This isn't exactly what you asked for here, but I'd recommend the Story Orchestra series for younger kids. My wife has tried a few of their books with our boys (ages 2 and 3).
The books retell each story and include buttons on each page that play a few bars of the matching section of the music.
After reading each of the books several times, listening to the full pieces is more approachable. Now they can recognize when each musical theme appears, and it actually means something to them.
Only THREE?! What a fun assignment. I could be here all day trying to pick just 3, so I'm going to avoid decision paralysis and just go with the first 3 that come to mind.
1) American Pie by Don McLean - 1971 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRpiBpDy7MQ) - I loved this song when I was about 8. I grew up with a dad that was obsessed with classic rock (I'm named after a Beatles song) and I have so many favorites from that era, but it would be too hard to choose. Anyway, I heard American Pie on the radio in the car one day and my dad had so much knowledge about the backstory, the plane crash, and all the cultural references in this song. He explained to me while we were listening and I liked it so much I asked for it for from everyone I knew so I could listen to it again. I ended up wtih 3 casette tapes for Christmas. 😂
2) Lean on Me by Bill Withers - 1972 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOZ-MySzAac) - This song just reminds me of my childhood and I think the message is timeless. My youngest is learning to play it on the piano now, so I currently sing it to my kids on a weekly basis and haven't gotten tired of it yet. Fortunately, I don't think they have either.
3) Good Riddance by Green Day - 1997 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnQ8N1KacJc) - As a teenager of the late 90s, I wanted to pick something from this era. This was actually like the fourth one I tried, but the first 3 I re-listened to had questionable morals or explicit language. 😜 I think this one's pretty representative though. I'm sure I felt sentimental listening to it at my high school graduation. I've also heard it's often played at funerals which is pretty funny given that it's called Good Riddance.
And now I regret picking NOTHING by a woman. What sort of feminist am I?!
+1 for all three of these. I only didn't mention American Pie because of the whiskey and rye and Withers because I was getting far too 60s centric with my recommendations.
I remember listening to Teach Your Children Well by CSNY on my graduation day, along with that same Green Day. Seems like a long time ago.
The most powerful song I know is Floating in the Forth by Frightened Rabbit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFtfi677G1U). I'm not sure it would be appropriate for young kids, but maybe. It's the story of a man committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. It's powerful because the writer (and lead singer) actually did it ten years after the album came out. It's horribly tragic.
My second suggestion is Look at Us Now (Honeycomb) by Daisy Jones and the Six (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRbEg1Rke2A). It's a song about a complicated relationship that can be analyzed on multiple levels. Its creation is interesting because it's from a tv show about a fictional band in the 1970's, using modern writers to imitate the style. It's also just a really good song.
My third suggestion is The Fox, The Crow, and the Cookie by Mewithoutyou (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwGgQAMj5DI). It's a retelling of a classic fable through fun music and really clever wordplay ("Your subtle acclimation's true/Best to give praise where praise is due/Every rook and jay in the Corvidae/Has been Raven about me too"). The fable would be interesting to young kids, the wordplay to the older kids, and the musical composition to the even older kids.
This piece invokes very strong feelings of "home"-ness for me, despite having no real connection to my own home. It makes me feel "the poet's...love of quiet things" in my body from the first notes. The text can provide a lot to talk about and is also quite short and easy to memorize. I thought this might be a bit different than many other recommendations you receive.
OK, this is a very early 1990s list and thus dates me in the classic "no music ever hits you like the music of your early-to-mid teenage years" way, but:
Absurdist yet deeply felt, full of references that could be fascinating side-objects of study in themselves, and virtuosic wordplay on a level with the great hip-hop masterpieces.
As with so many Cohen songs, the cover is better than the original. Obvs if you want to teach them something about religious traditions "Hallelujah" is a better choice, and if you want something really trippy and eternal "Anthem", but this song is as good a way as any into the disillusionments of secular modernity.
