Your one-of-a-kind All Around This World Musical Map of Latin America is here! Over the last few months I’ve had the pleasure of working with Uruguayan illustrator Gustavo Wenzel to create something neither of us has ever seen before–a fun, family-friendly and fully illustrated map of any part of the world–in this case Latin America–that serves as a geographical guide to that region’s main musical styles and instruments. This map introduces you to over fifty Latin American genres and even more instruments, then adds and extra special bonus by showing you the countries of origin of the songs on your All Around This World: Latin America CD. If you’re taking music class this season you’ll recognize Gustavo’s drawing as the thing I’ve been passing out in sections on the back of your weekly class handouts. It’s a great-looking thing, isn’t it? I’m just about to print the Musical Map up as a 24″ x 36″ poster that should be ready in time for Thanksgivica, and definitely for Christmas, which will look even better–perfect for a kids’ bedroom wall or a school classroom. If you want to buy one, or twelve, order here. But wait, there’s more! The Musical Map is not just a printed item that starts and ends in tangible form. What is this . . . 2010? If you look at your Latin American Musical Map, see the name of a genre of music and want to know a bit about it, dial up the All Around This World site, specifically http://www.AllAroundThisWorld.com/musical-maps-2, and you’ll find a clickable version. Click on any image and you’ll go to a page on the AATW more here site where you’ll find background information about the Latin genre, instrument or song, showing you video of someone performing the type of music or playing an instrument to boot. Voila! Your “Musical Map” truly becomes a musical map.
Archive | June, 2013
Update September 7, 2013
This week the fall season of All Around This World classes starts in Philadelphia and beyond, with most of us landing squarely in Latin America. Classes start this week in several places around Philadelphia and will begin within the next couple weeks in several other cities. This is the first season I’m teaching with the professionally produced (and professionally duplicated) All Around This World: Latin America CD. I know kids in the great out there who have never heard me sing won’t be yearning to hear my voice instead of those of the accomplished Latin singers who graciously lent their voices to the project. Some parents have wondered if listening to these CDs rather than to the handmade CDs I used to hand out, which truly were all-me-all-the-time, will change their kids’ intimate relationship with my classes. I don’t think so, but we’ll have to see. Have a listen to one of my favorite tracks on the AATW Latin America CD, the Brazilian samba, “Bambo du Bambu”:
While all other AATW aficionados out there are going to Latin America, at home in West Philadelphia I’m birthing a special season of AATW material drawn entirely from music I found in the extraordinary Smithsonian Folkways collection. Even if you don’t know Folkways you’re still in the debt of label founder Moses Asch, whose ethnomusicologists and music researchers performed the service of recording over 2,000 albums of “the People’s music,” recorded virtually everywhere around the globe, over the several decades from the label’s founding in 1948 until Asch’s passing in the 1980s. Folkways extensively documented the music of distant world cultures just as the modern world was mounting its most insidious offensive, not obliterating them this time through the strong arm of colonialism, but through a combination of Hollywood blockbusters and carbonated beverages. Today many of the cultures whose music Folkways documented have diminished, or simply no longer exist. Folkways gives us the rare opportunity to hear those cultures in all their pride. Since the Smithsonian Institute acquired the Folkways collection it has continued Asch’s mission, bringing forth music of the world that may never have had a chance to be heard.
In the course of my research to find just the right songs for All Around This World I found myself time and again listening to Folkways recordings and having musical revelations. Most generously the Smithsonian Folkways label makes the extensively researched and always thoughtful liner notes of all their albums available online. For cultural music geeks like me, that’s gold.
This fall in my “Smithsonian Folkways” season we’re singing only songs I found on, and adapted from, Smithsonian Folkways releases, and in class when we listen to music on the CD player I’m only drawing upon releases on the Smithsonian Folkways label. Each week’s in-class “experience” focuses on something I find interesting about the recording of “the people’s music,” or of ethnomusicology. Trust me. It’s more fun than it sounds. Click on the “Music of the Worlds Peoples” album art below to hear a clip from an original version of the song “Bambo du Bambu,” as I first heard it on a Smithsonian Folkways release:
Update November 5, 2013
LET THE CROWDFUNDING BEGIN! All Around This Generic Viagra – Sildenafil Citrate from USA with Next Day Delivery! World is embarking today on an ambitious yet essential crowdfunding campaign with the goal of raising $40,000 — yes, the number four and then all those zeroes — by the end of the 2013 to support the transformation of the program from a quirky West Philadelphia kids’ music class into a much more substantial and, ideally, widely effective global music and cultures program for young children everywhere. Visit
THE ALL AROUND THIS WORLD CROWDFUNDING PAGE
for details. Much more about this exciting development to come.
Update December 5, 2013
Recording for the the All Around This World: Africa double Generic Cialis | Tadalafil Citr… CD set is 95% done and mixing is happening at Amon Drum’s Hook Studio in Brooklyn probably at this very second. Throughout the month, until the digital release, planned for some time this December, I’ll be posting the occasional sneak preview track here for your listening pleasure.
Today let’s enjoy “Nanu Ney” an excellent Ethiopian Jazz song that will appear on All Around This World: Africa Volume 1. In class we use the song as background music as we dance the shoulder shaking Eskista, which you can see here, and which is believed to have inspired the Harlem Shake.)
Audiophiles take note: this preview track is mixed but not yet mastered. Learn more about Nanu Ney.
