2 Tunes 2 Ways
Beth Blenz-Clucas blogs about music for kids that grownups will love too
Why is it that this time of year, people want to hear the same old songs and stories? You’d think we’d have had our fill by now: Burl Ives and Rudolf, Charlie Brown and his scrawny Christmas tree, poor little Tiny Tim and his “Merry Christmas to us all!” Ah, but there’s something comforting and joyful in the repetition. We feel a tingle of familiarity from the old Christmas carols, and even “The Nutcracker” never seems to get stale.
This week, I rediscovered the Alvin and the Chipmunks “Christmas Don’t Be Late” song and just couldn’t stop listening. No doubt, I heard this song repeatedly as a kid. And now, at least once each day since December 15th, I’ve been irresistibly drawn to play this song several times a day. What is it about Alvin’s plaintive “Please, I want a hula hoop?” that sends me? Read more...
2 Tunes 2 Ways
Once kids get to age 4 or so, they are ready to move beyond familiar nursery songs (“Row Row Row Your Boat,” “Twinkle Twinkle”) to try to master songs with a little more complexity. Hence, the appeal of classic rhymes like “The House that Jack Built” and “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” and story songs like “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
As this literary blogger notes, these repetitive, cumulative rhyming songs provide lasting appeal. And in the grand folk tradition, these songs are often tinged with “a good sprinkling of underlying, shivery darkness.” Cumulative story-songs are part of an ancient, memory-enhancing oral tradition handed down through countless generations. Kids respond to these songs as if they come from deep within their genetic coding.
Read more...
2 Tunes 2 Ways
When it’s party time, there’s nothing like get-down funky music to get things started. The Sugar Free Allstars employ a simple setup – just two performers on a Hammond B-3 organ and a drum kit – but they deliver a grand and groovy sound.
Groovy? Did I just say that? Anyway, here is how the band describes itself, and it probably makes the most sense to people who once actually used the term “groovy” all the time: “Imagine that Deep Purple and Sly and the Family Stone had a love child that grew up in New Orleans listening to Ray Charles, Black Sabbath and Booker T. That love child would be the Sugar Free Allstars.”
It’s enough to make me wonder whatever happened to my 1970s purple crushed velvet bellbottoms. Read more...