And because three is really really too few (DM me for another 10-20 if these grab you, I could go on all night), a non-1990s bonus out of left field:
Full of religious references yet in no sense "simply" devotional; one of the great masterpieces of 20th century choral music, and the lyrics are extremely moving *if* you inhabit them really deeply, and form a terrific introduction to the incomparable poetry of W.H. Auden.
Father and son by cat Stevens was a winner recently with my kids. Cat Stevens is one of my Dad's favorite musicians and I listen to Cat Steve to remind me of him. Listening to Father and Son with my boys was great - the idea of a father advising his son to slow down, think a lot while the son comes back expressing frustration at not being heard and needing to do something really resonates on both sides for me as a daughter and a parent. The kids seem to really like trying to understand the song - what does the son want to do? It's not spelled out in the song, but I assume something Vietnam war era...
My first recommendation is Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody. It is one piece of music that contains every human emotion. It begins solemnly, picks up some speed but remains serious, gradually transitions to lively, becomes brilliantly tuneful, doubles back to somber, etc. At various points is wild, playful, buoyant, drunkenly hilarious, and finally triumphant. Not to overlook that it has many beautiful passages. There's nothing like it. https://open.spotify.com/track/7CIoJE0JfVFcmmUY3fFojH?si=df69379b6ad54c97. Second, Chopin's Fantaisie in F minor, for similar reasons; It also begins portentously, then goes through a transition that can only be compared to a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. It's a struggle with setbacks, but joy and beauty triumph. Again, some beautiful, transcendent passages. https://open.spotify.com/track/2t6opc8WVeQz6NDtNTkhOL?si=88c1f28730e34a26. Finally, Chopin's Berceuse in D Flat major is a lullaby that's simply beautiful throughout, with flights of music that would seem flamboyant if not anchored by the steady calm of the left hand. https://open.spotify.com/track/38J3F2EqXt9DnRstJiziTJ?si=d0e59471800d404f
A love letter to vaudeville from a movie that's a love letter to Hollywood. The other day, I mentioned to a friend that I was going home to watch this movie, and he quipped, "People were just more talented back then."
Dessa has been one of my favorite artists since forever -- an unashamedly literary rapper/singer whose virtuosity is only matched by her self-possession. The lyrics here speak to code-switching, but also a kind of resourcefulness that reminds me of the heroines in my favorite books as a kid.
The best, most appropriate-for-kids distillation of an extended riot grrrl phase. (Okay, it's not a phase if you never grow out of it.) When I was a teenager, this was also helpful in understanding/defusing a kind of anger that was otherwise difficult to name. Maybe it's the type of anger that leads people to start punk bands? Hmmm. :)
How open are you to songs with significant lyrical depth in non-English languages? If you are, I think the Brazilian artist Chico Buarque might be a great fit for this.
He was a notable artist back when Brazil was under a military dictatorship in the 60s and 70s, and wrote what were effectively protest songs, but because of the censorship of media back then he had to use a lot of allegory and poetic language to get around it.
And he's an amazing songwriter and lyricist, so a lot of those songs have become classics. Pick any of the below, and I think you could get a lot of mileage out of them.
---
"Apesar de Você" ("Despite You") is one of my favourites, a lively samba tune that criticizes a vague "you", "you" who makes the rules, "you" who doesn't allow discussion, "you" who invented sin but forgot to invent forgiveness.
But the chorus is hopeful: despite you, tomorrow will be another day. With lines like: "How will you prohibit the rooster from crowing?" "I'll pay to watch the garden blossom where you don't want it." "And I'll die laughing, because that day will come before you think it will."
If you're looking for something with a more direct historical bent, "Tanto Mar" ("So Much Sea") is my recommendation. He wrote it for Portugal, Brazil's colonial fatherland, who at the time had just overthrown their own fascist dictatorship in the Carnation Revolution.
