JAM is a hootenanny, a hullabaloo, a dance party, a shindig-bash, a festival, a family band, a rain dance, a sun song, a fairy frolic, a wander in the park, a race on the beach, a flitting floating butterfly-bop, a blundering thundering elephant-stomp, a twirling-whirling-swirling dizzy-dee fall-down boogie!
JAM is about making sounds and songs and hooting and hollering and belly laughing and shimmying and swaying and running and jumping and jiving and bouncing with people you love!
JAM is about pushing the furniture to the walls and creating a dancing room in your homes and your hearts, for forever, for inside and out, for back and forth, for now.
JAM is about being real and feeling alive.
JAM IS!
Physically speaking, JAM is a constellation of music and movement events born out of my own experience as a mother, musician, educator, performer, and songwriter. I offer/produce/create the following: music and movement classes; performances at schools, festivals, birthday parties and libraries; workshops and trainings; live JAMband concerts; and family music CDs.
Metaphysically speaking, the name JAM is an acronym that stands for Joy And Music. JAM is about connection...connection with self, connection within families, connection with the rhythms of the universe. Singing and dancing with our kids is one of the simplest, purest, and certainly most feel-good ways of connecting with them, sharing real experience, and feeling alive.
Any time we spend "on the floor" playing with our kids on their level, in their worlds, is time well spent, for both kids and parents. Any time spent not obsessing about all the pressures and commitments and schedules and responsibilities, both culturally- and self-imposed, is healing time. Any time spent in our bodies and not in our heads is time we reconnect with the earth, our souls, and our intuition. This experience can only be good for our ability to listen to, hold (physically and emotionally), and understand our kids. So it stands to reason that the more of it we have, the better chance we all have of realizing our potentials, shining our lights into the world, and supporting each other. JAM enables this experience.
JAM is also about having fun and feeling good! Children are naturally on the move...they dance their way through life. Children are naturally noisy...they sing their way through the day. Music and movement together provide a natural vehicle for self-expression, confidence building, brain-development, and experiencing joy.
Music has the power to uplift, to inspire, to help us truly feel, to communicate past language and socio-economic and cultural barriers. Every culture has music. Every culture has dance. Every culture has human beings. And we're all just trying to find our way, feel alive, and locate love.
Why record CDs?
I record the JAM CDs so families can take the JAM vibe and energy into their homes, cars, lives. I've heard so many stories of parents coming home at the end of the day, with everyone tired and cranky. But then Peanut Butter and JAM goes into the CD player and 45 minutes later everyone's in a great mood! It's as if the music heals the stress, and allows everyone to come down from the day and enter their bodies once again. My musical influences are wide and varied, so the songs I write and record span every genre from funk to bluegrass to surf to rock 'n' roll to meditative, resulting in music the parents dig as much as the children.
JAM Songs
Children naturally live in a state of wonder and awe at the universe around them. A simple thing like an ant crawling across the sidewalk or a backhoe digging a big hole can put them in a trance of amazement or cause them to gyrate with excitement. So I write songs that speak to children, on their level, not talking down to them, but talking to them in their language about the things that make sense to them and that they are wondrous about. This actually takes no effort at all, and the songs simply come of their own accord.
A great example is the story of how the song We Like Funky came to be. My son Jasper (who at the time was about 3) came up to me in the kitchen and said, "Mommy, we like funky, right?" And I said, "Yeah, we definitely like funky!" wondering what had inspired this train of thought. Then he said, "Mommy, this is the funky dance!" And he proceeded to demonstrate the thumb-shaking hip-swaying move that became the seed of We Like Funky, a funk/rap tune on PB&JAM.
Another song story: I was trying to get Silas down for a nap in the Bjorn when he was about six months old, and was thinking about what I had learned at one of the parent education meetings at Sunset Co-Op (Jasper's pre-school) about movement and brain development. I started turning around with him, and swaying from side to side, and rocking back and forth, and the song Turn Around surged through me and was born.
I wrote Kids Train for all the 18-month-olds in Jasper's playgroup, the first JAMmers, who where all obsessed with trains. Creeper Walk emanated from Jasper's crazy creepy walk, where he'd crouch down and run around with his arms behind his back. Ridin' the Big Waves, a collaboration with my surfer/bass-player husband, is a reflection of kids' interest in a sport that is a huge part of our life in the Outer Sunset, and a fascination for the world as a whole. Other JAMsong themes: transportation (from most- to least-fossil-fuel intensive), animals, building a tree house, counting and math, wiggling, play on familiar nursery rhymes, weather, scarf dancing, major scale, being upside down, body parts. And on and on.
