New Music: Ozomatli Presents OzoKidz

I'll admit to having been spoiled a bit by They Might Be Giants. It was hard not to be, when a band of which I had already been a longtime fan chose the period when we had our first child to make a marvelous crossover into kids' music—and proceeded to put out four instant classics, still the strongest series of albums in the genre. Even beyond the high quality and the dazzling ease of their transition (beyond subject matter, TMBG didn't really have to change that much about their sound or songwriting), there was also a personal psychological effect: Look, I thought. I'm listening to They Might Be Giants with my infant son. This parenting thing doesn't have to change everything!

Of course, I was dead wrong about that—and not only because my subconscious expectations that Husker Du, the Smiths, and Bauhaus would each reunite to put out kids' albums were never fulfilled. (I'm still holding out hope for Smashing Pumpkins.) I learned to accept that life had changed, a lot, and went on to discover a whole slew of great kids' musicians, some with a history of recordings of "adult music" I wasn't previously familiar with (Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Lunch Money), others with no professional background in music for nonkid audiences at all (Recess Monkey).

Which is why I was so blown away when I heard that L.A.-based masters of eclecticism Ozomatli had moved into the genre and were coming out with a full-length kids' album, Ozomatli Presents OzoKidz. I've been a fan of this band and its unique blend of urban sounds—hip-hop, ska, reggae, and about eight different varieties of Latin music, all fused together by a blistering-hot horn section—since their 1998 debut album. (Whitney and I even had "Cut Chemist Suite" on our wedding-reception playlist.)

Ozomatli wouldn't have been the first band I'd have expected to make the move to kids' music—their sound in their heyday had a satisfyingly hard edge, and they're renowned and somewhat revered for their raucous-good-time live shows. But while the songs on OzoKidz are as a whole a gentler than the sum effect of the band's early albums, I was thrilled to find that they're still absolutely true to their sound—the mixing and melding of musical types is still here, as are those fantastic horns (used to great effect on "Moose on the Loose" and "Balloon Fest," among other tracks).

The result is an uptempo album with suitable kid lyrical content (as the song titles I just mentioned indicate) that kids find irresistible, while retaining enough of the band's sophisticated sound to make parents happy, too. In addition, thanks to Ozomatli we have now discovered, somewhat to my wife's dismay, that four-year-old Griffin loves bachata.

OK, Billy Corgan. You're up.

[Cover image courtesy of Ozomatli]

Update: I just learned right after posting this about the OzoKidz Chalk Art Contest. In the band's words, here's the scoop:

Folks who purchase the new OzoKidz CD at participating independent record stores will receive a FREE OzoKidz chalk box, which contains a link to the bonus track "Vamos a Cantar."

Kids (and parents) everywhere are invited to enter the OzoKidz Chalk Art Contest!

Entry Details: All you have to do is re-create the OzoKidz album cover art on your driveway or sidewalk—or, for the bonus prize, create a visual representation of the bonus track "Vamos a Cantar" using the OzoKidz chalk. Send us photos of your artwork and we'll pick the best ones. Winners will receive an OzoKidz prize pack!

Send photos to ozofans@gmail.com.

When sending photos, entrants must include the OzoKidz chalk box in the photo. For a list of record stores participating in the chalk-box giveaway, please visit: http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home. Please call your local store to confirm they have the items. For more information and updates, visit www.ozomatli.com/ozokidz.

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New Music: Make Believers

Spring brings many wonderful things each year, but I only recently realized that one of them is "new albums from all my family's favorite kids' musicians." Lo and behold, what do we have here but Make Believers, a brand-new release from another top-of-the-personal-charts artist, the man who made hip-hop safe for kids' music and vice versa, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo?

First off, to anyone who isn't already familiar with 23 Skidoo, and is therefore sensibly skeptical that hip-hop for kids can be any good: This guy is the real deal, an Asheville, North Carolina–based hip-hop veteran who's spent the last five years or so bringing serious old-school beats and rhymes—think the late 1980s—to a pint-size audience. (As is so often the case, having a kid of his own—who's a featured rapper on every one of his albums, by the way—seems to have had something to do with that.) Yes, the subject matter is a little different than that of your average Public Enemy or KRS-One track, but the music and the flow will definitely set parental heads bouncing properly while they bring our kids to their feet.