Without ever naming Portugal directly, the lyrics cry out: I wish I was part of your celebration. There's so much sea between us. I wish I could pick a flower [carnation] from your garden. Send us urgently a little smell of rosemary our way. [Rosemary is symbolic of, and native to, Portugal.]
The last one I'll call out is "Construção" ("Construction"), which is not as overtly a protest song, but is extremely poetic.
It describes a story of a worker who kisses his wife and kids goodbye in the morning, goes to work at a construction site, goes up the building, works, has lunch, enjoys himself laughing and dancing, slips, falls, and dies.
Then it tells the story AGAIN but SWAPS the ending words of each line, completely changing the tone of the story, calling the man a drunkard who cheats on his wife. Then it does it again a third time.
He ends it by recontextualizing a religious blessing for a good deed done, "May God repay you", into a curse, asking God to repay "you" for the smoke we choke on, for the scaffolding we fall from, and for the botflies that bite us.
I'll also link this reaction video, not because the guy in the video is particularly insightful, but because the comments are absolute gold. Ctrl-F "proparoxytones" for example.
Honorable mention goes to "Cálice", but I feel like that song relies a bit too much on Portuguese wordplay to be great for an English-speaking audience. ("Cálice" means "chalice" but when said out loud it's indistinguishable from "Cale-se!" which means "Be quiet!". The climax of the song involves background singers shouting "Cálice!" in authoritarian-sounding voices.)
Wagon Wheel (I assume the Old Crow Medicine Show version is on Spotify)
I’ve had quite a journey with this song. As a kid learning to play hillbilly music in Virginia this was a really fun song to jam to. And it felt like a special part of my little culture, as most other “standard” songs were from different places and different times. Then the Darius Rucker version came out and the song just blew up; you couldn’t escape it. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true, because once I ended up on the other side of the world it was pretty unknown. So now it’s like a song from my culture back home that I (once again) enjoy playing and sharing with people.
I’m also really into the history of it. Bob Dylan has half of the writing credit because the chorus is taken from a bootleg tape he made in the 70s. But his version also wasn’t fully his. One of the (final) writers said it like this:
“(Dylan) said ‘I didn’t write that; Arthur Crudup did.’ Arthur Crudup said, ‘I didn’t write that; [Big] Bill Broonzy wrote that.’ Bill’s first recording of the derivative of ‘Rock Me Mama’ is around 1928. That’s a true folk song—one that has gathered a lot of dust on the fender before it ever rolled into your town. And songs like that tend to last longer because they’ve been influenced by such lasting voices.”
And since it seems like this list is going to be heavily biased towards English songs I’ll add 海闊天空 by Beyond. I can’t sing it, but I can play it on guitar, and in Southern China everyone will sing along, even if they don’t really know Cantonese. Funny enough, the verses use the same chord progression as Wagon Wheel does. I once pointed this out to some Chinese students and then said that maybe our cultures had similar music. They disagreed with me.
I almost suggested “Zombie” by Fela Kuti – a brilliant, fiery Afrobeat protest piece – though it’s probably a little long for a school setting. Thinking along those lines, though, there’s such a rich tradition of anti-war and protest songs that move people and are simple enough to sing together, one or two could be good for inclusion! (“Bella Ciao,” or “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Misérables come to mind. More recently, a Ukrainian folk march, “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” was revived in 2022 and became an anthem of defiance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV_vT0Vud5Q)).
It could also be wonderful to include other songs people sang while they worked, like sea shanties (“The Wellerman” had a big revival a few years ago).
This isn't exactly what you asked for here, but I'd recommend the Story Orchestra series for younger kids. My wife has tried a few of their books with our boys (ages 2 and 3).
They've really enjoyed Vivaldi's Four Seasons (https://www.amazon.com/Story-Orchestra-Seasons-Press-Vivaldis/dp/1847808778/) and Peter and the Wolf (https://www.amazon.com/Story-Orchestra-Peter-Press-Prokofievs/dp/0711294178).
