So let’s talk about A Life of Song. You’ve certainly lived one.

Well, I’ll tell you. I liked to sing when I was a small child. Not that my mother or father sang, but my uncle introduced me to music, as well as my first instrument, which was the harmonica. I really enjoyed that. I’m not a formal musician, I’ve just always done it by ear, and that’s how I share it with people today. I would still encourage anyone to train formally, but you don’t have to — just by singing, or even through exposure to music, you’re part of it. Often that’s what children do — they listen to music and then take parts of what they hear to make their own. I’ve always hummed or whistled or something. You don’t need an instrument or a band — birds sing all the time.

But anyway, I was never formally trained. When I was a child in the South Side of Chicago, many of the parents in my neighborhood got together and said, “we would like our children to learn the piano.” So there was a man who came and collected lots of money and told everyone that a music school was going to open on a certain day. Well, it came to that day, and the man never showed up. All that money gone, and he never showed up.

Kind of like Harold Hill in The Music Man, right?

[Laughs] Oh, I tell you. We’re joking now, but there was so much disappointment then. I’m glad people don’t do that so much anymore.

You’re talking about the power of singing, and one of the things I really love about your music is the way you use call and response.

Well, you know, if you think about it, people have always been interested in an echo — I mean, even as far as yelling into caves and mountains. There’s something about using your vocal cords to push something out of you, and if you can get something back, it’s also satisfying. That’s what I started with. In churches, you know, and you hear it on some records too, whether they’re American or Middle Eastern or what have you. You hear it in gospel music and spirituals, whether you’re listening to ministers or leaders of choral groups.

I used to go to the Regal Theatre in Chicago, you know, and see some of the top stars — like Cab Calloway and Muddy Waters and others. Cab Calloway had a call and response, you know, they called him the Hi-De-Ho Man. He’d have everyone in the audience singing back to him. And there was a movie star named Danny Kaye — I’m not sure if you know who he was. But he also did a lot of that, and many times, he’d use French or Spanish with his expressions, and we’d call back to him. And of course, cheerleaders do it all the time.

It has different uses. Sometimes the person leading just wants you to repeat back exactly what they’ve said; sometimes you have to know your own part. So I find that it makes it easier for your audience to remember, and it’s also a way to participate.

Right, exactly. It makes me think of Pete Seeger, and the way he’s always approached his music as something people should participate in –

Oh, Pete Seeger is a friend. He has his guitar and his banjo, and he’s really fantastic with his banjo. I’m always thrilled when the two of us can get together, and he’ll play his banjo while I play my harmonica. He can do all kinds of fancy things. His instrument is his companion, and he goes all over the world with it — sometimes he’s playing solo, and sometimes he’s getting people to sing along with him. He can start a song very easily, and it doesn’t take a long time to teach it, and to get that response.

I read once that early in his career, he was ambivalent about making albums at all, because he felt like he was encouraging people to just listen passively, instead of making their own music. Have you ever felt that way?

Oh, no, no, because I feel — and I’m sure Pete feels this way now — that you can reach people and encourage them to create when they hear you. I know that what you’re talking about happens sometimes. In classrooms, for instance, it can happen. But I’ve always been of the mind that if we all can listen, then we all can respond. With a lot of a classical music, of course, it’s mostly listening. But with folk instruments and folk songs, you can sing along, and you can do that whether you’re in an audience or listening to your record collection.

You’ve made a lot of albums. What was your motivation for releasing this one now?

I’ve been listening to a lot of music for a long time, music that’s — you know, they call it African-American now, but it’s had a lot of names, colored, black… [laughs] But that type of music. And every so often when I hear certain music, I get inspired. In this case, we’re talking about music I hadn’t heard for awhile, and I was also working with a woman named Mara Tapp, who works with a group of children from two different schools called Cool Classics! And so I got those two groups together, and I was thinking about doing a session with them, but I was also thinking about doing another recording.

I thought, “Some of these children probably haven’t even heard these songs.” And I started thinking about how, often times, I’ll reflect on my own background and my own childhood, and that’s a good way to share — reflecting on the past while talking a little about the future. And so this album has some of both. We’ll do “Little Sally Walker” and songs like that, but with some of my own arrangements, like the part where I start talking about black royalty. You know, with European history, there’s a lot of talk of kings and queens, but we also call people royal names. Like Count Basie…

Queen Latifah!

[Laughs] Oh, yeah! You know. And don’t forget the Queen of Soul. But anyway, I was looking back at my background, and I started sharing it with the children. That’s how I start off the album, talking about how my brother and I were born in St. Louis, Missouri, but my mother and father were from the South. When I was growing up, you talk about the South, and people would say, “Oh, dear, those people don’t know anything.” They used to be down on it, you know. But anyway, my mother was from Mississippi and my father was from Alabama, and my grandmother was in Mississippi, so we went down to visit her, and she was on a cotton farm.

