Kids tunes : great childrens music on CD

Annie Soundtrack

Cormac — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:36:55 +0000

Price: $14.97

Isabelle’s school put on two Christmas musicals this year - Bugsy Malone with the older kids and Annie with the younger. I didn’t really know what to expect, I hadn’t been to a school musical since I played Gertie Cummins (yes, a girl - I went to an all-boys school from the age of 8 ) in “Oklahoma!” myself, but I ended up enjoying it enormously. Doing these things as a kid, making a mistake IN FRONT OF ALL THOSE PEOPLE was horrifying, but when you’re in the audience the mistakes and the oddball things the children do are most of the fun - like a girl in senior infants reprimanding her classmate for looking the wrong way on stage, or a looooong pause in the dialogue ending in one boy reminding another of his lines in a loud whisper.

Isabelle’s class played a chorus of orphans. They shuffled onstage in their “orphanage-y” outfits, holding hands and blinking in the stage lights and looking tiny, to sing and do a kind of action dance during two of the songs. Really the experience was a bit overwhelming for Isabelle - she had sung the songs at home enough that Heather picked up the chorus of “Tomorrow” (singing “Tomowwo, onee a dee aweee” in her high chair), but on stage she spent half her time try to spot me and Niamh in the crowd, staring at the older girls and licking her lips over and over. She was still my favourite actor on the stage, of course, but I think she’ll enjoy it more next year.

This CD has become very popular in the house since. The big hit has been “The Hard-Knock Life” (you might know the chorus from the Jay-Z tune) which has knocked “Emmo dong” (”Elmo’s Song”, from Sesame St) off the number 1 spot in Heather’s most-requested-music list. “Daddeee! Had not IIIIFE!”, she says. Quite right too, it’s an absolute cracker. Other favourites are “Maybe” and “You’re never fully dressed without a smile”, and they’ve infiltrated themselves into mine and the kids’ consciousness to the extent that, at this stage, we’re starting to wreck Niamh’s head:

“Aaaargh! Guys! Please! It’s like I’m surrounded by the cast of Annie with you all breaking into song! Can’t you be quiet for JUST ONE MINUTE?”

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Captain Bogg and Salty - Pegleg Tango

Cormac — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:39:04 +0000

Price: $16.33

ARRRRRRR!!!

Normally I don’t get into music quickly - even stuff I end up loving will often take me 3 or 4 or 10 listens before I start to like it. Not so this CD - the first time I heard “Pieces of 8ight” I just couldn’t keep the smile off my face, it’s just so ridiculously up my street. I’m favourably disposed to seafaring and pirate-y stuff for a start, having worked as an oceanographer for a while and being, believe it or not, actually descended from pirates - according to my mother-in-law’s genealogical books the surname Parle comes from French pirates shipwrecked off south-eastern Ireland. There are other origin stories for the name, of course, but that’s the one I’m going with (wouldn’t you?). And as for the music, well, there’s a Russian-sounding melody and a xylophone and lots of “HEY!”s (Isabelle thinks it sounds like Gogol Bordello), so how can I resist? Isabelle loves it too - the first time I put it on she instantly got up and started dancing round the kitchen . And it’s got an amazing video, check it out:

The rest of the music is very diverse (Niamh thought it was a compilation at first) - there are other pirate-y sounding tracks like “Scallywag”, then there’s some Pogues-y traditional sea-shanty fare like “Weigh anchor” and then there’s rock’n'roll tunes like “Pirate party” and one real Flaming-Lips-style noughties indie rocker about a sea monster. The only misstep is yet another version of “Nellie the Elephant” (what is it with rock bands and Nellie the Elephant?) that doesn’t measure up to Mandy Miller’s original but the hilarious introduction to the song makes up for it. The rest is all great - really well-written party songs with really funny lyrics and interludes. I’d absolutely love to see them live, though being from the north-western US I don’t expect they’ll be setting their compasses for Ireland anytime soon. The album has achieved the ultimate accolade in my book - I’ve gone and learned two of the songs - so next time you’re at a party with me (not that I go to many parties these days) expect to hear me calling on myself to sing them.

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Sesame Street Platinum All-Time Favourites

Cormac — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:19:10 +0000

Price: $16.33

I mustn’t have watched much TV as a kid, because when people around me have nostalgic conversations about Grange Hill and He-Man and the like I’m utterly lost, but, like everyone else who grew up in the 70s, I did watch Sesame Street. I honestly can’t remember what I thought of it at the time, but then we put this CD on in the kitchen and heard:

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street

Niamh, washing the dishes, just said “Oooooooh!”. Then on came:

Who are the people in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood

In your neigh-bour-hood …

… and I couldn’t stop grinning, I felt like I was 5 again. Obviously not every song you might have loved in your childhood is here (like the sadly absent “One of these kids is doing his own thing”), but there’s a wide enough selection from across the years to put a smile on the face of any grown-up - from “C is for Cookie” to “Elmo’s song”.