The books retell each story and include buttons on each page that play a few bars of the matching section of the music.
After reading each of the books several times, listening to the full pieces is more approachable. Now they can recognize when each musical theme appears, and it actually means something to them.
Only THREE?! What a fun assignment. I could be here all day trying to pick just 3, so I'm going to avoid decision paralysis and just go with the first 3 that come to mind.
1) American Pie by Don McLean - 1971 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRpiBpDy7MQ) - I loved this song when I was about 8. I grew up with a dad that was obsessed with classic rock (I'm named after a Beatles song) and I have so many favorites from that era, but it would be too hard to choose. Anyway, I heard American Pie on the radio in the car one day and my dad had so much knowledge about the backstory, the plane crash, and all the cultural references in this song. He explained to me while we were listening and I liked it so much I asked for it for from everyone I knew so I could listen to it again. I ended up wtih 3 casette tapes for Christmas. 😂
2) Lean on Me by Bill Withers - 1972 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOZ-MySzAac) - This song just reminds me of my childhood and I think the message is timeless. My youngest is learning to play it on the piano now, so I currently sing it to my kids on a weekly basis and haven't gotten tired of it yet. Fortunately, I don't think they have either.
3) Good Riddance by Green Day - 1997 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnQ8N1KacJc) - As a teenager of the late 90s, I wanted to pick something from this era. This was actually like the fourth one I tried, but the first 3 I re-listened to had questionable morals or explicit language. 😜 I think this one's pretty representative though. I'm sure I felt sentimental listening to it at my high school graduation. I've also heard it's often played at funerals which is pretty funny given that it's called Good Riddance.
And now I regret picking NOTHING by a woman. What sort of feminist am I?!
+1 for all three of these. I only didn't mention American Pie because of the whiskey and rye and Withers because I was getting far too 60s centric with my recommendations.
I remember listening to Teach Your Children Well by CSNY on my graduation day, along with that same Green Day. Seems like a long time ago.
Barber's Adagio for Strings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4PWdOoOQjI&list=RDY4PWdOoOQjI
That video is from a concert played as a memorial for the victims of 9/11. You can see why they choose it.
The most powerful song I know is Floating in the Forth by Frightened Rabbit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFtfi677G1U). I'm not sure it would be appropriate for young kids, but maybe. It's the story of a man committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. It's powerful because the writer (and lead singer) actually did it ten years after the album came out. It's horribly tragic.
My second suggestion is Look at Us Now (Honeycomb) by Daisy Jones and the Six (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRbEg1Rke2A). It's a song about a complicated relationship that can be analyzed on multiple levels. Its creation is interesting because it's from a tv show about a fictional band in the 1970's, using modern writers to imitate the style. It's also just a really good song.
My third suggestion is The Fox, The Crow, and the Cookie by Mewithoutyou (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwGgQAMj5DI). It's a retelling of a classic fable through fun music and really clever wordplay ("Your subtle acclimation's true/Best to give praise where praise is due/Every rook and jay in the Corvidae/Has been Raven about me too"). The fable would be interesting to young kids, the wordplay to the older kids, and the musical composition to the even older kids.
Bohemian rhapsody - Queen (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ&list=RDfJ9rUzIMcZQ&start_radio=1&pp=ygURYm9oZW1pYW4gcmhhcHNvZHmgBwE%3D) I think this ticks s lot of the boxes. Lyrics to be analysed, the story of Freddie Mercury, a lot going on musically…
In the hall of the mountain king - Grieg (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OqvHWUZZdP0&pp=ygUZaGFsbCBvZiB0aGUgbW91bnRhaW4ga2luZw%3D%3D or https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uqDOnTHPZHQ&list=RDuqDOnTHPZHQ&start_radio=1&pp=0gcJCaIEOCosWNin) Maybe my Norwegian background getting the best of me, but it is an evocative piece of music, with this ever-increasing tempo, it can be tied to the discovery of national identity and romanticism, to Henrik Ibsen, and TROLLS.
