Tim Kubart, Kids Music Grammy Winner, First Among Equals

In the insular world of kids music, news that Tim Kubart won at the 58th Grammys the award for Best Children's Album for his album Home spread quickly and was met with universal acclaim.

In part, it's because Home is a really good album, filled with as many big pop hooks as you might find on a Taylor Swift album.

But there were lots of good albums nominated (the Fids and Kamily Awards agreed with my own assessment), and this was a year in which I would have been satisfied with whichever of the five nominees -- which also included Molly Ledford and Billy Kelly, Lori Henriques, Gustafer Yellowgold, and Jose-Luis Orozco -- won this year's award.

Now, outside the kids music world, well, I'm going to assume that that outside world is pretty big judging by the number of hits my site's received in the past 18 hours or so on pages such as that Home album review up there and my rundown of the list of nominees.

That's why it's what Tim did after his name was called and he and his bandmates jogged down to the stage to accept the award is what will endear him for a looooong time to the rest of us who've spent years in this genre.

58th Children's Music Grammy nominees at Lucky Strike Live

In his speech, which you can view here, Tim thanks a kajillion people in the many different roles he plays -- at one point, after thanking the "Tambourine Army," Kubart says, "I know a lot of this doesn't make sense, but it does to a lot of people." Simply by naming his fellow nominees by name and giving a shout-out to the fact that they were all independent artists (and first-time Grammy nominees, to boot), Kubart gave a boost to the genre. I'm sure that the other four nominees were disappointed that they didn't win, but Kubart's good-hearted nature and generous speech made it easy for them on social media to congratulate Tim. (As somebody noted on Facebook in a status update, "my thumbs are broken from hitting 'Like' so much.") It was really a "first among equals" sort of moment, and while kids music has many good ambassadors, and needs them all (and more) to reach that wide world still unaware of the excellence in this field, there are few I can think of who wear that suit as well and as gracefully as Tim.

Jose-Luis Orozco and band at Lucky Strike Live, Feb. 13, 2016

I should note that, yes, I did party with Grammy nominees on Saturday. The five nominees all played 3-song sets in Hollywood at Lucky Strike Live for an audience of bouncing kids.

I hung out at the back for the most part, listening to musicians I'd known for many years. While I hesitate to call them "friends" because I respect the distance and perspective necessary to observe and critique the genre, these are musicians whose effort I respect and whose company is worth having. That photo I took above with the nominees all together? I saw similar photos from the ceremony itself on Monday. While I've had lots of mixed thoughts over the years about the Grammy Awards and their value, if they can bring together artists once a year on the West Coast to party and celebrate what they do, then in my book, they've done enough.

58th Grammy Award Nominations for Best Children's Album

I am of mixed mind when it comes to the Grammys. I'm a fan, of course, of celebrating outstanding achievement in the kids' music world, but sometimes the nominees have been... interesting. Which isn't to say that we should celebrate or denigrate a process depending on how much we personally like or dislike the results, but given the tremendous fluctuation from year to year of what type of albums are getting nominated, in the runup to this morning's announcement of Grammy nominees, I deliberately kept a low-key attitude.

But, hey, setting aside any qualms I have about the Grammys and kids music generally, the list of nominees for Best Children's Album at the 58th Grammy Awards was announced this morning, and it is a fine, fine slate of nominees, including some of the best (and nicest) folks in the kids music genre. It features four newer artists and one legend, Jose-Luis Orozco, who, though his album tends somewhat more toward the folk/educational sound that may not catch as many modern listeners' ears as some of the other nominees here, is, as I said, a legend who I was surprised to find out earned his first Grammy nomination this morning. It's well-deserved.

In any case, here's a list of the five nominees and some links to let you explore further. The Grammys will be awarded Monday, February 15, with the awards in categories like Children's Album to be awarded earlier that weekend.

¡Come Bien! Eat Right!

Jose-Luis Orozco

[Review]

Bilingual album celebrating healthy eating, Orozco's first album on Smithsonian Folkways

Dark Pie Concerns

Gustafer Yellowgold

[Review]

Funny enough this should appear under Orozco's album -- this is all about food, too. But about as far away as possible from that album in style, lyrics, and just about everything else. Wonderful, but in its own way.

