Recess! Media

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It’s always a house party when a new CD from Dan Zanes and Friends appears. And you never know who’s going to turn up — maybe Deborah Harry, David Jones, or Phillip Glass — and what they’ll be singing and playing — songs from music halls, front porches, and hayrides; old-timey mountain tunes and play party ditties, hoe-down “Tennessee Wig Walks,” traditional Japaneses folk songs. You may go “Waltzing Matilda” or learn to count out to sixty, West Indian style with Aggie Decaul and Courin Gibbs:

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This Whitmanic mix of styles and singers and sounds — spontaneous, unprocessed, heart-felt, inspired — is some of the most unique and best music being created for children and families today. It’s a musical democracy, with people of all colors and creeds singing together, managing to craft harmonies from the most unlikely sources and instruments — a guitar, a trombone, a sax, and a pump organ — creating, if only for a few moments, something to dream on — a fresh sense of possibility:

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