23 Skidoo is letting his music for kids grow with his family, logically enough, and so Make Believers is aimed at a slightly older audience than his previous albums were: preteens, rather than the youngest elementary school kids and preschoolers. Accordingly, there's a shift in the sound—while the album as a whole remains family-friendly, a couple of tracks, like the hard-edged "Brainstorm" and the dance-friendly "Gotta Be You," (check out the video, below!) push the envelope of kids' music in satisfying ways, as 23 Skidoo has always done. There's a similar shift in the words, with an eye to the issues preteens face in school and life in general.

Then of course, there are the guest artists. For 23 Skidoo, who seems to be uncommonly plugged into the entire eastern seaboard's worth of musicians, that includes both another of our family's favorite kids' artists (Molly Ledford of Lunch Money, who's guested with so many of our favorite artists already that we're half expecting her to turn up on the next Radiohead album) and some remarkable talent we weren't previously aware of (singer Kellin Watson, indie-folk cellist Ben Sollee).

It's yet another story in the brick house of great music 23 Skidoo has been building over the years. And while I can't quite imagine what he's going to do when he gets to his teen album—doesn't it stop being kids' music at that point, and isn't there quite a bit of music-industry hip-hop marketed to that age group already?—I must also remember that there was a time I couldn't imagine good hip-hop for kids to begin with. And that this is the guy who changed all that. In fact, if there's one thing I've learned covering this beat, it's this: Never underestimate Secret Agent 23 Skidoo.

[Images courtesy of Secret Agent 23 Skidoo]

Now Playing: Sugar Free Allstars, Recess Monkey, Lucky Diaz...

Wanted to do a quick roundup of some upcoming shows by some of the scene's top children's musicians for my readers in the NYC area. Given the near-overlap of a few of these shows, making all of them is probably not possible, but each is worth the trip (and the various new songs and albums they're releasing are all worth a look or a download):

•The ever-prolific Recess Monkey (shown above) are coming east again as part of a "sneak preview" of the June release of FLYING!, their latest studio album. They'll be playing a free show at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on Saturday, April 30, at 1 p.m., and then another as part of the 92YTribeca's B.Y.O.K series (tickets $15, with kids under 2 free) on Sunday, May 1, at 11 a.m. As I can testify firsthand, parents and kids alike should jump at any chance they get to see these guys whenever they're on our coast!

•Oklahoma City's soul-and-funk-tinged duo Sugar Free Allstars will be at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side on April 30 at 11 a.m. (tickets $11 to $20). They, too, have a new release—a fun single recorded with my personal hero of kid music, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, titled "Cooperate."

•Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band are celebrating the release of their second album, Oh Lucky Day!, with a show at the Knitting Factory ($10) in Brooklyn on Sunday, May 1 at 12:30 p.m.

•And Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could will be promoting their new album, Love Me for Who I Am, with a show at Brooklyn's Southpaw on May 14 at 1 p.m. (tickets $12 in advance, $15 at the door).

 [Photo courtesy of Recess Monkey.]

2010 Wrap: Music

As I've mentioned before, I don't feel confident that I'm seeing absolutely everything out there in kids' music, books, etc., these days, not like I did (or thought I did, anyway) when I was covering this beat for a national magazine. So a traditional "top 10" list for the year in each category seems presumptuous—I'm sure there's a ton of great stuff that came out in 2010 that I missed entirely.

So instead, I'm just going to humbly put forward a few posts of the best kids' entertainment I've seen this year. Most of it will be items I've covered previously in this blog, but a few will be stragglers I never got around to, or am still hoping to get to, if they came out recently.

I'll start with music, the easiest category for me to tackle because I've sort of done it already, as a voter in the annual Fids & Kamily Awards. I won't just reproduce my ballot here, though—the cutoff dates for that voting ended at October 2010 releases, and my best-of-what-I've-heard includes some stuff that came out after that date.

So here, in no particular order, are the kids' music CDs our family discovered this year that never seem to go out of rotation.

Underground Playground, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo. I've raved about Skidoo on multiple occasions already in this space, but I'm still blown away that anyone could manage to make hip-hop for children, well, listenable at all. And Skidoo's sophomore output (as his debut was) is far more than that; with his old-school beats and smart, sharp rhymes, he puts a smile on your face and a bounce in your kid's steps. And the other way around, too.