Aside from creating music and lyrics that both parents and kids love to listen to, and song topics that resonate with the kids, an important part of my message for children to learn in this fast-paced, media-infused culture is how to slow down and how to take space and be quiet when they need to. I wrote a yoga song (Namaste), and a meditation song (Meditation), partly to give children the vocabulary early on for these mind- and body-calming activities. I also like ending the CDs with a mellow vibe, a lullaby of sorts. Lay Down My Dear Children is a rewrite of a beautiful spiritual; my words speak of finding your song and singing it to the world. Round as a Moon is essentially a love song that evolved out of all the different ways we say "I love you" in our family. I encourage families to write their own verse, and sing it during the instrumental.
The Message of JAM
Here's the welcoming message of JAM (from Jam Jam Jam, on JAM: Music for Movement with Children), which we sing at the beginning of each class, and at the beginning of most performances:
Hey there everybody, won't you join us in our JAM?
We're gonna raise our voices, stomp our feet and clap our hands!
We're gonna sing and dance,
We're gonna move and groove,
We're gonna laugh and love,
And after all that we're gonna get on down and JAM, JAM, JAM...
These lyrics from Lay Down My Dear Children also underscore the message of JAM, which encourages children to speak their truth and be themselves, and for parents to support them in this quest:
Lie still and feel the music coursing through your skin and bones
And if you listen close and quiet, you'll hear a song in your soul
You gotta sing your song for the world that loves you so
And, finally, here are the lyrics to the rap in the middle of We Like Funky, which pretty much say it all:
When you're feelin' like you wanna do something' funky
you wanna dance, you wanna sing
you wanna move, you wanna groove
you're gonna feel it
you're gonna feel the funk a-way down low in your toes
you feel it movin' up, movin' up
takin' you over, takin' you under
you're gonna feel no fear
you're gonna move to the beat you hear
you're gonna let yourself fly, high, high, high
you're gonna let yourself try anything
you're gonna do what the music tells you to do
you to do you to do you to do you to do
you're gonna funk!
So, the message of JAM is really just this: push the furniture to the walls, clear the floor, turn up the music, and dance! Celebrate the energy flowing from your kids, and from you. Spend a little piece of each day connecting, really connecting, with each of your kids, through music and movement, or any avenue that works for you, for that matter. And spend a little piece of each day connecting with yourself, too.
Our Light
I'd like to end with a quote from Marianne Williamson, because I feel it speaks so beautifully to the part of being human I hope JAM inspires in parents and kids alike:
Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?"
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God, your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone, and as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear our presence automatically liberates others.
--Marianne Williamson, as quoted by Nelson Mandela in his inaugural speech
All lyrics and words copyright 2002-2009 Charity Kahn unless otherwise noted.
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"Here is a little bit about me and how JAM came into being: I was raised in a small town in Wisconsin by two piano-teaching, singing, dancing parents. Weaned on Bach and Brahms and Mozart, the music took root in my heart at an early age and never left. In middle school, I added jazz and swing to the classical foundation, and discovered rock'n'roll soon thereafter. Many influences followed, including Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, The Grateful Dead, Zakir Hussain, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Richard Thompson, Parliament...far too many to list here.
"I wrote my first songs (about princesses, the rain, and other age-appropriate topics) when I was about five, but didn't write much more until college, when I started playing in bands. Writing songs and performing all the while, I graduated with a degree in mathematics (my other love), and then spent time as a math teacher (at the Head-Royce School in Oakland, CA), a piano teacher and math tutor, a writer (Math and Music: Harmonious Connections), a software engineer, and travelling rock-climber. But only when I had my own children did I figure out a way to surround myself with music day in and day out.
"I recorded my first cd (firstborn) when my now-9-year-old son was in the womb, and my second (JAM: Music for Movement with Children) while my now 6-year-old son was in the womb. When I decided not to have any more kids, I wondered if I would still be able to make records! But then Peanut Butter and JAM came along without a baby in the belly, followed by Rock Your Socks Off, The Birthday Suite, various singles, and the upcoming not-yet-titled mellow lullaby collection, so all was well! In the meantime, I started teaching music-and-movement classes, performing both solo and with the JAMband, and offering trainings in the JAM curriculum to grown-ups who work with children.
"I feel a deep gratitude for my work with children and families, and for the music. There is nothing more pure or honest than a child, and nothing more amazing than a parent doing her or his best to respond consciously and responsibly to that being. I love writing songs that emanate from the day-to-day experience of being in a family, from the tender connections that shine in our memories, from the moments where we as grown-ups experience the infinite through our love for these little people. They are our greatest teachers. We are lucky they came to us, and the gift of singing, dancing and creating along with them is one of life's greatest joys."
Take a group of musicians marinated in a tasty sauce made of everything from funk to folk, bluegrass to baroque, rock'n'roll to reggae, rap to hip hop, classical to jazz, trance to dance.
Throw in a dash of life-lust, a spoonful of celebration, a sprinkling of good humor, a generous quart of kid-inspired crazy energy, and fill in all the cracks with big family love.
Stir it all up in a big pot over the village fire and you've got the music and experience of Charity and the JAMband. Eat some and dance in the mud and rain.
Share some with your friends.
Cook up some of your own.
And pass the recipe on down the line.
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