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Richie Havens - Three Little Birds

Jazz is a genre of music like no other. It is a combination of cultures, elements, and vibrations that embrace the soul. It is a range of sounds and emotions in styles that can be characterized as ebullient, cool, enthusiastic, doleful, or any of a thousand other sensations, pulsations, and long bluesy notes.

Like jazz artists improvising to differentiate and discern, books about jazz for young readers stand out and away from other genres. Perhaps because of the broad yet exceptional and exclusive canvas of sounds and emotions in jazz, certain illustrators and authors for young people have capitalized on the unique relationship between text and image.
Picture books often weld images and sounds, words, yet jazz often creates dissonance. While words and art each contribute a portion to the ideas readers use to interpret or make sense of picture books, the words and art may not always reflect reciprocity... there is a dissonance between text and illustration. In a picture book, words and pictures never tell exactly the same story. It is this dissonance that catches the reader’s attention. Readers work to resolve the conflict between what they see and what they read or hear.

The literary and visual elements of jazz picture books depict extraordinary movement, boldness, and fluidity that mirror lines like the music itself... A practice of creating music, either by harmonic, melodic, or rhythmic means at the moment it is being performed. Improvisation is a signature attribute of jazz and is at the heart of many of its compositions... The movement of musical tones with respect to time, that is, how fast they move, tempo, and the patterns of long and short notes as well as of accents... An important stylistic element in jazz music, syncopation occurs when rhythmic accents are placed on weak beats or weak parts of the beat.
Source: These Books Are Not Quiet: Bebop, Blues, Swing, and Soul: Jazz in Children’s Books by Darwin L. Henderson, Brenda Dales, and Teresa Young


Richie Havens - Three Little Birds
  • Released on: October 29, 2013
  • Released on: ...His Last Songs album
  • Genre: Folk

"Richie Havens was the opening act at Woodstock, sang jingles for television commercials, and was also the voice of the GeoSafari toys. His opening 1969 appearance at Woodstock catapulted him into stardom and was a major turning point in his career."

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