Home

Tim Kubart

[Review]

Pop hooks. So. Many. Pop. Hooks.

How Great Can This Day Be

Lori Henriques

[Review]

Tickles me pink to have Henriques' jazz and jazz-inflected songs on this list of nominees.

Trees

Molly Ledford & Billy Kelly

[Review]

Sui generis album about the natural world from two of kindie's most unique artists.

Ten Great Spanish-Language Kids Music Albums

Earlier this week, the 16th Annual Latin Grammys were awarded, and the Children's category featured 3 familiar names to fans of kindie (and Zooglobble): Mister G, Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band, and 123 Andrés. (The winner this time around was Mister G for Los Animales; Diaz won a couple years ago for ¡Fantástico!.)

Concurrently, as I wrote recently in my review of Sonia De Los Santos' latest album, I think we're in a third wave of Spanish kids music. And I believe that because this new wave has a broad range of musical sounds and is made for entertainment rather than explicitly educational (read: language-learning) reasons, it's likely to stick.

So I thought it was an appropriate time for me to produce a list I've been pondering for awhile, and that's this list of ten great Spanish-language kids music albums.

I'll be the first to admit that the relative paucity on this list of albums released before 2000 is a weakness of this list, but there are no weak albums here -- they are either essential albums from a historical or classroom setting, or they are lots of fun regardless of whether Spanish is your first, second, or sixth language.

I'll also say that this list was harder to compile than I initially thought it might be, not because I struggled to find ten albums to be on the list, but because I had to cut some albums that I initially thought would make it due to sheer numbers. But it's folks like Andrés Salguero and Mariana Iranzi, for example, whom I expect to continue to make quality music along with the rest of these artists.

It's a good time to listen to kids music sung in Spanish -- here are ten albums, ordered chronologically, to let you dive in.

ALERTA Sings / Songs for the Playground cover

Artist: Suni Paz

Album: ALERTA Sings & Songs for the Playground (2000 on CD; the two albums date to 1980 and 1977, respectively)

Description: 44 traditional nursery rhyme and playground songs, with some folk songs as well, sung by perhaps the best-known bilingual Spanish-language (female) kids' musician. (Paz has a number of albums for adults as well.) Released on Smithsonian Folkways. Features a handful of songs in English to go along with the primarily Spanish-language songs. Many songs for preschoolers, but also older

Artist: José-Luis Orozco

Album: De Colores and Other Latin American Folk Songs (2003 on CD, though it dates back to the '90s at least)

Description: 27 traditional folks songs for children, sung by perhaps the best-known bilingual Spanish-language (male) kids' musician. Looking for an album to learn songs for use in a (preschool) classroom setting? Start here.

Putumayo Kids - Brazilian Playground album cover

Artist (Label): Putumayo Kids

Album: Brazilian Playground (2007, tweaked and re-released in 2012)

Description: Putumayo has of course built its business on bringing songs from around the world to the English-speaking part of the world. This album is particularly dance-y. It's not necessarily "kindie," but it's a lot of fun. Oddly enough, even though the album got a second release, it's now out-of-print. Latin Playground, which draws from a broader range of countries, is an acceptable (in-print) substitute. [Review]

Artist: Dan Zanes

Album: ¡Nueva York! (2008)

Description: Probably the first "kindie" Spanish-language album, almost entirely in Spanish, but with an undeniably Zanes-ian roots-rock spin. It's not quite a "Dan Zanes" album -- it's missing some of the goofiness interwoven through his best work -- but it's generous and open in sharing the stage (or recording studio) with many wonderful artists and songs. [Review]

Artist: Baby Loves Salsa

Album: Salsa for Kittens & Puppies (2008)

Description: Part of the "Baby Loves..." series, which started with disco and then (briefly) branched into a series of different genres. This one is produced by Grammy winner Aaron "Luis" Levinson and features a host of all-star players, including Jose Conde on vocals. The lyrical content (mostly Spanish) is for preschoolers (it is "Baby Loves..." after all), but the music will appeal to a broader range.

