Message from the CEO, Bill Shontz
I have a question for you.Do you have students, kids or grandchildren?
What music do they listen to?
Can you name one song that they love?
If so, do you love that song also?
Recently during a teaching residency in a school, I asked the children to bring in a CD of their favorite music. What they brought was a shock.
The CD that they found the most exciting was a Gangsta Rap CD. I could not believe that first of all, their parents allowed them to listen to it, and that they knew no other music. I thought maybe thatwas an aberration, so later during the same kind of residency in another school, again Gangsta rap remained a favorite -- at least this time some also liked Country music.
What was most interesting though, was that over the course of the semester, they truly came to love the songs that we were singing together. Quality songs with quality messages, such as Green Up, One Earth, Read a Book, and on and on. Once they were exposed to this music, guess what their favorite became? In a return performance for an outdoor concert, many of my students came. I asked them, from stage, what their favorite music was and they screamed the names of the songs we worked on. It was very gratifying.
Let me ask you this. Have you ever heard of Tom Chapin? Tom Paxton? Kathy Byers? How about RosenShontz? Did you know that Joanie Bartels has a Gold record but is virtually unknown anywhere but California? Did you know that the number onselling children's record of all time is now “Kidz' Bop, vol. 9”?
But there is even more music out there. How about classical music for Kids? Have you ever heard the Leonard Bernstein youth concerts? Peter and the Wolf? How about “Beethoven lives Upstairs”? Can you name one children's song from Africa, or Russia, or China? The scope of this project is worldwide. I have plans to translate this web site into other languages and make “The Children's Music Hall of Fame” truly a worldwide resource for music.
There is a wealth of entertaining, educational, very listenable music (even for adults) that exists now, that most children, families and educators know nothing about. There are many individual artists and groups that have dedicated their lives to writing, performing, and recording these songs and until now they have had few ways of letting you know about their music, not to mention any avenue of selling it.
The technology is finally available to create a distribution channel for these deserving musicians and songs is here now. Fortunately for me, no one has made a Web site for only quality children’s music and artists, one that is child safe, and educator and family friendly. If this rings true to you, you are in the right place. At the Children’s Music Hall of Fame at www.childrensmusichalloffame.com you can preview, download, get virtual CDs, original artist CDs and more. In fact you can preview every song, on many subjects for all age groups.
Message from the CEO
COMING SOON Album and Song reviews