Mind of My Own, Frances England. She's the other artist I couldn't stop talking about this year, and her third album lived up to her first two. You know how, with a really good album by an artist you like, you gravitate toward certain songs on the first several listens, but then toward different ones after a few more, obsessing over each group in turn until nearly every track has been your "favorite"? This is that kind of album, for kids and parents alike.


The Final Funktier, Recess Monkey. This is undeniably a goofy CD, and in kids' music a little of that goes a long way, especially for parents. The difference with the prolific Recess Monkey that these guys are really good, as both songwriters and musicians. Their songs could hardly be catchier, and when you find yourself humming them to yourself at the office, you're not horrified like you are when the tune is "Elmo's World" or the map song from Dora. You just laugh at yourself for a moment—and then keep on humming.


Sunny Day, Elizabeth Mitchell. The most soothing voice in kids' music today is, not surprisingly, responsible for the standout "cool-down" album of the year. What is surprising—though really, given her previous track record, it shouldn't be—is her ability to preserve that warm, calm vibe through songs well beyond the comfort zone of the folk-acoustic genre. This CD can be the answer to a parent's craziest morning.


Original Friend, Lunch Money. I'm still planning a full writeup of this South Carolina trio's excellent third album, but suffice it to say for now that it hasn't emerged from the CD changer since we acquired it. With a sound that would fit right in on any indie or college radio station, and smart, smooth, irresistibly likeable vocals by guitarist Molly Ledford, Lunch Money is another of those special bands producing songs kids love that parents can often forget is kids' music.


Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti,various artists. This CD to benefit victims of the Haitian earthquake contains tracks by every single one of the artists I've just mentioned, as well as much of the rest of the genre's top talent, from Pete Seeger to Jonathan Coulton to They Might Be Giants to Gustafer Yellowgold to Dan Zanes...the list really does go on and on. Far and away the best kids' music compilation I've ever encountered, it's the perfect way to find out which of today's kids' musicians might be your children's (and your) favorites, and of course it serves a most worthy cause.

[Images, from top: courtesy of Secret Agent 23 Skidoo; courtesy of Frances England; Kevin Fry/courtesy of Recess Monkey; courtesy of Elizabeth Mitchell; Brandon Reese/courtesy of Lunch Moneycourtesy of Spare the Rock Records]

New Music: Underground Playground

Let’s face it: For just about any parent who likes hip-hop, the phrase “hip-hop for kids” is filled with dread. Almost all of the attempts at it can be summed up by the word joke—either intentional (I give Elmo’s occasional rapping on Sesame Street, which is meant to be funny, a pass) or horribly, horribly not. So I once tended to view the few children’s hip-hop CDs I encountered with skepticism.

Then Secret Agent 23 Skidoo came out with his first album, Easy, in 2008. As I’ve written before, and so many other reviewers wrote at the time, it was a revelation: “kid-hop,” as he calls it, was suddenly a viable genre after all. The key—really the key for almost all art forms for kids—was that 23 Skidoo doesn’t dumb things down for children. The subject matter was obviously different than it would be on an adult rap album, but the beats, the rhythms, and the rhymes were not, for the first time in my experience. (It didn’t hurt that 23 Skidoo has been a rapper and producer of grown-up hip-hop, with Asheville group G.F.E., for well over a decade—though it also must be said that others of similar description have made such forays with far less success.)

My wife and kids loved Easy as much as I did, and it got tons of play around the house. We found ourselves eagerly anticipating his follow-up, though my own anticipation was tempered by a little knowledge of sophomore slumps. Now that he was established, could 23 Skidoo maintain his high standards without simply repeating himself?

I shouldn’t have worried. Underground Playground, which comes out August 31 (tomorrow!), is still clearly the work of the reigning king of kid-hop, but it expands on his debut, too. He dabbles in crossover with other genres, from the sunny singsong reggae of “Road Trip” to the Pogues-esque final section of “Wildlife” (representing a cheetah, fittingly enough). Meanwhile, his lyrics again convey positive messages on subjects like friendship (“Secret Handshake”) and honesty (the Public Enemy–tinged “Speak the Truth”) without ever getting finger-waggy, or losing the loose sense of fun that’s the core of so much quality hip-hop. (The verbiage in “Mind Over Matter,” a song about being yourself—perhaps 23 Skidoo’s core message—is a particular highlight.)