As for Isabelle’s and Heather’s reactions - well, Sesame St is famous for testing everything they do on kids and only using stuff that the kids really engage with, and it shows. They’ve never seen the show, but Isabelle has really taken to the characters just based on the songs - “Who’s singing this? Grover? Is he a boy? He sounds like Mrs. Piggy.” (yes, Mrs. Piggy, she doesn’t really get the Mrs./Miss thing just yet - she calls Heather “Little Mrs. Mischief”) - and now she’s listening to lyrics a bit she’s getting a big kick out of the idea of monsters singing about how much they love rubbish and frogs lamenting their colour. And Heather spent Friday morning squealing with delight while “dancing” her baby dolly up and down on the kitchen floor to “Rubber Duckie”.

So - a fun nostalgic treat for adults, and the kids dig it too.

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Celtic Dreamland

Cormac — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:59:36 +0000

Price: $18.37

This is my second discovery from myself and Heather’s weaning week. I normally shy away from anything with the word “celtic” in it. Not that I’ve got anything against Irish music - I could sing you ballads all night long (or could have once, fatherhood hasn’t been kind to my memory) - but “celtic” makes me think of … well, druids and healing crystals. And Enya. So I was half expecting New Age renditions of Danny Boy, but happily I got almost the exact opposite - honest-to-goodness performances of some really top-notch Irish/Scottish music I had (mostly) never heard before. The tunes are not strictly lullabies, but they - songs and traditional dancing music both - are all quiet and soothing and I guess babies don’t care about strict definitions one way or the other.

My favourite tune is called “Goodnight and joy” - it seems to be a variation on the well-known “The Parting Glass” and it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck every time I hear it. The other highlight is a jig called “The Dove’s Return” played on harp which is … well, I hesitate to use the word “magical” because the word is almost as suspect as “celtic”, but really it is magical - plus it’s got pretty much the perfect rocking-to-sleep tempo and rhythm and on a normal night it’s rare that Heather makes it to the end awake.

Highlights aside, this is consistently good all the way through and I’d recommend it to anyone. Like Asian Dreamland it performed well in rigorous field-testing, and it has the added benefit, on account of the music being so good, of being inclined to distract you from the fact that you’ve been pacing the floor half the night and have to go work in 3 hours. A sanity saver.

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Beethoven lives upstairs

Cormac — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:23:39 +0000

Price: $18.37

A children’s introduction to Beethoven, this is the story of a young boy called Christoph who lives in 1820s Vienna. After his father’s death, his mother takes in a lodger who Christoph thinks is a madman - eccentric, unkempt in the extreme and constantly making a racket in his room. He writes to his uncle to complain, and the story continues in the form of letters between the two of them. The boy’s initial hostility towards the lodger (none other than Ludwig Van Beethoven) softens and eventually, as the premiere of the 9th symphony approaches, they kinda become friends.

Beethoven’s music underscores the text throughout - symphonies 5-9, the Moonlight and Pathetique sonatas and lots more. The music isn’t separate from the story, it’s more like the soundtrack - I guess the theory is that your child (and you) will come to know and love the tunes by osmosis. It’s hard to tell how well the theory has worked on Isabelle - I did try to see how she’d get on listening to the 5th symphony on its own one day and was amazed at how quiet she was being until I realised she had fallen asleep.

She really loves this CD though, whatever about the theory. On our first listen in the car during our summer holidays she dozed off halfway through and we thought it was obviously too old for her and were trying to decide what older kid to pass it on to (it didn’t help either that Niamh took against the boy narrator, Christoph, because he was “a whinger”). When she woke up she surprised us by demanding to continue listening, and then demanding the album regularly (along with Peter and the Wolf) all through the holiday (and since).

The story really draws you in after a while (even Niamh got to like Christoph eventually) - it’s fiction, of course, but you feel like you’re getting a real insight into the composer’s life and times - and naturally the music is fantastic. So while I can’t guarantee that your children will be able to tell the 7th symphony from the 6th after listening to this, if they’re anything like mine they’ll enjoy listening to it (Isabelle grandly declared that this is the third best CD ever, after Rompe and Mamma Mia) and you might too.

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Raffi - Singable songs for the very young

Cormac — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:25:15 +0000

Price: $18.37

Raffi is a kind of godfather of children’s music - not that he invented it, but he’s very much associated with its rise as a distinct genre in the 1970s, and he’s still putting out records (most recently in 2006). He’s better-known on the far side of the Atlantic where this record, released in 1976, remains a best-seller, but even so you’ll most likely recognise some of the songs. “Mr. Sun”, for instance, was used regularly in “Bosco” (a 70s/80s Irish kids tv show) in the part where they used to go through The Magic Door. “Brush your teeth” is, according to Isabelle, now used in Barney, and then there’s a few singalongs that everyone knows, like “Baa baa black sheep” and “Going to the zoo”.

