The Whole Music Experience

Exploring Music for Early Child Development  When I grew up, we took music for granted.   The town where I grew up  provided a district-wide music program for K-12.   Prior to entering elementary school, my mother exposed my siblings and me to classical, jazz, Latin American music, and Broadway show tunes.   We also learned songs from popular children’s entertainment such as Disney movies.   In fact, I don’t recall music ever absent from our home.   We listened to, performed, and explored music. Fast forward to 1997 and the publication of Don Campbell’s book The Mozart Effect which brought a shift in consciousness to how we view classical music, in particular, as it relates to emotional, physical, and mental development.   Pregnant women introduced their fetuses to Mozart’s violin concertos and mothers played Mozart recordings to jump start their toddlers’ brains. However, the years that followed the book’s publication bro...

Oran Etkin Wake up Clarinet! Motema Music Clarinetist Oran Etkin has taken his music to kids. Music not only helps children develop mentally, physically and emotionally, music education teaches children how to appreciate different types of music while preserving various music traditions for future generations. Not to mention that musicians reap rewards from teaching children music appreciation and musical language because they are in essence fostering their future concert goers and record buyers.  His children's album Wake up Clarinet! isn't a run-of-the-mill feel good children's CD, but has some educational components, such as learning about the timbre and range of a clarinet. “You know, everyone talks about music as a language-universal language,“ says Ektin (liner notes), “About five years ago, I started wondering what we are doing to make sure that children grow up to be fully fluent and comfortable inside this powerful language that can enable them to expre...

Oran Etkin Kelenia Motema Music I have been fortunate. I have received many recordings fusing traditional West African music, mainly from Mali, with American blues, jazz and now the swirling sounds of Jewish clarinet. Israeli reedman Oran Etkin (clarinet, bass clarinet & tenor sax), teamed up with Balla Kouyate (balafon), Makane Kouyate (calabash & vocals) and Joe Sanders (bass). An array of guest musicians also bring in cello, violin, guitar, djembe and bass. The end result is Kelenia -- a multicultural jazz stew with a warming effect. Etkin cites in the liner notes, "The music you hear was not created in a studio--it developed over the course of a decade as I was working with various African musicians in the US and Mali and then through the years of performances and rehearsals with wonderful musicians on this record." And sure enough this seamless fusion feels completely natural to my ears. The opener, Yekeke bubbles like champagne with its efferv...