Archive | August, 2016

All Around This World in Fairfax Virginia

The girls and I played the final show of our “Sands Across America” summer tour 2016 today as the headlining act of the massive “First Annual Back to School Fest” at historic Suter farm in Fairfax, Virigina.  The kids and I set up under a massive tree at the bottom of an incline, powered by an extension cord run by historic Cory Suter from his sheep barn, and played our hearts out for an enthusiastic crowd of back-to-schoolers.

Though we’re looking very much forward to reuniting with the rest of our family at historic cousin Dan’s wedding later this evening in Annapolis, we felt a thrilling sense of accomplishment at having conquered the country. And did we not also conquer ourselves? Conquer any fears we may have harbored of the unknown? And what about the known? That’s pretty scary too. And we conquered the heck out of it.

BEST.

SUMMER.

EVER.

What can we do next year to rekindle this freedom, resume such bliss? Stay tuned.

All Around This World in Louisville, Kentucky

all-around-this-world-in-louisville-2

INSTRUMENTS! This is what happens when a mild-mannered kiddie world music teacher, not unlike yours truly, opens his bag of instrumental tricks — drums and rattles and shakers, oh my! — and pours the contents of said bag on the floor of a mind-mannered venue like the auditorium of the Main Branch of the Louisville Public Library and lets the kid in attendance go at ’em.

No kids were harmed in the photographing of this incident. One tambourine gave its life for the cause.

All Around This World in Kansas City

all-around-this-world-in-kansas-city2

Two sets of musical adventures today in Kansas City, the first joining homeschooling families galore at All Souls Universalist Unitarian Church and the second, a smaller, quirky set at the Cotillion Room and Garden, a wedding hall in Independence with a mirrored ceiling, as you can see from the photo below. Overflowing gratitude to Dionna Ford for setting the wheels for these adventures in motion.

all-around-this-world-in-kansas-city

All Around This World in South Pasadena

Pure joy last night, performing multilingual with  abandon in the backyard concert venue of the inimitable — yes, I said INIMITABLE — Song-Wizard, Dave Kinnoin. Here the Sands sing “Wan Boto,” a Surinamese fisherman’s song with the call, “One boat is coming with just one flag!” and the response, “Why is just one flag hanging?”

Sounds much more profound in in Sranan Tongo.

All Around This World at the Discovery Learning Center in Santa Cruz

aatw-santa-cruz-discovery-learning-center

Today at the Discovery Learning Center in delightful Santa Cruz, California, I taught an introductory All Around This World class to a half dozen homeschooling families. We sang about a joyous Nubian wedding. We sang in Hindi about an aspirational starscape. We sang about a lonely Romanian singer with a talent for turning a phrase. An odd set of songs for a trove of toddlers? For me, all in a day’s work.

See more from the tour.

All Around This World in Oakland, California

all-around-this-world-in-oakland-132

Good times at Oakland’s historic Temple B’nai Abraham this morning, singing tunes from All Around This World’s “Scattered Among The Nations” set of international Jewish songs — songs in languages like Ubzek, Luganda, Ge’ez (the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia Jews), Shona, Ladino, and a couple in Hebrew and Yiddish for good measure.

all-around-this-world-in-oakland-15-1  all-around-this-world-in-oakland-172

Speaking of diversity in the Jewish world, Jay sang at Temple B’nai Abraham at the invitation of Bryan Schwartz, photographer and author of Scattered Among the Nations: Photographs and Stories of the World’s Most Isolated Jewish Communities, which inspired my set of multilingual Jewish songs. If you look closely at the image of the book jacket you’ll also see my name there in little print. I took the photos and wrote the text for the book’s chapters about the Abayudaya of Uganda and the Shona Jews of Zimbabwe.
Scattered Among the Nations book photo all-around-this-word-oakland-5

 

See more from the tour.

All Around This World in San Anselmo at the Children’s Music Network Bay Area regional gathering

all-around-this-world-in-san-anselmo-2016-2

Today the kiddos and I drove north from our cousins’ house in San Francisco, crossing the Golden Gate and blasting out of the S.F. chill zone into the warm and sunny San Anselmo, where we were the outta-town guests at a Bay Area region gathering of the Children Music Network. We were honored to share the “stage” with lovely and talented performers and educators like Pam Donkin (who taught us a fun hello song), Liz Hannan (who taught us a song about donkeys), Andy Z (who taught us a song about dinosaurs) and Cristal, who hosted us all in her Music Together of Marin space.

See more from the tour.

All Around This World in Foster City, California

all-around-this-world-foster-city

I spent most of yesterday at the HUGE and happenin’ Peninsula JCC in Foster City, California, where I helped the JCC’s day camp wind down for the summer by winding kids up for their season-ending carnival. In the afternoon I sang Scattered Among the Nations with kids in their camp groups, which you see in the pictures above and below. When the camp day ended I led an international Likrat Shabbat service, introducing kids to prayer melodies from far-flung places like Bukhara, Turkey, India, the Iberian Peninsula and the Caribbean. After the service the camp counselors, giddy from a successful summer, upstaged me and all the chipper campers by singing the heck out of a set of All Around This World songs.

all-around-this-world-foster-city-2

See more from the tour.