It’s not hard to see the reasons for this guy’s enduring success. There’s none of the grating in-your-face cheerfuless you get in some kids music and TV, he just sings the songs straight up like some kind of friendly uncle. His voice is warm and rich, his band (in which Daniel Lanois plays mandolin) is capable without getting in the way and he totally doesn’t talk down to his audience. Even “Brush your teeth”, in which you might reasonably expect children to be hectored about not eating sweets, turns about to be a funny little rhyme based on the sound that the toothbrush makes in your mouth. I don’t know about your kids, but this approach is far more effective at encouraging mine to brush than my best technical explanation of cavity formation by acid-forming bacteria in the presence of sugars.

As well as being a really enjoyable listen, with some emotional depth amongst the fun like the poignant little “I wonder if I’m growing”, there’s some great jumping off points here for family singalongs. I spent this evening amusing everyone with my extra nonsense couplets for “Down by the bay” (like “Did you ever see some trees/Doing a sneeze?”), and “Willoughby Wallaby Woo” makes Isabelle completely crack up with laughter when you add teachers from her school to the song like this:

Willoughby Wallaby Woo, an elephant sat on you

Willoughby Wallaby Wee, an elephant sat on me

Willoughby Wallaby Wister Hoey, an elephant sat on Mister Hoey

Willoughby Wallaby Wiss Ryan, an elephant sat on Miss Ryan

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Mary Poppins soundtrack

Cormac — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:27:37 +0000

Price: $14.97

Mary Poppins is one of the two kids DVDs in my parents’ house, and it’s the one Isabelle always wants to watch when we visit. If you haven’t seen the film then you should - recently Isabelle was watching a bit of it before bed, and after she was tucked in myself and Niamh and both my parents all sat down and had an absolute blast watching the rest. It’s funny and crazy and warm-hearted, with an ending that’ll make any Dad cheer.

The songs were written, funny enough, by the Sherman brothers who also wrote the music for The Jungle Book - real old-school professional songwriters whose father was also a songwriter, on Tin Pan Alley, and whose grandfather had been a composer in the court of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. They won Best Song and Best Musical Score Oscars for this, and the music is so different from The Jungle Book you’d hardly believe the same people wrote it. Instead of jazz it’s English music hall, which means there’s sentimental ballads like “Feed the birds”, comic songs like “I love to laugh” and dance numbers with oom-pahs and frantic singalong choruses like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Every single song is a knockout and, though the performances are far less “perfect” then you’d find in more recent Disney films - Julie Andrews is probably the only actor in this who’d be allowed sing in a modern movie - they’re bursting with character and all the better for it. I really can’t recommend this highly enough, it’s a true cast-iron classic - I even love Dick Van Dyke’s (as Bert) famously terrible cockney accent.

Speaking of Dick Van Dyke as Bert, I was casting around for his name when we were listening to the CD in the kitchen last week and Isabelle says “I know his name, it’s Youbert”. Youbert? It was only when “Jolly Holiday” came on and Mary sang “It’s a jolly holiday with you, Bert” did I realise where she got it from. So she’s listening to the words now, hmmm. I think it’s time to discreetly hide about half my CDs.

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Asian Dreamland

Cormac — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:40:11 +0000

Price: $18.37

I mentioned before that I was planning a week of nightshifts in order to wean Heather off feeding at night. It didn’t go exactly as planned, as things were going crazy in my dayjob so I had to drag my spaced-out head in there each afternoon. It did, however, actually kinda work - before the week the latest she had arrived in our bed for the night was 2.45am, and now she’s getting to past 6am about half the time and she doesn’t look for milk if she does wake (which is usually because she’s teething - hurry up and grow, teeth!). Not exactly perfect, but a great leap forward nevertheless.

Anyway, in advance of the week, I stocked up on lullaby records and this is one of the best. The majority of the music on here is Japanese, but there’s also tunes from India, China, Tibet and Tatarstan (a republic in the Russian federation). One thing that really surprised me is how accessible the Japanese music is. The singing and the instrumentation can be pretty oriental-sounding, and perhaps it’s just the fact I’ve listened to this so often now, but if you changed the arrangements and had someone sing them in English I don’t know if you’d guess where the music is from. The Chinese and Indian tunes, on the other hand, you can spot a mile off - the former in particular really evokes the Chinese countryside, or rather my imaginary version of of it, complete with paddy fields and terraced hillsides and peasants in conical hats. Considering the closest I’ve been to China is watching “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” I suppose that might not correspond too closely to reality.

