Herbie Hancock and Watermelon Man:
At Duane St. WMS, we have been learning about Herbie Hancock and his classic composition Watermelon Man! Here are three videos you can check out: One is the actual lesson we've been doing about Herbie Hancock. This was filmed at one of the Timbalooloo music classes that people host in their homes. I suggest you watch that first to put it all in the context in which the kids have learned it. The following Video is of Herbie Hancock playing a solo piano version of it. He starts off playing the song, and then improvises, making up other melodies based on the original song. The third video is Herbie playing with his mentor and teacher, the great Miles Davis. Herbie originally wrote and recorded Watermelon Man in the 60s, but this video is very much from the 80s as you'll see. You can point out the different instruments to your kids as they're featured in the video. After everyone plays the main melody of the song, they take turns improvising. The first improvisation is actually a musical conversation between Miles Davis on the trumpet and Herbie Hancock playing a special keyboard held like a guitar... the keytar. It's great to see them being playful and smiling as they converse musically.
If you enjoy this, I highly encourage you to buy the original Herbie Hancock album from 1962, Takin' Off. Also, if you want to purchase Timbalooloo CDs like "Wake Up, Clarinet!", there are some at the front desk of both Duane St and Hudson St, or you can buy CDs or MP3s here.
"High Low" - Learning about pitch and the notes Mi and Do:
We have been doing many songs and games in order to develop the children's sense of pitch (high vs low sounds). We connect the vertical terms low and high to their relative sounds by talking about birds (that fly up high, make high sounds and are small) and cows (live low, make low sounds and are big). We have been playing games like "Pitch Switch", in one child points to the bird or cow and the other child must translate that cue and play the appropriate sound on the piano! Here is an original Timbalooloo song about High and Low that uses two pitches-- mi and do (that they will soon learn and get to play as well)!
Yekeke - What The Djembe Says When He's Happy!:
We have been learning a long story about the Djembe drum from Mali West Africa. As the story has developed from week to week, we have met the Djembe maker and learned how he carved the djembe from the tree, then gave the djembe to the silly Djembe Fola (master drummer) who forgot how to play the djembe until the kids showed him. The story continues as the Djembe travels to New York and meets instruments from other cultures. The story provides opportunities to learn about music, culture, history, math, foreign languages and self-expression. This is the song that the Djembe sings when he gets to New York because he is so happy, that he says... Ye-Ke-Ke!"
In the first video, you can see the full lesson of Yekeke as we present it in music class. This video was taken in one of the Timbalooloo music classes that happen in people's homes, organized by parents:
In the second video, you can see how this song is done with a full ensemble. This video was taken by a fan in the audience of the Theatre Moliere in Brussels, Belgium, where I performed with my Kelenia project last spring. You can hear a lot of the call and response of the song between the singer and the clarinet, and then a nice djembe solo by the great Yeye Kante from Guinea. You can also see the balafon, a predecessor to the balafon that we will learn about soon... the original 800 year old Balafon is actually still in the same family as this balafon player in this video. Unfortunately, the person who filmed this from the audience disabled embedding on the video, so please CLICK HERE TO WATCH A LIVE VIDEO OF YEKEKE WITH A FULL BAND
This song is also on Oran Etkin's CD "Kelenia". There are some CDs for sale at the front desk of both Duane St and Hudson St, or you can buy CDs or MP3s here.
Mali Sajo - Beautiful Song About A Hippo From Mali:
As we continue our in-depth exploration of Malian culture and music, we have been singing this beautiful song about Mali Sajo, a hippo who helped the children cross the river. This is the song that the children sang to Mali Sajo and that we can sing now to remember all the wonderful things she did. The words are "Oh, Mali Sajo, Oh Mali Sa"
The first video is an instrumental version from a sound-check before a performance at the Portland Jazz Festival I did with Malian Kora player Yacouba Sissoko. The second video is of the great kora player Toumani Diabate and has great images of Mali in the video (clips of traditional dances and drumming, Malian shepherds and the traditional way of tuning the djembe by placing it next to a fire to make it warm up and the pitch rise). I actually have fond memories of playing this specific song with Toumani when I was in Mali in 2001! The singer on here doesn't really sing the song exactly like we sing it, but rather tells the story of Mali Sajo through his song. In the third clip, you can hear the singing in the same way that we do it at school, singing "oh mali sajo, oh mali sa". That is the simplest version of the melody, so once you are familiar with that, you will hear the Mali Sajo melody in the other videos too.
We Shall Overcome:
In the period around Martin Luther King Day, we learned this beautiful spiritual which gained prominence in the civil rights era. We used this to speak a little bit about how MLK noticed that people are different and that's okay and when people treated him badly because he was different, he got all the people who didn't like that and they used the power of their words by speaking and singing and telling everyone that that is not okay. One of the words they liked to use is "overcome". At Hudson, the children are learning about the concept of motif development in composition by learning how to play the first phrase on the xylophone and then seeing how all the other phrases of the song develop from that one phrase, just like a tree grows from a small seed.
There are many great recordings of this song. We picked these two versions by two great artists - Bruce Springstein and Louis Armstrong. In each one, you can hear the personality of the singer come through so strongly that you really feel that you know who they are! This is great for children to see the same song being done in such a personal way by two very different artists.
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