I’ll se if I can find a third one
Calme des Nuits by Camille Saint-Saens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdRC2SmbB1A
This piece invokes very strong feelings of "home"-ness for me, despite having no real connection to my own home. It makes me feel "the poet's...love of quiet things" in my body from the first notes. The text can provide a lot to talk about and is also quite short and easy to memorize. I thought this might be a bit different than many other recommendations you receive.
OK, this is a very early 1990s list and thus dates me in the classic "no music ever hits you like the music of your early-to-mid teenage years" way, but:
Metallica, Nothing Else Matters: https://youtu.be/tAGnKpE4NCI?si=3oiUQDgY3lnwIYQo
Incredibly somatically powerful buildup; timeless theme of vulnerable devotional love rendered in a (mostly) minor key.
They Might Be Giants, Birdhouse In Your Soul: https://youtu.be/vn_or9gEB6g?si=KgzECMHjpmIewwpm
Absurdist yet deeply felt, full of references that could be fascinating side-objects of study in themselves, and virtuosic wordplay on a level with the great hip-hop masterpieces.
Concrete Blonde, "Everybody Knows" (covering Leonard Cohen): https://youtu.be/l5Fb4K8pNmg?si=3HJ38Fdj1zKQ3MAv
As with so many Cohen songs, the cover is better than the original. Obvs if you want to teach them something about religious traditions "Hallelujah" is a better choice, and if you want something really trippy and eternal "Anthem", but this song is as good a way as any into the disillusionments of secular modernity.
And because three is really really too few (DM me for another 10-20 if these grab you, I could go on all night), a non-1990s bonus out of left field:
Benjamin Britten, "Hymn to St. Cecilia": https://youtu.be/ViSQRzLk68s?si=AhjopHjIF9j9BW8D
Full of religious references yet in no sense "simply" devotional; one of the great masterpieces of 20th century choral music, and the lyrics are extremely moving *if* you inhabit them really deeply, and form a terrific introduction to the incomparable poetry of W.H. Auden.
Father and son by cat Stevens was a winner recently with my kids. Cat Stevens is one of my Dad's favorite musicians and I listen to Cat Steve to remind me of him. Listening to Father and Son with my boys was great - the idea of a father advising his son to slow down, think a lot while the son comes back expressing frustration at not being heard and needing to do something really resonates on both sides for me as a daughter and a parent. The kids seem to really like trying to understand the song - what does the son want to do? It's not spelled out in the song, but I assume something Vietnam war era...
My first recommendation is Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody. It is one piece of music that contains every human emotion. It begins solemnly, picks up some speed but remains serious, gradually transitions to lively, becomes brilliantly tuneful, doubles back to somber, etc. At various points is wild, playful, buoyant, drunkenly hilarious, and finally triumphant. Not to overlook that it has many beautiful passages. There's nothing like it. https://open.spotify.com/track/7CIoJE0JfVFcmmUY3fFojH?si=df69379b6ad54c97. Second, Chopin's Fantaisie in F minor, for similar reasons; It also begins portentously, then goes through a transition that can only be compared to a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. It's a struggle with setbacks, but joy and beauty triumph. Again, some beautiful, transcendent passages. https://open.spotify.com/track/2t6opc8WVeQz6NDtNTkhOL?si=88c1f28730e34a26. Finally, Chopin's Berceuse in D Flat major is a lullaby that's simply beautiful throughout, with flights of music that would seem flamboyant if not anchored by the steady calm of the left hand. https://open.spotify.com/track/38J3F2EqXt9DnRstJiziTJ?si=d0e59471800d404f
1) "Am Yisroel Chai"
(Lyrics & music by Shlomo Carlebach)
https://youtu.be/rmWUyOBmwdU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_Yisrael_Chai
2) Mimkomcha
(Traditional lyrics with music by Shlomo Carlebach)
https://youtu.be/v1BhMhsxuFs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedushah
3) One by U2
https://youtu.be/ftjEcrrf7r0
Music that has shaped me:
Donald O'Connor (as the character Cosmo Brown), "Make 'Em Laugh," Singin' in the Rain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGCNBdCvzL4&pp=0gcJCfwAo7VqN5tD
A love letter to vaudeville from a movie that's a love letter to Hollywood. The other day, I mentioned to a friend that I was going home to watch this movie, and he quipped, "People were just more talented back then."