My brother and I were fascinated by people working so hard, and my grandmother saw that, so she gave us two little bags, and we went out there and did a little bit of cotton picking ourselves. And I remember that song from long ago about picking cotton. [Singing] “Oh lordy, pick a bale of cotton / Oh lordy, pick a bale a day.” Sometimes I’d hear children singing it “pick a bale of hay,” and I’d say “that isn’t the right way.” [Laughs]

But the children on this album didn’t have a lot of choral experience. They were just children who loved to sing and were interested in learning new things — you know, we weren’t trying to do anything fancy. We didn’t do a lot of rehearsing, we just got up there and were ready to go. They were really fascinated by seeing all the microphones and equipment.

I wanted to ask you about working with children. How have your experiences with them changed over the course of your career?

Well, they’ve changed. They’re more sophisticated. But they’re interested. And they understand more about how to apply what they learn. But some things don’t change — you know, I’ve always said children are my favorite people, and that’s because there’s an honesty and a purity, especially in their smiles. If a child really wants to smile, they smile. And their laughter makes you want to laugh inside. We should recognize, and that’s what I do in my music, that any of us can help preserve that. When a child shakes your hand, there’s just a wonderful little warmth that goes along with it. It makes me feel good.

Ella Jenkins’ new album, A Life of Song, will be released February 22.

The packaging is also every bit as basic (and basically awesome) as the musical contents — the disc comes in a black-and-white cardboard case that says COLOR ME! on the cover, a winking nod to the days when these songs were originally popular, a time when families would sit around their parlors and sing the hits of the day themselves rather than streaming them to their AirPlay-enabled devices. (Of course, the album is also available as an MP3 download, but you get the point.)

The Professor (a.k.a. Paul Silveria) won’t win any awards for his vocals, but that’s part of Old Time‘s charm — this is one-take, rough-hewn stuff, meant for clapping and singing along to, beautiful in its stark, uncommon simplicity. If your kids love Pete Seeger (and if they don’t, you aren’t doing your job), here’s another perfect addition to the family music library.

What if you could have it — lots of it — and support a worthy cause in the bargain?

That’s the idea behind Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, the debut offering from Bill Childs‘ Spare the Rock Records, and it works splendidly. The track listing boasts a virtual Who’s Who of the best and brightest in kindie, including Recess Monkey, Elizabeth Mitchell, Gustafer Yellowgold, Dan Zanes, and Uncle Rock — and almost all of the songs are previously unreleased. The set was produced by Dean Jones of Dog on Fleas, who helped round up the artists (including Pete Seeger, recorded in a single take in his living room) and contributed a pair of tracks (Dog on Fleas’ lovely “Sing About the Sun” and the quirky, irresistible Jones solo cut “Little by Little”).

If you’re familiar with Bill’s work, or any of the artists I named above, you know what to expect from Many Hands — it includes its share of boisterous, candy-colored tracks (like They Might Be Giants’ “My Name Is Kingof Socks”), but this crew is fighting the good fight; where they go, smart, honest kids’ music is sure to follow, and most of it is stripped down to its bare essentials. There’s no artifice here, no pandering to children, no teeth-grindingly cute arrangements or lyrics. Just family entertainment, in the truest sense — beautifully recorded by a family of artists, to benefit families half a world away.

More about that worthy cause: Proceeds from Many Hands go to the Haitian People’s Support Project, where they’re working hard to repair the devastation of the January earthquake. It’s a crisis too great for one charity — or one great CD — to solve, but you can help by picking up a copy of the album and explaining the story behind it to your kids. And if you’re lucky enough to live within driving distance, you can attend one of the Many Hands concerts scheduled for the fall.

(While it wasn’t an official Many Hands show, Dadnabbit was lucky enough to play a part in bringing Dog on Fleas to our rural corner of New Hampshire recently. Pictures here.)

The more time I spend with kids’ entertainment, the less patience I have for movies or music that waste energy condescending to their audience. Kids are just like us — they respond to things that make them feel, that treat them with respect, and that trust their intelligence. The artists who contributed their time and talent to this project understand this, and that’s what makes it such a beautiful, valuable listen. If you buy only one CD for your family this year, make it Many Hands.

Now 91, Seeger isn’t the vocalist he used to be, but he’s only used this as an excuse to further embrace the group performances he’s always encouraged; his Appleseed Recordings tenure has included a number of collaborations, and that trend continues with the delightful Tomorrow’s Children.

Credited to “Pete Seeger with the Rivertown Kids and Friends,” Tomorrow’s Children is a remarkable late-period testament to Seeger’s career-long belief in the joy of untrammeled creativity. Invited to join in a local fourth-grade teacher’s music lessons, Seeger became a fixture at the school, and here’s the result: 19 tracks of group performances featuring an American icon, a handful of special guests, and a whole bunch of kids who now have one amazing story to tell.

