MUSIC REVIEW
Sol y Canto gets playful for kids' show
By Scott Alarik, Globe Correspondent, 11/4/2003
There is a joke told around the world that if you know many languages, you are multilingual; if you know two, you are bilingual; and if you only know one, you are American. Sol y Canto has made a globe-trotting career out of introducing non-Hispanic audiences to pan-Latin music, making it the perfect ambassador to introduce children to the joys of knowing more than one language. It is a mission the Cambridge-based group cheerfully accepts on its new Rounder Kids CD, "El Doblo de Amigos/Twice As Many Friends."
The band performed two CD-release concerts Sunday for a total of more than 1,000 kids and parents, displaying a buoyant but grown-up stage savvy that paid off handsomely in the faces of unusually attentive children and grateful parents.
Sol y Canto appears in configurations ranging from the duo of husband-and-wife founders Brian and Rosi Amador to much larger ensembles. While some children's shows are stripped-down affairs, with tape loops and funny sound effects substituting for real live music, the Amadors brought the whole shebang on Sunday: nine first-rate supporting musicians, the eight-voice Amigos School of Cambridge chorus, and their 7-year-old twin daughters, Sonia and Alisa, for whom their father wrote most of the CD's songs.
"You're the only one exactly like you," Rosi Amador sang in her crystalline mezzo, announcing the show's theme of tying self-esteem to a multicultural, openhearted view of the world. So many of Brian Amador's songs combine the playful and the useful, offering Spanish and English lists of the days of the week, numbers from one to 10, and phrases such as "do you want to play?" and "what's your name?"
The songs came in a dynamic array of styles, from reggae to calypso to merengue to the bewitching Afro-Brazilian ijexa. Band members shuffled percussion instruments, horns, and flutes. The Amigos chorus was robust and sweetly harmonic, and the Amador twins sang lustily, often acting out their parts. In a very funny quick-change chorus of animal imitations, they scurried behind Mom to supply the additional appendages necessary for a proper octopus impression.
Belying the tired notion that kids need silly costumes, funny noises, and ditty-dreadful melodies to hold their interest, Sol y Canto had the crowd at its quietest during soft, complex songs such as Brian Amador's gentle "Arco Iris/
Rainbow" and Tom Paxton's adult lullaby "Peace Will Come," a lovely but difficult meditation on the disquieting distance between inner and outer peace. After a full hour, when kids would usually show how ready they are for other activities, Sol y Canto literally had them dancing in the aisles, and on top of seats, to the joyful Nicaraguan anthem "Banana." But all the wiggling stopped at a cascading horn-section solo, the crowd listening hard and "ooh"-ing audibly before resuming the dance.
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