Dessa, "Skeleton Key:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-elJDC8N7I
Dessa has been one of my favorite artists since forever -- an unashamedly literary rapper/singer whose virtuosity is only matched by her self-possession. The lyrics here speak to code-switching, but also a kind of resourcefulness that reminds me of the heroines in my favorite books as a kid.
Veruca Salt, "Seether:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPsQcB52V18
The best, most appropriate-for-kids distillation of an extended riot grrrl phase. (Okay, it's not a phase if you never grow out of it.) When I was a teenager, this was also helpful in understanding/defusing a kind of anger that was otherwise difficult to name. Maybe it's the type of anger that leads people to start punk bands? Hmmm. :)
How open are you to songs with significant lyrical depth in non-English languages? If you are, I think the Brazilian artist Chico Buarque might be a great fit for this.
He was a notable artist back when Brazil was under a military dictatorship in the 60s and 70s, and wrote what were effectively protest songs, but because of the censorship of media back then he had to use a lot of allegory and poetic language to get around it.
And he's an amazing songwriter and lyricist, so a lot of those songs have become classics. Pick any of the below, and I think you could get a lot of mileage out of them.
---
"Apesar de Você" ("Despite You") is one of my favourites, a lively samba tune that criticizes a vague "you", "you" who makes the rules, "you" who doesn't allow discussion, "you" who invented sin but forgot to invent forgiveness.
But the chorus is hopeful: despite you, tomorrow will be another day. With lines like: "How will you prohibit the rooster from crowing?" "I'll pay to watch the garden blossom where you don't want it." "And I'll die laughing, because that day will come before you think it will."
Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33-bMTOlvx0
Lyrics translation: https://lyricalbrazil.com/2012/03/18/apesar-de-voce/
---
If you're looking for something with a more direct historical bent, "Tanto Mar" ("So Much Sea") is my recommendation. He wrote it for Portugal, Brazil's colonial fatherland, who at the time had just overthrown their own fascist dictatorship in the Carnation Revolution.
Without ever naming Portugal directly, the lyrics cry out: I wish I was part of your celebration. There's so much sea between us. I wish I could pick a flower [carnation] from your garden. Send us urgently a little smell of rosemary our way. [Rosemary is symbolic of, and native to, Portugal.]
Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdvheuHhF2U
Lyrics translation: https://lyricalbrazil.com/2012/04/25/tanto-mar/
There's also a second version of the song with different lyrics written after the revolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST30-i7cZJk
---
The last one I'll call out is "Construção" ("Construction"), which is not as overtly a protest song, but is extremely poetic.
It describes a story of a worker who kisses his wife and kids goodbye in the morning, goes to work at a construction site, goes up the building, works, has lunch, enjoys himself laughing and dancing, slips, falls, and dies.
Then it tells the story AGAIN but SWAPS the ending words of each line, completely changing the tone of the story, calling the man a drunkard who cheats on his wife. Then it does it again a third time.
He ends it by recontextualizing a religious blessing for a good deed done, "May God repay you", into a curse, asking God to repay "you" for the smoke we choke on, for the scaffolding we fall from, and for the botflies that bite us.