It’s hard to pick stand-out tracks. I love the Tatar Cradle Song, “Kokoro Ni Dakarete” from Japan and the Chinese one, but really it’s all pretty much perfect lullaby music - sparse arrangements, gentle singing and slow steady rhythms. I’ve given it some fairly extensive real-world testing during my nightshifts, and it’s performed well. It’s not a magic bullet - one night Heather didn’t close her eyes once from midnight to 3am, and slept only fitfully thereafter - but even so it got me some sleep that I wouldn’t otherwise have got, both helping to calm Heather down and keeping her asleep when she had finally drifted off, and it’s still one of my go-to albums on teething nights.

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Peter and the Wolf - Prokofiev / Dame Edna Everage

Cormac — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:28:36 +0000

Price: $13.61

The central children’s theatre in Moscow commissioned Sergei Prokofiev to write this to cultivate “musical tastes in children from the first years of school”, and it’s gone on to become pretty much the children’s classical music classic. Composed for narrator and orchestra, it’s the story of a young boy outsmarting everyone and catching a wolf. Each character has its own tune played on a particular instrument - flute for the bird, strings for Peter, horns for the wolf, etc. - and the tunes re-appear throughout the piece as the story progresses. I think listening to this as a kid is where I got the idea that on oboe sounds like a duck (which, now that I think of it, it doesn’t really all that much).

This particular recording is narrated by Dame Edna Everage and she does a wonderfully dramatic job of it - her “LOOK OUT!” when Peter spots the cat stalking his friend the bird nearly made Isabelle leap out of her car seat. The orchestra is great too - they play with relish, and the strings in particular are very rich-sounding, even on our very dodgy car stereo (we have to copy CDs to tape because there’s no CD player in the car).

The music itself might not be what you’d expect from a 20th century composer - it’s very melodic, and I was amazed to find I could still sing along with most of it despite not having heard it since my own childhood. Peter’s and the cat’s tunes are the real stand-outs, both of which I’m sure everyone in my office knows now from me whistling them going up and down the stairs. The pieces are short enough for young attention spans and the story keeps Isabelle engaged, so it’s ideal for the car - we brought it on holiday with us a while ago, and between this and the Classical Kids CD “Beethoven Lives Upstairs” Isabelle was kept absorbed for hours.

Also on the CD is “Babar the Elephant” by Francis Poulenc, another story with musical interludes. The story - about a little elephant who, when his mother is shot by a hunter, goes to live in a town where he wears clothes and drives a car, eventually driving it home to the forest where he, out of the blue, becomes king - is utterly bizarre, like one of the crazy stream-of-consciousness stories Isabelle makes up herself. The music is, mostly, less accessible than Peter - the harmonies more astringent and the melodies less hummable. That’s not to say that I don’t like it - it reminds me of Stravinsky’s ballets a bit, which I love, but it’s inclined to make Isabelle fall asleep.

Then right at the end is Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”, which is a more explicitly educational introduction to the different orchestral instruments, but we seldom make it this far before Isabelle demands to go back and listen to the Peter story again.

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Apple Brains - Get Fruity!

Cormac — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:58:36 +0000

Price: $13.61

Super-catchy lo-fi indie-rock songs about fruit and vegetables. After hearing “Apple x3″ first I drove Niamh crazy by constantly singing it:

Me: “Apple apple apple growing in a tree …”

Her: “STOP! STOP! You’ll put me off the song before I even hear it properly!”

It was harder to stop than you’d think, I’d suddenly realise I was singing “App ..” and think “Oh no! I’m doing it again” and snap my mouth shut half way through the first word before Niamh could give me a Stern Look.

There’s a cool kinda home-made feel to this CD. Niamh reckons it sounds like The Moldy Peaches doing Sesame Street, which I guess means the songs are very (very!) singalong-able and the production tends towards the spontaneous rather than the slick, like it was recorded on a budget by musicians intent on enjoyment rather than perfection. The lyrics are more fun, and less preachy, than you’d expect from a record that deliberately sets out to extol the virtues of healthy eating, and the song titles are brilliant - “Tomatoes are so wonderful they make me want to cry”, for example, or “A mango is a precious egg to be cherished”. Isabelle’s funny bone is tickled bigtime by the occasional silly voices and crazy sound effects, as well as, oddly, the line “Jump up and down/Because potatoes are brown” in “Lots of different colors”. She also likes to make up her own imaginary vegetables for the empty singalong verses in the same song, and to dance madly to “Growing like crazy” as it gets faster and faster and FASTER. I love the little variations on the indie-rock template - there’s a waltz in here, plus an occasional appearance from a latin-sounding horn section. It’s the tunes though that really make the whole CD stand out - irresistibly melodic and heaps of fun.