Educational CyberPlayGround

National Children's Folksong Repository

PRESERVE OUR AMERICAN VERNACULAR SONGS - OUR ORAL CULTURE

FUN FOR THE FAMILY & FUN FOR EVERYONE
BE A PATRIOT AND SAVE OUR HISTORY

 

SONGS GO INTO THE NCFR LIBRARY

Technology might not be what kills hand-clapping games.
Instead it could be what saves them.

jumprope

Phone-o-folk song. Phone-o-phonic. Phone-o-funk.
It's a game song or game chant that you phone in
but it ain't phony.

Use the Phone to submit your song,

GET SMART

YOU MAKE HISTORY

ONLY YOU
CAN SAVE
WHAT IS LEFT.

In 1973 Karen Ellis was the first person in the U.S. to get her Level III Orff Certificate having been taught music with the Orff Schulwerk pedagogy as a child while attending 5th grade at Oak Lane Day School by the Fanabel Kremins who was the first Orff teacher in America!!

Please call 1-276-633-0388 & your American Game Songs, Playground Poetry, Folk Songs, jump rope chants, kiddy rhymes, circle games, play parties, call and response songs, lullaby's - using your cell phone, or computer.

Find the National Children's Folksong Repository of Children's Songs, their indigenous playground poetry. U.S. Online Library to Record American folksongs, jump rope chants, rhymes, songs, using your ipod, phone, or computer.Children are Cultural Primitives.

Their own culture is FABULOUS!

What Has Happened to Recess and why Recess is good for kids. listen 52:00
Anna Beresin was one of 2 guests who was interviewed on Radio Times about her ongoing research with importance of children's play and recess. A very articulate excellent show.

The child world is a coherent primitive culture lying right at our door. THIS is the hidden civilization of childhood, the all child-originated culture, the skip rope songs, counting out rhymes, parodies, singing verses, superstitions, of children themselves. We do not want to see the Adults pushing their "brand" adult melody, copyrighted, DRM, made up songs onto the kids through CD's, websites, and MP3's.
Their ears and bodies need to be left alone, unmolested by adult intervention, and commercial branding efforts. We want kids to teach each other the songs they make up themselves - they don't need adults involved in this process.
Their brains need to be grooved and made ready for reading by doing what they have have always been doing by themselves through evolution. What kids can do with technoloy is collect their own songs and share them online, then feel free to download new ones to share with their friends. Not only are they spread, they do spread right now!

GESTURE / RHYTHM & READING

Hand Jive | Hand and Speech
Let's Get the Rhythm
2014 | 53 min
Discover the power of Miss Mary Mack! Explore the history of hand-clapping games on playgrounds around the world. Through wars and migrations, across language barriers and oceans, young girls connect with each other through thousands of variants—ancient as they are global. The film chronicles these rhythmic and recreational practices. Guided by three eight-year-olds from diverse cultural backgrounds in the New York area, it is a charming and beautiful survey with universal insight into the budding social mind.
We are often so busy with the details of living that we forget to look inside. Let's Get the Rhythm focuses on girls' handclapping games to awaken awareness of the rhythmic designs that influence our lives. The legacy of the past is interwoven with our experience of the present. Childhood rituals provide a foundation for cooperation, collaboration and friendship. Even something as simple as handclapping games can give us strength and help us honor the beauty of being present, and provide us with the courage to continue with a positive attitude." - Irene Chagall and Steve Zeitlin

 

 

2015 Published in the journal Infancy, the study found that when infants listened to music, they remained calm for significantly longer than when they listened to speech - even when the speech was baby talk. Study co-author Prof. Isabelle Peretz, of the Center for Research on Brain, Music and Language at the University of Montreal in Canada, wanted to know how singing affects a baby's emotional self-control. The researchers found that when listening to the Turkish music, the infants remained calm for approximately 9 minutes, while they only stayed calm for around 4 minutes when listening to speech - regardless of whether or not it was baby talk. The rhythm of songs that appeal to infants rather than the words." Our finding shows that the babies did get carried away by the music, which suggests they do have the mental capacity to be 'entrained,'" says Prof. "These findings speak to the intrinsic importance of music, and of nursery rhymes in particular, which appeal to our desire for simplicity, and repetition." Peretz. <source>

5/9/14 Gestures research suggests language instinct in young children

GESTURE, THE ORAL TRADITION & SYNCRONY

 

EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE
& CULTURE

60's Soul Music Is All About Human Syncrony

THE Oral & Aural Tradition is the Heartbeat of Culture
Consider William Condon's observation of conversational synchrony, that motions and gestures of listeners are closely synchronized with the rhythms of a speakers voice. The body is wired for perfect time.

 

NCFR NEEDS YOUR HELP

John Broomall
John Broomall Executive Director
Pennsylvania Alliance For Arts Education

[P] 800-782-4289 or 610-564-0002

Invite Friends to Donate Friends,

If you are interested in Arts Education, Children's Health, and Society the National Children's Folksong Repository is a public folklore project will preserve what is left of our oral culture. Children in the United States aren't singing the songs of their heritage, an omission that puts the nation in jeopardy of losing a longstanding and rich part of its identity.

SHARE THIS WITH A FRIEND

Yes You Can

Make a Difference

For Social Goodness.

Believe

You care. We care.

Amazingness.


Invite Friends to Donate Invite Your Friends

OUR OWN
"JOHNNY APPLE SOUND SEEDS"


You can just GIVE YOUR SONG
and help SAVE YOUR CULTURE.

Please support Our Cause.