Artist (Label): Minimusica

Album: Los Animales / Els Animals (2012)

Description: There is plenty of traditional Spanish-language folk music and instrumentation on this list, but this compilation was the first album that really changed my notion of what Spanish-language kids music could be -- it's basically indie rock for kids in Spanish, made for Spanish kids. Subsequent albums (Stateside) took a similar approach, but this is my favorite from Minimusica's four such collections. [Review]

Artist: Moona Luna

Album: Vamos, Let’s Go! (2013)

Description: Sandra Velasquez's band for kids can sometimes feel like it has an "educational" bent in that its lyrics are simple, often mimicking the English in its Spanish verses and vice versa. But she has a sharp ear for hooks, and this particular album, which uses the sounds of late '50s and early '60s rock and roll, has a unique sound not duplicated elsewhere on this list. Definitely one of my favorite bilingual artists. [Review]

Artist: Mister G

Album: Los Animales (2015)

Description: As the Massachusetts-based Mister G has recorded more albums in Spanish and English, his songs have become pared down more to their bare essentials. This album focuses on animals and is focused on preschoolers, but he brings in a number of top-notch musicians to give the songs a rich folk-rock texture with Latin accents. [Review]

Artist: Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band

Album: Adelante (2015)

Description: Diaz is another artist who is pushing the boundaries of what Spanish-language kids' music can sound like. This is a big, poppy bilingual record with a foot planted in English-language pop-rock and the other foot planted in more traditional Spanish sounds. If there's an album on this list that will challenge preconceptions of what Spanish-language kids music made in America can sound like, this is it. [Review]

Mi Viaje: De Nuevo Leon to the New York Island album cover

Artist: Sonia De Los Santos

Album: Mi Viaje: De Nuevo León To the New York Island (2015)

Description: I think it's appropriate that one of the artists featured by Dan Zanes on his ¡Nueva York! album gets a spot of her own. It takes a very broad view of Spanish-language music, covering songs from either side of the Atlantic Ocean and recounting, in a manner of speaking, her own journey from Mexico to New York City. Ecumenical in its musical approach, from traditional instrumentation to Dan Zanes roots-rock. [Review]

Review: Mi Viaje: De Nuevo Leon to the New York Island - Sonia De Los Santos

Sonia De Los Santos - Mi Viaje: De Nuevo Leon to the New York Island album cover

We are in at least the third wave of Spanish-language kids music. The first wave was a narrow but very deep wave, for the most part consisting of Jose-Luis Orozco and Suni Paz, who each have been making music and releasing records for roughly forty years. (They're still doing so.)

The two of them (separately) made their folk music, often with little more than their voices and guitars, but in the late 2000s, the second wave swept through. This second wave was considerably broader, but also far more shallow. This was because most of the music was designed with the idea of teaching Spanish to English speakers in mind. This led to literally dozens of Spanish-language albums featuring simplistic lyrics and, often, music to match. There were exceptions, of course -- Dan Zanes' ¡Nueva York! from 2008, his attempt to translate his age-desegregated music to a non-English idiom and capture in music the vibrancy of the Latin culture in New York City was the most notable -- but mostly they proved the rule. I don't know how successful these albums were in teaching Spanish, but the fact that such albums aren't released much these days suggests that there isn't much of a market for them, educationally or musically.

So here we are in the third wave, I think. What are the features of the third wave? I think they're threefold:

1) An expansion of the sound from guitar-based folk music to encompass not only traditional music from a wider range of Spanish-speaking countries, but also shinier pop and rock sounds.

2) The diminution of interest in the song as explicit Spanish-language teaching tool. There are still songs and albums for which that's a more important point, but they tend to be much better songs, which makes any educational point go down much more smoothly.

3) The choice to write songs in Spanish just because it happens to be the best language for telling the story of the song. Much as a musician might choose a particular genre, they can choose a language as well. Here in the United States, of course, English is usually the default option... but it's not the only option.

