Video: "Who Got the Baby in the King Cake" - Johnette Downing

The twelfth day of Christmas, known as Epiphany, is the kickoff to a whole season of “King Cake” baking in New Orleans. During Carnival season, folks bake this ring-shaped pastry with brioche dough, with a plastic baby hidden inside. The lucky person who finds the baby is “king” for a day… and, in some traditions, is obligated to host the next party. It’s a virtuous, party-giving circle, all the way through Mardi Gras.

Johnette Downing has recorded many albums featuring the music and traditions of the New Orleans area she calls home, not to mention having written and illustrated a number of books as well. Her latest book, Who Got the Baby in the King Cake?, recounts the tradition.

To go along with the book, Downing and her husband Scott Billington recruited a trio of Crescent City heavy hitters for a horn front line (trumpeter Kevin Clark, trombonist Craig Klein, and clarinetist Tim Laughlin) to record the book’s accompanying musical track. It grooves and struts sounds classically New Orleans. (The track is from Downing and Billington’s forthcoming album Swamp Romp.)

Anyway, there’s a video to go along with it, which also features Downing’s vibrant illustrations. It’s a bunch of fun. Here’s hoping you find the baby in at least king cake this season.

Johnette Downing - “Who Got the Baby in the King Cake” [YouTube]

Video: "Blue" - Ants Ants Ants (World Premiere!)

Why Why Why? album cover

Yay for new bands making a splash!  The band in question is Ants Ants Ants, and even before the release of their debut album Why Why Why? next month, I'm already tickled pink by one of their brand new videos.  It's for the song "Blue," about blue whales, inspired in part by a conversation which one half of the duo Johnny Clay had with his daughter -- “On the way to school one morning, my 7 year old asked what the biggest animal on earth was - I told her it was a blue whale and we looked it up together when we got to school. We found out they can be 80 feet long!”

For the gentle, hummable song about blue whales, the Portland, Oregon duo of Johnny Clay and Dave Gulick turned to animator Chris Purdin.   The animation from Purdin (who also did the album art) is a perfect fit for the music, friendly and warm.  I'm happy to world-premiere the video.  And while Why Why Why? isn't available until May 20th, if you pre-order it at all the places you preorder music these days, you can get "Blue" as an instant download.  So go forth and, er, dive in!  [Slinks away slowly...]

Ants Ants Ants - "Blue" [YouTube]

Video: "Constellation Jig" - Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer (World Premiere!)

Zoom a Little Zoom cover

While I think one of the things I've appreciated most about kids music over the past decade plus is the genre's expansion into new sounds, it's a little sad that there isn't as much history, so to speak, aside from the many traditional folk songs that reinterpreted many times over.

So I was glad to hear that Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, key players in the kids music field for many years, were honoring some of their forebears with their forthcoming album Zoom a Little Zoom! A Ride Through Science.  The new album takes songs from the classic set of albums called Ballads for the Age of Science.  Those albums, also known as the Singing Science Records, featured songs by lyricist Hy Zaret and composer Lou Singer, performed by Dorothy Collins, Smithsonian Folkways artist Tom Glazer, and more.  They Might Be Giants covered a couple songs off the album, so it's not totally unfamiliar, but as songs that essentially beat Schoolhouse Rock by a full decade, they're important in the history of American kids music.

Fink and Marxer don't cover every song off the albums, but the ones they do, including this one, "Constellation Jig," (very Irish, natch) get contemporary arrangements commissioned by Zaret's son Robert. The accompanying video is lovely, with lots of detailed animations (including, of course, the constellations themselves) to accompany the lyrics.  I'm happy to world-premiere the video below.  And if you want to pick up the album, which comes out this Friday, March 30, feel free to check out iTunes or Amazon.

Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer - "Constellation Jig" [YouTube]

Video: "The Starlighter" - Shawn Colvin

The Starlighter cover

I don't want to say that I squealed aloud when news came across my desk that Shawn Colvin was doing an album for kids and families... but I sure squealed silently to myself.  Like many others of a certain age, I was a big fan of her 1996 album A Few Small Repairs, and I have a good feeling about her ability to bring tenderness and understanding to an album geared at a younger crowd.

The singer-songwriter announced this week that her next album would be The Starlighter, released exclusively through Amazon Music early next year.

On the album, Colvin returns to Lullabies and Night Songs, a 1960s-era book which featured composer Alec Wilder's arrangements of traditional and children's songs and artwork from Maurice Sendak.  Colvin already dipped into the book once for her 1998 holiday album Holiday Songs and Lullabies, and for this new album, she pulls 14 songs from the book.

The leadoff video for the album is for the title track, a hypnotic ballad whose video, based on Victorian paper theatres, matches its dreamlike quality.  The layered illustrations and motion design come courtesy of WeFail.  It's a lovely work of art, and leads me to high expectations for what's to come.

You can preorder the album here.  The Starlighter is released on February 23.

Shawn Colvin - "The Starlighter" [YouTube]