Seeger and other folk artists collected the song in the 1940s; Joan Baez sang it during the March on Washington in 1963, and Rev. King repeated it to full effect in the last speech he made in 1968.

A video of Baez’ March on Washington performance isn’t available online, but here she is at Woodstock a year later:

Beth Blenz-Clucas is a Portland-based mom and musical bystander. When she’s not trying to convince a journalist to listen to the latest indie kids’ music CD, she’s enjoying the fact that she no longer needs to find a babysitter to enjoy the vibrant Northwest music scene. Check out more of her writing at Sugar Mountain PR.

Photo of Ella Jenkins by Bernadelle Richter, Adventures in Rhythm.