We Return to Music Class

Fans, as you may recall, last Saturday were to be our first music classes of the season. Alas, the bambini were sick, so our first music classes were this Saturday. Clara is enrolled in Musical Explorations, and Joe is enrolled in Musical Make Believe. We plan to flip which parent accompanies each child each Saturday, but for this first time around, Julie was Clara's handler and Ted, Joe's. Julie can report that Musical Explorations with Birdie is a whole different experience than Musical Explorations with Joe. Sit down? In a lap? Dude. There's music on. You got to shake what your mama gave you! Yes, our Birdie, true to fashion, was not to be contained. She was mesmerized by the goings on and engaged in all of it. She shook jingle bells, she waved a ribbon wand about, she chewed on rhythm sticks and a ball, and "[she] sailed and [she] sailed and [she] stopped!", and she went under the parachute as it was waved up and down and giggled her little heart out. By the end of class, she was pretty zonked, could not be kept awake in the car on the way home, and napped until four!

Ted reports that Joe's class involves an art project. Clearly, a holistic approach to the arts in Musical Make Believe. Also, by the time one has progressed to Musical Make Believe, one has progressed beyond the usual opening ditty (Duo Duo*) to Sing With Me**. Readers, you will note that we include the opening lyrics to Sign With Me below, and can do so, despite the fact that but one of us has been to but on class. This is because we were given another of the MacPhail Center for Music's early childhood music education CDs, aptly titled Sing With Me, and Our Hero is rather taken with it, and specifically, tracks one (Sing With Me) and twleve (Floating Down the River). Sing With Me is the second effort and, it would seem, they cannot give enough of these things away, in contrast to the first, for which you practically had to promise to name your next born MacPhail to obtain a copy. Here we pause to note three things, and will leave you with them:

1. This second effort is not a Billboard chart topper.

2. In Sing With Me, the song, the singers, rather annoyingly given the "all together now!" lyrics, do not sing all together. What?

3. We sing Floating Down the River better than these two ladies that sing it on Sing With Me, the album. Our rendition is full of joy, the way any song that does, or can be made to, linger on the O vowel (e.g. OOOOOHHHHH-klahoma where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain!). We are thinking of heading into the studio to cut some vocals.

*Hello, Friends, duo duo.

Hello, Friends, duo duo.

Hello, Friends, duo duo.

Shake your fingers down.

Repeat, exchanging Friends for child's name.

**Sing with me, all together now!

Sing with me, all together now!

sing with me, all together now!

Won't you be my darlin'?