If there’s any kind of gripe to be had, it’s that Tomorrow’s Children doesn’t always sound like a Pete Seeger record; though he performs on all the tracks, he frequently takes a back seat to his young collaborators, who even contributed lyrics to some of the songs. That’s a minor complaint, though, particularly because it always feels like a Seeger album — this is a beautiful, clear-eyed testament to the power of using music to bring people together, of using simple ingredients to create something timeless, and of working locally to effect global change.

Though they’re sometimes humorous, these aren’t silly songs. They don’t pander. They’re for — and by — kids, but they don’t stoop to make their points; they’re direct and honest about their points of view, and they trust their audience to listen accordingly. Modern parents, accustomed to shielding their kids from anything more troublesome than a disagreement between Muno and Brobee, may blanch at the prospect of letting them hear songs about social activism, pollution, and the like, but that isn’t doing anyone any favors. As Seeger demonstrates here yet again, responsible citizenry starts with you — and it starts with nothing more complicated than your voice.

Both compilations include a number of kiddie giants — Raffi, who I hate, pops up on both of them — but you can expect plenty of surprises, too. Buckweat Zydeco and Bonnie Raitt appear on Pickin’ & Grinnin’, for instance, and on Love & Peace, you’ll hear Faith Hill, Sheila E., and AC/DC’s Brian Johnson (the latter popping up, along with some kids, on a sweeter-than-you’d-expect version of “If I Had a Hammer”).

All in all, it’s really entertaining stuff, and although the current age of mp3s, iPods, and burned CDs has left us less reliant than ever on label-curated compilations, both Pickin’ & Grinnin’ and Love & Peace are perfect for keeping handy in the car for long family car rides. They’re also great for educators (as my kindergarten-teaching wife can attest), or anyone who finds themselves responsible for wrangling a group of little people. You could seek most of this stuff out on your own, but really, any albums that collect songs from Taj Mahal, Pete Seeger, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Los Lobos, Maria Muldaur, Dan Zanes, Woody Guthrie — and many, many more — are worth celebrating, aren’t they? For any parent who’s building a kindie collection, these two CDs are a splendid way to start, blending time-tested classics and new favorites with style. Wonderful, just wonderful.

Go Waggaloo is credited to Sarah Lee Guthrie & Family, and the credits reflect that spirit: Songwriting credits are spread between Sarah, her husband Johnny Irion, and their daughter Olivia, and a whole passel of Guthries — plus family friends like Pete Seeger — show up on the recordings. The connections between the musicians — and from the musicians to the songs — translates into an album whose warmth is felt from the first sunny strains of the opening track, “Don’t I Fit in My Daddy’s Shoes?,” and lasts clear through to the final ringing chords of “Oni’s Ponies.” In between, you get a half hour of fun that includes the joyous title track, the startling morality tale “Oh How He Lied,” the lovely “Big Moon,” a transcendent group runthrough of the classic “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” and much more. It feels less like an album than an accidental peek into a very talented family’s singalong, which fits right in with the Guthrie/Seeger musical mission statement: Singing is just as important as listening, and everything is more fun when we all join in.

And joining in is easy where these songs are concerned — as Arlo attests in his booklet essay, he recently concluded a concert by performing a Sarah Lee song he’d only heard on YouTube, and had the audience singing along before it was finished. Give Go Waggaloo a few spins with your family, and be singing along too.

A collection of 14 Vigneault songs performed by Canadian singers including Patrick Watson, Thomas Hellman, Coral Egan, and Vigneault’s daughter Jessica, Kyoto highlights Gilles’ gentle whimsy; the title track, for instance, is about a Cajun musician who lives in Kyoto with his Japanese wife, where they lead jam sessions and perform for Buddhist monks (“Let me tell you about Yoshi / Fingers dancing on the harp / Has a pond of swimming carp / Just don’t say the word ‘sushi’”). Other songs continue in the same vein, from the sprightly “When the Danse Began” to the mock-operatic “Four Eggs” and effortlessly catchy “The Great Big Kite.” The arrangements are clean and jazzy, with charmingly silly vocal contributions from the singers, and the lyrics manage to be appropriate and educational while also avoiding your typical well-worn kids’ music subjects (one notable exception is “One, Two, Three, ABCD,” which will use copious amounts of Jew’s harp and lyrics about bovine peeing and farting to squeeze gales of laughter out of your children).

Sunday in Kyoto holds up well enough on its own as a CD, but as with Secret Mountain’s last release, the Trout Fishing in America collection My Name Is Chicken Joe, what makes this release special is the accompanying storybook. Illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch, the Kyoto book really only depicts the album’s title track, sticking with thumbnail sketches for the other songs, but Jorisch’s artwork is simple, colorful, and beautiful. At under $12 at Amazon, this has all the makings of a perfectly affordable, wonderfully quirky gift for the mainstream-eschewing youngster in your life. For examples of the artwork — and samples of the French-language version of the album — click here.