Song with English lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmGrRmXivmM
I'll also link this reaction video, not because the guy in the video is particularly insightful, but because the comments are absolute gold. Ctrl-F "proparoxytones" for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTgoJK9HFlg
---
Honorable mention goes to "Cálice", but I feel like that song relies a bit too much on Portuguese wordplay to be great for an English-speaking audience. ("Cálice" means "chalice" but when said out loud it's indistinguishable from "Cale-se!" which means "Be quiet!". The climax of the song involves background singers shouting "Cálice!" in authoritarian-sounding voices.)
Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzlniinsBeY (Has English captions)
The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
Queen - Don’t Stop Me Now
OutKast - Jazzy Belle
Wagon Wheel (I assume the Old Crow Medicine Show version is on Spotify)
I’ve had quite a journey with this song. As a kid learning to play hillbilly music in Virginia this was a really fun song to jam to. And it felt like a special part of my little culture, as most other “standard” songs were from different places and different times. Then the Darius Rucker version came out and the song just blew up; you couldn’t escape it. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true, because once I ended up on the other side of the world it was pretty unknown. So now it’s like a song from my culture back home that I (once again) enjoy playing and sharing with people.
I’m also really into the history of it. Bob Dylan has half of the writing credit because the chorus is taken from a bootleg tape he made in the 70s. But his version also wasn’t fully his. One of the (final) writers said it like this:
“(Dylan) said ‘I didn’t write that; Arthur Crudup did.’ Arthur Crudup said, ‘I didn’t write that; [Big] Bill Broonzy wrote that.’ Bill’s first recording of the derivative of ‘Rock Me Mama’ is around 1928. That’s a true folk song—one that has gathered a lot of dust on the fender before it ever rolled into your town. And songs like that tend to last longer because they’ve been influenced by such lasting voices.”
And since it seems like this list is going to be heavily biased towards English songs I’ll add 海闊天空 by Beyond. I can’t sing it, but I can play it on guitar, and in Southern China everyone will sing along, even if they don’t really know Cantonese. Funny enough, the verses use the same chord progression as Wagon Wheel does. I once pointed this out to some Chinese students and then said that maybe our cultures had similar music. They disagreed with me.
I think my one and only recommendation is “Shosholoza” – originally sung by South African miners as they worked and later famously sung by Nelson Mandela on Robben Island. Performance: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7jYdtRTlvgQ&list=RD7jYdtRTlvgQ&start_radio=1&pp=ygUKU2hvc2hvbG96YaAHAQ%3D%3D
Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shosholoza
I think it would be super interesting to pair this with learning about gum boot dancing, also created by miners. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumboot_dance
Performance example (although there are many more!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA9Q36PY5CU
I almost suggested “Zombie” by Fela Kuti – a brilliant, fiery Afrobeat protest piece – though it’s probably a little long for a school setting. Thinking along those lines, though, there’s such a rich tradition of anti-war and protest songs that move people and are simple enough to sing together, one or two could be good for inclusion! (“Bella Ciao,” or “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Misérables come to mind. More recently, a Ukrainian folk march, “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” was revived in 2022 and became an anthem of defiance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV_vT0Vud5Q)).
It could also be wonderful to include other songs people sang while they worked, like sea shanties (“The Wellerman” had a big revival a few years ago).
I forgot to mention that I’m sure there are also some great marching songs out there which could be good for inclusion!
Also maybe a lullaby? I grew up learning Thula Baba but I’m sure there are many from different cultures as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OCLTEO2t3s
FKJ & Masego - Tadow (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hC8CH0Z3L54)
TOOL - Parabola (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-_nQhGR0K8M)
Pink Floyd - The Great Gig In The Sky (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MTovRtERP5U)
https://radioparadise.com/home
https://acclaimedmusic.net/
https://radio.garden
Gillian Welch - Revelator (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4gEc5Pq50xo)
R.E.M. - Man On The Moon (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLxpNiF0YKs)
Massive Attack - Psyche (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gU-gz06cJCc)