2014 Who is U2? Proof that your music will be forgotten too! The point being time marches forward every day, and what is big today will almost certainly be forgotten tomorrow. Even the Beatles. That's how the world works. Could this be the future? That which expires draws our attention?

DO IT! Record a Playground Song for the National Children's Folksong Repository ~ Sonja Stewart of Parenting Squad

  • SUPPORT NCFR
  • DONATE YOUR SONG
  • FIND FOLKSONGS
  • FIND GAME SONGS
  • BALLADS SPREAD LITERACY


SUPPORT NCFR

BE A PATRIOT AND SAVE OUR HISTORY
Silver and gold will rot away but a good education will never decay.

2009 An urgent initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record. For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. These creative works—which include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation tales, songs, myths, legends, word games, life histories or historical narratives—are increasingly endangered. Globalisation and rapid socio-economic change exert complex pressures on smaller communities, often eroding expressive diversity and transforming culture through assimilation to more dominant ways of life. As vehicles for the transmission of unique cultural knowledge, local languages encode oral traditions that become threatened when elders die and livelihoods are disrupted.

"Schools often only see playground rhymes as an encroachment into literacy, they're only interested in seeing the playground as a problem, not as a stimulus to literacy." ~ Mavis Curtis

FROM THE MEAT SPACE PLAYGROUND TO THE CYBERPLAYGROUND History of NCFR 1976 - 2006 JOURNEY

2) WATCH A 3 SHORT VIDEOS LEARN THE REASONS TO DONATE YOUR SONGS:
Allan Lomax explains the Saga of a Song Hunter.

COMMMUNICATION IS SUPPOSED TO BE 2 WAYS:

Lomax says: [...]Our job is to represent all the submerged cultures in the world. The slogan is: "Every Culture with it's equal time on the air and in the classroom". Cultural equity should join all the other important principals of: human dignity, freedom of speech, freedom of movement freedom to work and enjoy yourself and freedom of your culture to express itself. Cause that's all we have you know [...]

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Work songs
[9:31 - 9:33] weaving songs (stretching the tweed)
[9:49] Spanish Spinning song
[9:33] Work Songs - hammer stone quarry driving in wedges, Shanty Man, Gang Leader, Roll the old chariots along root of american railroad work songs.
[9:35] Texas Penitentary Song When that man in the White House can hear how sweet I can drum he sure gonna let me go
Most interesting of all our own Folk Music Good Night Irene -Ledbelly
[9:37] and [9:41] Go down Old Hannah first recording for the Library of Congress
[9:38] and [9:40] Michael Taft speaks about the forms of discs and about field recordings
[9:42] Explanation about the view of learned society, the snobish upper class and how Lomax made the nation understand the worth of culture from all people, that even poor people's culture has value and is as good as the other culture.
9:43 Pete Seeger explains Alan was 22 years old and in charge of cataloging music and he did it all in 6 years.
9:50 Songs carry the Culture of the people, you have the spirit of the place and the person, in all these songs all the fragments, what you have is the history of the people and the memory of the people, its how they feel about so many things and its the wonder of the language not written down just passed down thru the centuries from mind to mind is a miracle.
9:55 Spanish Folksong Style - No one asks why there are bagpipes in Spain?
Bagpipe - the piper doesn't live to far from here Galicia road to colambria recorded in the middle of the night in a bar work song cutting the rye, cutting the straw.


Dr. Alan Jabbour Integrating Folk Music, Folklore and Traditional Culture Instruction Into K-12 Education

DONATE YOUR SONG: HOW TO SEND YOUR FOLKSONGS OR PLAYGROUND GAME SONGS / CHANTS

1. HOW TO EMAIL THEM TO THE NCFR PROJECT

2. U.S. RESIDENTS CALL TOLL FREE AND LEAVE THEM ON THE PHONE 1-276-633-0388

Please record your American Playground Poetry - the circle games, jump rope games - songs and chants, kiddy rhymes, play parties, call and response songs AND folk songs.


FIND THE FOLKSONGS


UF STUDY:
CHILDREN'S KNOWLEDGE GAP OF FOLK SONGS THREATENS OUR HERITAGE

Children in the United States aren't singing the songs of their heritage, an omission that puts the nation in jeopardy of losing a longstanding and rich part of its identity.

Find out your state rank.


FIND GAME SONGS

FIND PLAYGROUND GAME SONGS

Indigenous playground poetry - American folksongs, jump rope chants, rhymes, songs. It is the U.S. Online Library where you can Record using your ipod, phone, or computer.

Collect Playground Poetry Classroom Activity

Find video example that we can include Pizza Pizza Daddy -o 1890--Jesse Walter Fewkes records the Passamaquoddy Indians off the coast of Maine. This is the first field use of the newly-invented recording machine.
54 Ring Game Songs From the Library of Congress 1980s.

PENNSYLVANIA EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE
HEAR FROM USIP.edu COLLEAGUES

BALLADS SPREAD LITERACY

HOW BALLADS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR SPREADING LITERACY.

The Roots of Print, Power, Politics, Literacy, Ballads, Plays, Thought and failed Censorship. Who is allowed to write? Who is allowed to read? Who is allowed to hear? Who is allowed to print? Who is allowed to publish!

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Why Use Playground Game Chants to Teach Reading

PLAY IS SERIOUS WORK for the young and old from the novice to the experienced. RESEARCH PDF It's about all the different ways we play to learn. Larger brains are linked to greater levels of play. In other words, playing makes you intelligent. Rich or poor, young or old, male or female, play has evolved to shape the overall architecture and to build big brains, explaining why children need the playground just as much as the classroom.

CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EVOLUTION, MUSIC, LANGUAGE, READING.