Sound UbuWeb

Big Music, Little Musicians 1 Big Crescendo #2 2 Misty 3 Vortex 4 John 5 Butter 6 Crossing the T (Medium Fast) 7 Chord Canon / X-tra Credit Waltz 8 Ghost Train 9 Green Slippers 10 No Words to Describe It 11 Crazy Strings 12 Epicenter 13 Patterns 14 Excerpt From Around D 15 Cluck 16 The Rhythm Czar 17 Indecisive Weather 18 Up and Down Song 19 Tom Foolery 20 The Note Catcher 21 Cuculi 22 Double Bock Double Rock 23 Raindrops 24 Watercolors 25 The Happy Man 26 Warp 9 27 The Edge 28 Night 29 Quavalette 30 The Jazz of Melody 31 A Walk in the Woods 32 Cheerio! 33 The March of the Termites 34 S.P.A.M. 35 Niru 36 Waves 37 Fireclouds 38 The Cage 39 A Fish in the Water 40 Trump Bone Music 41 Personel 42 Planet Earth (Sun Ra) 43 Help! I'm Drowning in a Sea of Harmony! 44 You Know What? The typical model for becoming a musician is to learn how to play our instrument through a lot of practice, playing exercises and songs from books or learning to play our favorite songs by playing with recordings over & over & over. After we've gained some proficiency the adventurous among us may start writing our own songs or coming up with you own riffs. For most it's a long way down the line before we start really putting much effort into being creative. But what happens if when we first start learning to play someone's there to urge us to learn to be creative from the very start? For the kids in Randy Porter's music classes at Chabot, Montclair, and Thornhill elementary schools in Oakland, California this is exactly what happened (I'd like to think that's it's still happening, but I don't know). These 4th, 5th, and 6th graders not only learn how to work their chosen instruments, but with as little as a couple months of experience under their belts, they are encouraged to improvise and compose and this disc documents it. Outside of one Sun Ra tune, everything is created by the kids, and while some may cringe at some of the technical problems young, inexperienced players are bound to have, the creativity exhibited is undeniable. It is also refreshing to hear such unabashed, egoless joy as we have hear. Many a seasoned player could stand to give this a listen. I can't imagine a musician who wouldn't be moved by this and who wouldn't find themselves a bit humbled.