Category Archives: Music

CD Review: Cat and a Bird, “Cat and a Bird”

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Cats and birds, generally speaking, don’t play nicely together — check any random Sylvester and Tweety short if you don’t believe me — but the laws of the universe have been known to bend from time to time, and here’s Cat and a Bird’s breezily addictive debut for proof.

Offering a dozen tracks of jazzy, acoustic-based pop, topped off with sun-kissed melodies and delightfully charming female vocals, Cat and a Bird is kind of like a kindie-friendly version of Swing Out Sister mashed up with, I don’t know, Leon Redbone or something — only with sharper hooks and extra helpings of tongue-in-cheek humor. The whole thing sounds like a smile on a warm spring day, and given that I’m writing this while surrounded by hard-packed mid-March New Hampshire snow, you can probably guess how much I appreciate listening to it.

It is, in a word, wonderful, and I can’t stop listening to it. (Not that I’d stop if they didn’t, but my kids love it too.) The arrangements are fairly sophisticated for family music (and I’m not complaining), but the lyrics are decidedly kid-friendly; each track tells a different animal-centric tale, from “Bee Jive” to “Butterfly,” “Night Owl,” and the insanely catchy “150 Year Old Surfer Turtle” (listen to it once and then try and get it out of your brain — I dare you). Check out the lyrics, along with adorable illustrations, at the Cat and a Bird website.

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A Conversation with Ella Jenkins

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Ella Jenkins is called the first lady of children’s music, and for good reason — she is a Lifetime Grammy Achievement Award winner who has been recording for over 50 years, and with her new album, A Life of Song, she’s still going strong. I was thrilled and honored to spend some time with her on the phone recently, talking about her amazing life and career.

So let’s talk about A Life of Song. You’ve certainly lived one.

Well, I’ll tell you. I liked to sing when I was a small child. Not that my mother or father sang, but my uncle introduced me to music, as well as my first instrument, which was the harmonica. I really enjoyed that. I’m not a formal musician, I’ve just always done it by ear, and that’s how I share it with people today. I would still encourage anyone to train formally, but you don’t have to — just by singing, or even through exposure to music, you’re part of it. Often that’s what children do — they listen to music and then take parts of what they hear to make their own. I’ve always hummed or whistled or something. You don’t need an instrument or a band — birds sing all the time. Continue reading →

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CD Review: Ladysmith Black Mambazo, “Songs from a Zulu Farm”

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Ladysmith Black Mambazo has one of the most unique sounds in modern music — and also one of the most malleable, as demonstrated by a run of recent projects that has seen their traditional isicathamiya vocals blended with electronic textures (Chillout Sessions), the English Chamber Orchestra (No Boundaries), and a wide array of pop-star special guests (Long Walk to Freedom). All of these releases have their charms, but there’s still nothing quite like the sound of the group’s voices in their purest form, and their new album, Songs from a Zulu Farm, is a fitting return to basics.

I say “fitting” because Songs from a Zulu Farm is a children’s album, at least nominally speaking; it’s a collection of traditional songs that Ladysmith’s members remember from their youth, and while they haven’t released a single album that wouldn’t be appropriate for kids — and while it’s extremely unlikely your children will be familiar with songs like “Imbongolo” or “Ntulube” — there’s an increased sense of the group’s trademark childlike joy in these songs that culminates with the playful closing track, “Old MacDonald Zulu Style.”

If your kids aren’t accustomed to hearing vocal music, or lyrics they can’t understand, they may approach Songs from a Zulu Farm warily. My daughter, for one, took awhile to warm up to it; at first, she just couldn’t get past the fact that she didn’t know what was happening in the songs.

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But she eventually came around, and that’s part of what kids’ music is all about — giving parents an opportunity to act as a gateway into new sounds for our children.

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All of what they hear doesn’t have to be — shouldn’t be — the stuff they’re accustomed to, and often, as with Songs from a Zulu Farm, expanding their horizons helps reinforce the beautiful universality of the language of music. It’s a journey we should all take more often.

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Visit Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s Facebook page to hear tracks from Zulu Farm, as well as watch videos (including the behind-the-scenes electronic press kit).

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