It's in this third wave that we find Sonia De Los Santos, who brings us Mi Viaje: De Nuevo León to the New York Island, her first solo album for families. Over the course of twelve tracks, De Los Santos sings about her journey ("viaje") from her home in Monterrey, Mexico to New York City. For the most part, the journey isn't literal, but rather a journey in song. Unsurprisingly, since De Los Santos first came to attention to the kids' music world when she joined Dan Zanes' band back around the time of ¡Nueva York!, Zanes plays an important role -- his Festival Five Records is releasing the album, and he and his band appear on several track. ("Tan Feliz," a De Los Santos original, has a very Zanes-ian folk-rock sound.)

But this is not another Dan Zanes album, which allows De Los Santos to put her own mark on the style of family music Zanes popularized. Setting aside the language difference (98% of the lyrics here are not in English), De Los Santos travels the Spanish-speaking hemisphere to dip into a broad series of styles.

As I live in the Southwest United States, and have for the better part of thirty years, perhaps I gravitated to the sounds most familiar to me, those of Mexico, the sons with sizable bands of stringed instruments (jarana and requinto, for example, which are versions of guitar). So "La Golondrina" ("The Swallow," another De Los Santos original) and album closer "Monterrey" appealed to me.

But it's definitely a broader tour than that as she records songs from Venezuela ("Luna y Lucero," or "The Moon and Star"), Chile ("Indeicto Dormido," featuring a distinctive pan flute sound), and Cuba ("Burubndanga," with Caridad De La Luz aka La Bruja helping out on vocals). She sings a lullaby, "Txoria Txori," in a language I've never even heard of before, let alone heard, Euskera, which is from the Basque region in Spain. She even translates a couple English-language songs into Spanish, most notable Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." Here, it becomes "Esta Es Tu Tierra," building from a single voice to a large chorus, and in its translation and structure, it's an artistic choice that is both subtler and bolder politically than anything else you're likely to hear on a kids' record this year.

The cumulative effect is indeed that of a journey, but I wish De Los Santos had been even more of a guide. De Los Santos' voice and the musical arrangements convey a fair amount of the songs' emotional and lyrical content, and she provides some brief comments in the liner notes, but there are no lyrical translations attached. (The website has some, but not all, translations as of the time of this writing.) I think, therefore, that some of the impact of the album will be muted for, say, the 5-year-old kid who doesn't happen to speak Spanish.

This will be an increasingly interesting choice for artists in the future -- do they make albums featuring non-English songs explicitly for an audience of primarily English speakers, or do they craft the albums for the target non-English-speaking audience and hope the English speakers come along for the ride? I think that artists are going to come down on both sides of that question, and continue to wrestle with what they're trying to do.

The 41-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 8. You can listen to "La Golondrina" here. As with most Festival Five albums, the physical album packaging is lovely -- it's definitely an album worth considering getting a physical version of.

Mi Viaje is an engaging album, and De Los Santos has succeeded in her goal of having listeners understand her journey from Mexico to New York City. A Spanish-language kids music album might seem like a niche record, but as De Los Santos and others in this third wave of Spanish-language kids music of the past couple years have shown, it can speak to a fairly broad audience. Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of this album for possible review.

Radio Playlist: New Music October 2015

This is the busiest time of the year for releases in the kids music world -- I would've held a couple of these back just to make the list a little shorter... but next month's will probably be just as long. If you want to catch my list from September you can see that playlist here.

As always, it's limited in that if an artist hasn't chosen to post a song on Spotify, I can't put it on the list, nor can I feature songs from as-yet-unreleased albums. But I'm always keeping stuff in reserve for the next Spotify playlist.

Check out the list here.

