BAM Folk Music Class plays some Oboe Jazz

Just today my trusty assistant Yun-Yun and I were talking about how much our kindergartners have grown in just the last 8 weeks. It is amazing how they are taking direction and able to step up and introduce a song. Today we worked on a little Oboe Jazz piece. We think you will be impressed...

Kindergarten Folk Music Class sings "Inch by Inch"

So... We have another year of our after school class Folk Music Class in progress. We have been meeting for the last 7 weeks this Fall and are now ready to share with you some of what we have been doing. Hope you enjoy our first video...

Kindergartner's sing The Pie Song

One of my very favorite songs to sing with Kids is The Pie Song. I first heard it in a movie The Waitress. I tell kids... learn this song and if you sing it to your mom or dad, they will never be able to stay mad at you... Our director for the song is Milo and Yun-Yun Yak helps with the choreography... Enjoy

A new group of Kindergartners

You won't believe it... but this is the very first class of our new Folk Singing Class for these Kindergartners. Once you see this video you will agree with me that these Kids are naturals... Can't wait to see what they do next but I think you will enjoy this new video of our kids singing.. Matilda the Gorilla!

The Original BAM Oboe Band

So... you take a bunch of straws... teach some kids about the invention of the reed (showing them the grass between the fingers thing)...cut the straws so you have reeds.... put a couple of straws together to make a slide oboe.... make a cool horn on the end... attach and decorate it... and with a wonderful band director and a experience video (she had been doing it for the last 15 minutes) director... you got yourselves one very fine BAM original Folk Music Oboe Band... Enjoy!

World Premier of "Eat His Head"

One last post before the new year... So, this sounds pretty bad "Eat His Head" but it is not as bad as it seems. See... we write songs in our class. Our songs, like good folk songs, tell a story, our story. On the day we wrote this song we were all into gingerbread men. The K's had then and we got to talking about how you eat a gingerbread man. Most everyone thought you should start with the head. So our song is a story about eating a gingerbread man.. Makes sense now don't you think. Plus we did think that a song with a title like "Eat His Head" might just get some hits on the internet. So here we go.. As usual the director is our faithful aid Devin. I am the producer I guess. My co-teacher, Yun-Yun, is the "special assistant" to most everyone in the production  (being very special helps in this job) and the stars of the video are all the 1st - 3rd graders in our BAM Friday afternoon Folk Music Class.

Learning to sing an Old Protest Song

Here in Berkeley part of our education process is teaching our young people to stick up for what is right in all that they do. What better way to teach this value than with a good old Pete Seeger Protest Song. We recorded this song on our "Pete Seeger Day" at our Folk Music Class. The class came up with their own words for verses for the song. Pardon the lighting of our video and we are thinking of getting a tripod for Devin, our director (who has perfected some interesting camera angles) Enjoy!