WowoSpot Kids

I remember watching 2015's Disney movie Cinderella with my daughters a few years ago and have loved it. What impressed me very much was the folk song sung by Cinderella in the movie: Lavender's Blue. The enchanted melody and the round form makes the melody echo beautifully. It feels like the song is never going to end.

In this episode Lisa is going to discuss the origin, lyrics and meanings of the song Lavender's Blue and she will be sharing with you the recording of her singing of this song!

When I first heard Hickory Dickory Dock, it was when I taught my five-year-old daughter to play the piano. I was intrigued by the cute mouse who ran up the clock with the clicking and came down with the sound of the clock striking every hour.

What a wonderful way to teach young children about numbers, with literature and music combined in an imaginary story!

To read the blog post of the same title please click the link here.

Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini's hit opera Turandot (杜蘭多) adapted the tune of a very popular Chinese folk song Jasmine Flowers (茉莉花). I imagine Jasmine Flowers worked as a perfect material for Puccini to portray the princess as an oriental beauty.

After the premiere  in 1926 in Milan, Italy, Turandot has become one of the most performed and celebrated operas to this day. It has always been the exotic settings of the stories and the hightened emotions that make Puccini's operas compelling and unforgettable. Turandot is no exception.

The melody of Jasmine Flowers is made out of a pentatonic scale, very often referred to as a scale that gives oriental colors. In this episode I will demonstrate the singing of this folk song in solfege, as well as in Chinese.

Momotaro is an iconic Japanese folk song that my father and my grandmother can sing to this day.

I grew up in Taiwan where Japanese culture became prevalent after the Chinese Chin dynasty lost the the first Sino-Japanese war in 1895 and ceded Taiwan islands to Japan. As a result, Japan had ruled Taiwan for fifty years until the new, modern China won the World War Two in 1945.

Under this historical background, many elder people in Taiwan are fluent in Japanese and still remember the Japanese folk song Momotaro they learned to sing as a kid. This helps us understand how and why Japanese culture has been prevalent and popular in Taiwan. I have known the song Momotaro since I was a kid too, although I may not be very familiar with the lyrics, which are in Japanese and have not been translated into a Chinese version in known publications.

Having living in Canada for more than twenty years, I observe and wonder why that numerous western folk songs have been adapted into eastern languages but rarely the other way round.

To talk about and sing the Japanese folk song, I will need to introduce the original Japanese language lyrics.

The lyrics and the story of Momotaro, the Peach Boy

Frère Jacques | Are you sleeping | The story, lyrics and music

Frère Jacques is a very familiar folk song well loved by children. It originates from France. My earliest memory about this tune goes back to my kindergarten days. I learned this song in Mandarin Chinese, not in English, and the meanings in the Chinese lyrics were entirely different from the English version. Let's take a look at the different versions of the lyrics. 

In this episode I'll demonstrate the singing of this folk tune in English, French, and Chinese. Also I will present the recording of a four-hand piano duet I arranged for this tune.

In addition, I will introduce the idea about a fun singing form: round. You will see how vocal music is performed in imitation and chase by multiple voices!

In this episode I would like to share with you how I came with the idea of writing the new children's song Little Puppy Lily's Magic Bone.

Toys and magic has always been a popular theme in children's stories

The imaginary world this song created reminds me of a TV cartoon show I used to love as a kid. In the show, this toy came to life after midnight when the little boy was asleep. And when the toy came to life, the clock stopped clicking and the whole world froze. Interestingly, there are in fact many children's stories describing toys coming alive. Take the beloved Tchaikovsky ballet Nutcracker for example, the little girl Clara's favorite Christmas present nutcracker turns into a handsome prince after midnight. Together they visit a snowy pine forest and then arrive at the Land of Sweets. They are charmed by the beautiful Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Little Puppy Lily's Magic Bone is the first children's song that I made as an audio recording. It was great fun to see how my creative work came to life.

How I came up with the idea of the story of the song

Originally I thought about writing a song based on the popular children's story Straga Nona.  Straga Nona is an enchanting children's story written by American author Tomie dePaola. It is about a grandma witch (Straga Nona) who owns a magic pot that can cook noodles if she casts a spell.  One day Straga Nona went out of town so she hired a boy to look after her home. The young boy, with a wandering mind, did what she had told him not to do: he chanted the spell to start the cooking pot. When Straga Nona came back to town and saw a disastrous scene—the town was quickly swollowed by mountains of noodles, she knew who did it. Apparently, the boy knew how to start the pot but did not know how to stop it.

I remember reading this story with my daughters when they were younger and have always liked it. I was so excited about this idea. Before I fetched a piece of paper to write down the music notes, I had constructed the rhythm, the lyrics and the melody in my mind.

After I googled this story, I was disappointed to find the story is a copyrighted work and is not in the public domain. It was a pity. The lyrics could have been awesome if it goes like "Straga-no-na has a magic cooking pot, she...." I loved the sound of the word straganona and how it would work perfectly with the rhythm I had in my mind.

Well, knowing I could not use the story as my lyrics, I tried to sing new lyrics to the melody I'd created. While I was scratching my head, my eyes fixed on my dog Wowo, a new idea struck me. "Wowo loves her chewing bone, a toy she could play with all day long." I thought, and "I am going to make a dog's toy story!"

What is your first experience on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? You may have heard it from your childrens' singing or from the kids TV shows, or you may have heard it since you were very young but you can not pinpoint exactly where and when and how. That is the magic of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It has so ingrained in our culture and tradition. Like a traditional Christmas song Silent Night, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is part of our life and as we all are passing by the world, the song will stay for generations to come.

What magic did Mozart do to make Twinkle Twinkle Little Star such an iconic tune that is still loved and known by almost everyone today? This week WowoSpot Kids Podcast is very excited to have our guest pianist Kim Yim in our show to talk about her personal experience on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. As well, she will discuss and perform selected variations from this famous Mozart's piano piece. 

Will we call a man who delivers muffins house-to-house a muffin man today? In older times we did. The popular nursery rhyme The Muffin Man is an English folk song. The lyrics are dynamic, easy to remember and they rhyme well. The melody is cheerful... If you were to change the lyrics into something else what would it sound like??

Who wrote Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? This beloved song has become a must-have lullaby nowadays in children’s song playlists. The tune comes from a French folk song ah vous dirai - je ma, maman (oh shall I tell you mama), written in the mid- 18th century. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart adapted the melody and composed twelve variations on it as a piano solo work when he was twenty-five, making this tune world famous.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://wowospot.ca/2021/07/16/the-story-of-twinkle-twinkle-little-star/

"In my very remote memories, my earliest musical experience was about songs. We react to music and language most naturally through songs. Before I was made to sit on the piano bench at the age of five to learn to play the gigantic instrument, I had known music by singing and dancing along my favorite songs from the radio."

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://wowospot.ca/2021/07/11/kids-songs-in-2021-the-ideas-about-wowospot/