**** New Music October 2015 (October 2015 Kindie Playlist) ****

"Get Happy" - The Verve Pipe

"If You're Happy and You Know It" - Treva LaViva

"Breakfast Club (feat. Carly Ciaricchio)" - Tim Kubart

"Magic Elevator" - Hot Peas 'n Butter

"Love Is the Way" - Sunshine Collective

"All of the Colors" - Mil's Trills

"Bird's Tweets. Presto leggiero" - The Amazing Keystone Big Band

"Grapes" - Andrew & Polly

"Peach Tree" - Alex and the Kaleidoscope

"Verduras" - Jose-Luis Orozco

"Goin' to the Pool" - The Bug Family Band

"Speedy Hill" - Dad-a-Razzo

"This Land is Your Land" - Rolie Polie Guacamole

"The End" - Caspar Babypants

Review: !Come Bien! Eat Right! - José-Luis Orozco

José-Luis Orozco ¡Come Bien! Eat Right! album cover

It is easy to think of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings as the record label of Ella Jenkins, Pete Seeger, and many more who joined the label more than a half-century ago. But they've also signed up to release recordings from artists not even born when Ella and Pete first started recording -- hi, Elizabeth Mitchell, welcome, Sarah Lee Guthrie!

From that perspective, the fact that Los Angeles-based musician and educator José-Luis Orozco has joined the Folkways fold is both entirely fitting and novel. If you're not familiar with Orozco's work, then there's a good chance that you haven't been in a classroom with young kids, particularly a classroom with bilingual kids. Since 1971, Orozco has released 15 albums; his website's biography page says those albums (along with a DVD and 3 songbooks) have sold more than two million copies, and I believe it -- if you look at the iTunes and Amazon best-selling children's music lists, his albums, particularly De Colores and Other Latin American Folk Songs, are often found there. (That album is one of the very few kids' music albums that my wife, who's taught young kids and in classrooms with lots of bilingual speakers, introduced to me.)

Which brings us to !Come Bien! Eat Right!, Orozco's 16th album and his first distributed through Smithsonian Folkways. In one sense, it feels completely natural that a musician and educator of Orozco's standing should be part of a record label so committed to celebrating and spreading the folk music of the world here in the United States (and around the world). And in another sense, you're surprised that this grandfather isn't already part of that family and that it's taken all this time for the two to finally partner.

The album's theme, in case you haven't already guessed it from the title and album cover, is healthy eating. It features 38 songs, the first 19 in Spanish, followed by the same 19 songs in English translation. So, for example, the album leads off with "Damos gracias," a simple blessing sung in Spanish and accompanied only by percussion from producer and well-known Latin musician Quetzal Flores -- and then you can fast-forward nineteen tracks to track #20, "Thanksgiving," and listen to the same song (and arrangement) sung in English.

On Orozco moves through the meal -- fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains. Musically, the accompaniment is generally simple, but I think it shines best when it features other Los Angeles musicians, such as Gabriel Tenorio on the quinto sonero on "La comida en mi plato/The Food on My Plate" or Tylana Enomoto on violin on "Verduras/Veggies," one of my favorite tracks. There's some call and response on the album featuring a couple of kids, and, of course, "De Colores" makes an appearance, nimbly reworked into a song called "Sabroses colors/Tasty Colors," all about eating fruits and vegetables with healthy colors. And -- yay! -- "Chocolate," a classic traditional song that's always fun to sing along with.

You might think that this album is "educational," and... it totally is. I don't speak much Spanish, and so I could listen to the Spanish language tracks and enjoy them, but when I switched to the English-language versions, some of them seemed very... educational and lacking some of the vibrancy I felt on the Spanish-language track. Now that's OK, but if you -- or your kid -- are expecting something freewheeling, this album isn't that. There are definitely songs you could pull out and place onto a broader playlist, but as something to listen to 62 minutes straight without an explicit expectation that your family will learn more about healthy eating or learning a different language, it's not designed for that.

The album will be most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. I feel almost contractually obligated (note: I'm not) to mention that the album packaging and liner notes are lovely -- in this particular case all the notes are produced in Spanish on one side, and English on the other. The lovely illustrations are by Elisa Kleven.

Orozco's music has been heard by literally millions of kids, and his new association with Folkways is not the culmination of a career, but just another feather in the cap of a much-beloved and well-respected musician and educator. It wouldn't be the first choice of mine for an introduction to Spanish-language music, but for educators seeking to broaden their Spanish-language collections or looking for something bilingual to address issues of eating and nutrition, there's a bounty here. And the rest of us can certainly find a number of tracks to nibble on. Recommended.

Note: I received a copy of this album for possible review.