Perhaps most important, the beats and riffs he lays down are top-notch—catchy and addictive, they have your head bouncing in no time. Even here the new album pushes envelopes, though. While the cement is still the old-school hip-hop sound this artist clearly loves (think KRS-One), you also hear the influence of more modern names, especially in the song arrangements: Eminem, Jay-Z. Frankly, the eclectic nature of 23 Skidoo’s work is reminiscent of a lot of people, but if I had to pick one, it'd have to be Michael Franti, with whom he shares both positivity of message and an ability to rap effectively over many different styles of music.

Like its predecessor, Underground Playground is an awful lot of fun to listen to, and if your kids are anything like mine, they'll be asking to hear certain tracks over and over. (It’s been getting serious car mileage lately for us!) And you won’t mind a bit. In fact, when you realize you’ve left it on in the car when the kids aren’t around, you might just leave it in there, and coast down the road with your head nodding.

As a taste, here's a video for another track from the album, “Chase the Rain”:



[Image courtesy of Secret Agent 23 Skidoo]

New Music: Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti

The all-star-musician benefit concept goes back years, of course, to George Harrison's Bangladesh concert, and a bit later the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and "We Are the World" singles. But with the exception of a few giants like Pete Seeger (who's been doing benefit and charity work with his music his whole career, really), there haven't been enough big names in kids' music for such a thing to be possible in the genre.

But Dean Jones (no, not the one from the original Love Bug movies—the frontman of kids' band Dog on Fleas), with a little help from the recent explosion of talent in this genre, has changed all that. Back in January, Jones desperately wanted to do something to help the earthquake victims in Haiti; he came up with the idea of a kindie-rock album to raise money. He joined forces with KindieFest cofounder Bill Childs, and the pair proceeded to put together an incredibly impressive roster of artists for the project.

The result is Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, a CD of 22 songs, one each from many of the top children's musicians working today. Seriously, if I were making a list of the genre's top echelon of talent, it would look a lot like this track list: Recess Monkey, They Might Be Giants, Frances England, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Jonathan Coulton, Dan Zanes, Gustafer Yellowgold, Elizabeth Mitchell...the list goes on and on. Even the venerable Seeger himself contributed a track!

The proceeds (all the greater because everyone involved in the album's production, replication, and distribution either donated or heavily discounted their services) will benefit the Haitian People's Support Project, an organization with a long history of important work in the country. Knowing this is certainly one benefit to parents and kids who purchase this CD.

But of course, you're also getting the best possible sampler of the cutting edge of today's kids' rock, pop, folk, and hip-hop. If your kids are already familiar with most of the artists, they'll be excited to get a new song from so many of them between new releases. (My five-year-old's favorites: "Fiddlehead Fern," by Recess Monkey, and "Quite Early Morning" from Seeger.) And if they're not, Many Hands offers the best single way I've seen to get a taste of so many of the genre's leading lights, all in one place, and find out which your kids (and you!) might want to hear more of.

So it's a great album, and a great opportunity, all serving a great cause. (I should also mention that there are still a few release shows upcoming in September in Brooklyn; Portland, Oregon; and Northampton, Mass., each featuring a number of the artists on the CD, so if you're in or near those places, check those out, too!)

[Cover image courtesy of Spare the Rock Records]

Upcoming Concert in NYC: Secret Agent 23 Skidoo

I was just preparing a new book post when some pre-emptive news hit my e-mail inbox: Secret Agent 23 Skidoo will be playing three venues in New York, for the City Parks Foundation, on July 7, 8, and 9. Parents and kids familiar with the artist’s 2008 debut CD, Easy, will know why this is so exciting: Secret Agent 23 Skidoo is the first real success story among the many attempts at “kid hop”—hip-hop for kids. The guy is a revelation, and I’d been interested in seeing a live performance by him since I first heard the album.

He’ll be playing three free concerts in two NYC boroughs on those dates: Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx on July 7 at 11 A.M.; Morningside Park in uptown Manhattan on July 8 at 10:30 A.M.; and Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on July 9 at 10:30 A.M. Maybe I’ll see you at one of them! (For those not in the New York area, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo will also be making stops this summer in Colorado, North Carolina, Illinois, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., this summer, among other places—check out his website for details.)

And to whet your appetite, here’s a couple of videos of tracks from Easy, one of which demonstrates that his daughter, Saki, can bust some rhymes herself:

[Image courtesy of Secret Agent 23 Skidoo]