Busy Kids Love Music

There’s something about October that makes even the most ordinary orchestra sound a little haunted. A rumbling drum becomes distant thunder. A xylophone becomes rattling bones. And composers have been leaning into that for a couple hundred years now, whether they were writing about skeletons at midnight or a mountain full of restless spirits. This […]

We’re closing out our orchestra series with the one person who doesn’t play a single instrument, and yet somehow holds the whole thing together. Last episode I left you with a riddle — one more part of the orchestra we hadn’t covered yet, something that isn’t an instrument family at all. If you guessed the […]

We’re wrapping up our orchestra series with the loudest, most colorful family of all — percussion. Over the last few episodes, we’ve built an orchestra together one family at a time. We met the strings, then the woodwinds, then the brass. This week we’re adding the fourth and final family, and I saved a fun […]

Today we’re getting to know the brass family — the loud, bright, fun-loving cousins of the orchestra. (And yes, I’m a little biased here, since my daughter plays trumpet. There’s just something about the sound of a room full of brass players warming up.) We talk about what actually makes an instrument “brass” (hint: it’s […]

Meet the Woodwind Family We’re kicking off a brand-new series on the podcast, and I could not be more excited about it. Over the next few episodes, we’re getting to know all four families of the orchestra — strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. (We already spent time with the strings a while back, if you […]

We made it to the final stop on this summer’s Around the World with Busy Kids Love Music tour — and what a destination to end on. The Philippines is an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands in Southeast Asia, home to over 110 million people speaking more than 180 languages and dialects. Its folk […]

Stop 4 on our summer world tour takes us to the heart of central Europe — the Czech Republic, a country about the size of South Carolina with a fiercely proud cultural identity and joyful, irresistibly danceable folk music. In this episode, we explore the patchwork of Czech folk traditions across its three historical regions […]

Stop 3 on our summer world tour takes us to the continent of Africa — specifically to Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent, home to more than 500 distinct ethnic groups, hundreds of languages, and one of the richest and most diverse musical traditions in the world. In this episode, we explore the […]

Our summer world tour continues — and for Stop 2, we’re trading the warm Caribbean rhythms of Puerto Rico for something entirely different: the misty fjords, ancient forests, and hauntingly beautiful folk music of Norway. In this episode, we explore Norway’s deep folk music roots, from the Norse storytelling tradition to the extraordinary sound of […]

  We’re officially stamping our passports for the first stop on this summer’s Around the World with Busy Kids Love Music tour — and we’re heading to the beautiful island of Puerto Rico. In this episode, we explore the rich, layered history of Puerto Rican folk music, from the ceremonial traditions of the indigenous Taíno […]